Tuesday, August 23, 2011

1979 Topps #223 Kent Tekulve

Nationals 5, Phillies 4 (10 Innings)
Game 125 - Sunday Afternoon, August 21st in Washington

One Sentence Summary:  With the game tied and the bases loaded, Brad Lidge hit Jonny Gomes with a pitch to force in the winning run in the the 10th.

What It Means:  The Phillies were 81-44 following this game and their lead in the East had shrunk to 6 1/2 games.

What Went Wrong:  A torrential downpour in the top of the sixth ended Roy Halladay's day and resulted in yet another rain delay.  The Phils held a 3-2 lead when the rain stopped, but Michael Schwimer, in his Major League debut, allowed a home run to Danny Espinosa to tie up the game.  Later, the Phils took a 4-3 lead into the ninth, but Antonio Bastardo allowed a two-out home run to Ian Desmond to tie up the game once again.

Lidge had nothing.  He promptly loaded the bases in the 10th before plunking Gomes to hand the win to the Nationals.

Featured Card:  This was a bad day all around.  Without going into any detail, an unfortunate chain of events led to a rough morning for us as we were leaving Pittsburgh to travel back home.  The Phillies provided no solace as they lost in painful fashion to the lowly Nationals.  Despite our troubles in Pittsburgh, I wanted to post a card to celebrate one of my favorite former Pirates and Phillies pitchers - Kenton Charles Tekulve.

I've got the 1979 Topps set on my mind this week, and this is a great card featuring Teke wearing one of the five different uniform combinations the Pirates wore back in the late-'70s.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So why didn't you use one of Teke's Phillies issues?

Jim said...

Because Teke's Pirates cards are so much more cooler than his Phillies cards. (And because I featured one of his Pirates cards last year when I visited Pittsburgh too.)