Spring Training Game 33 - Friday Night, March 29th in Philadelphia
Record - 16-16-1
One Sentence Summary: The offense stayed behind in Florida as the Blue Jays squeaked by the Phillies at Citizens Bank Park, 1-0.
What It Means: One more game to go, and then they all start to count.
What Went Wrong: Phillippe Aumont allowed a first pitch home to J.P. Arencibia to start the fifth inning, and it was the only scoring by either team. Cliff Lee pitched four scoreless innings and struck out five.
Featured Card: I attended this game with my six-year-old son Doug (see Field Report below) and Doug walked to one of the Newstands with me to pick up a Media Guide, the Topps Phillies 17-card team set, and the first edition of the team-issued postcard-sized set. Similar to the last few years, the photos in this initial series are all from Spring Training.
There are 41 cards in the set, and several Phillies (and non-Phillies) receive their first and possibly only Phillies cards. Marking their Phillies cardboard debuts are Mike Adams, Yuniesky Betancourt (now with the Brewers), Ender Inciarte, John Lannan, Humberto Quintero and Delmon Young. I'll have more on the 17-card Topps Phillies set in a future post.Field Report: Friend o' the blog Peter V. graciously gave us two tickets to last night's On-Deck Series game and we were happy to enjoy the game from his awesome seats in Section 138. It turned out to be a fairly boring game, but Doug was happy to meet new Phillies coach Wally Joyner and former Phillie Tommy Greene prior to the game. Joyner gave us coupons for a free hot dog and soda, while Greene signed a special Phillies Alumni card for Doug. I also took a picture of new Phillie Ben Revere's giant 2011 Topps-style card in Ashburn Alley as part of the night's starting line-up. (Michael Young had a Phillies card too, while Quintero was represented by the generic Citizens Bank Park card.)
It was cold, but Doug stayed warm by devouring a entire box of popcorn and waiting with his glove after every pitch for a foul ball.
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6 comments:
It strikes me as odd that they'd use a giant 2011 for a new player. I wonder if Topps stopped providing new templates? I haven't been to a park with the giant Topps cards since 2011, so I hadn't had the opportunity to notice anything like this.
I forgot to mention how jealous I am...
I'm jealous that you've been to a baseball game... I've usually been to at least a college baseball game by now.
I also have a long-standing jealousy that the Phillies have team-issued cards sets, and even more jealous that they put effort into it. I wish more teams did that.
The 2011 card template bugged me last year and it will bug me even more this year. My guess is that the re-use of the 2011 cards is for pure cost reasons only. Only a few of us would notice this sort of thing anyway.
The team issued cards are a nice touch for us collectors. Sure, I've complained about design, player selection or confusing checklists in the past, but I'd prefer a card set over no card set every time. And it's nice that they make the effort to update the set in the second half. It must be a decent money maker for the team. Sets are sold for $5 a piece and I can't imagine they cost more than a buck to print in bulk.
I love the Green alumni card -- I would love it if the Phillies produced sets of those as well, rather than just using them for player autographs at the stadium.
He had a stack of maybe a few hundred of these cards in front of him, and in case you're interested the copyright on the back is 2010. My guess is that they print these up per player on an as needed basis.
I've seen other alumni cards, both in that style and also in the style of the then-current photocard set. I was at the show at Cannstatter's Catering on March 23 (hours before heading out on vacation!) and a guy there had a Tug McGraw alumni card from, IIRC, 1990 signed by Tug. (Or at least it was in the style they used from, what, about 1989-94 or so, if it wasn't actually copyright 1990.) He wanted $65 for it, which was about $40 more than I was willing to pay. I suspect you are right that they are printed up as needed by players, so there probably are more signed copies of these out there than unsigned ones.
I have, I believe, Dave Cash and Garry MAddox signed cards in that style as well, and I definitely remember seeing a Dallas Green card signed in the style of the Tommy Greene that you received. Good stuff! I too am glad we have them (unlike the Mets....).
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