Friday, November 2, 2012

1987 ProCards Clearwater Phillies #1540 Dave Brundage

Dave Brundage was just 23 years old when this baseball card was issued in 1987.  Originally drafted by the Phillies in the fourth round of the June 1986 amateur player draft, Brundage spent two seasons playing for the organization's minor league teams in Spartanburg, Clearwater and Reading.  In December 1987, Brundage, along with Glenn Wilson and Michael Jackson, was shipped to the Mariners in the deal that brought Phil Bradley to Philadelphia.

He'd spend the next seven seasons climbing through the Mariners system, but he never made it to the Majors.

He became a player-coach in the late '90s and he managed within the Mariners organization until leaving to manage the Braves Triple-A team in 2007.  Yesterday, Brundage was named the new manager of the Triple-A Lehigh Valley IronPigs and he finally returns to the Phillies organization after a 24 year absence.  He brings with him 13 seasons of experience as a minor league manager, during which time he won three league championships.

The IronPigs manager for the past two seasons, Ryne Sandberg, joins the Major League ranks this season as the Phillies new third base coach.  It would be cool if Brundage joined Sandberg next season at the Major League level, finally ending his 27-year minor league odyssey.

3 comments:

deal said...

Wow nice find.

Jim said...

I knew this $2 team set would come in handy one day!

Steve F. said...

Thanks for the heads up. I vaguely remember his name from playing for the Reading (nee Phillies). If he ever becomes a big-league coach with the Phils, I may need to track this down, get it signed, and add it to my signed Phillies card collection. (That worked for P.J. Forbes, Ramon Henderson and Gary Varsho, each of whom had minor league cards but never standard-sized Phillies cards--although Varsho later had a giveaway card as a coach that I used to replace the minor league card in my collection.)