2009 Topps Ticket to Stardom Seasoned Veterans #SV-5 Ryan Howard

Nationals 9, Phillies 1
Game 11 - Friday Night, April 15th in Philadelphia
Record - 5-6, Tied for 2nd place, 4 games behind the Nationals

One Sentence Summary:  The Phillies came back down to Earth with a 9-1 thrashing by the Nationals.

What It Means:  Thoughts of being able to compete with the elite teams in the league were temporarily dashed by this reality check of a loss.

What Happened:  Jeremy Hellickson lasted just three innings, allowing six runs (five earned) on seven hits.  Brett Oberholtzer took one for the team and allowed three more runs in his four innings of work.  Bryce Harper (3 for 4 with a home run) and Jayson Werth (2 for 5 with 3 RBIs) did most of the damage for the Nationals.

Featured Card:  Today's featured card came to me in a round-about way.  I am absolutely positive that I have a card (or cards) in my Phillies collection featuring either Jimmy Rollins or another Phillies player wearing #42 in honor of Jackie Robinson.  Given that this game was the annual salute to Jackie Robinson in which every player wore #42, I wanted to post one of those cards.  But I couldn't find any.  Maybe I missed it, but I went card by card through my 2008 through 2012 Phillies binders before I gave up.

I came across this Ryan Howard card instead.  Howard hit home run #361 last night, tying him with Joe DiMaggio at 81st on the all-time home run list.  The card featured here is an insert from the one and done 2009 Topps Ticket to Stardom set.  I love the design of this card, and I would fully support this exact design showing up as a flagship set design in the future with "Seasoned Veterans" replaced with the player's team name.  No white smoke, no photo filters and no weirdly cropped photos are needed.  And if Topps really wanted to impress me, they wouldn't use any foil on the card fronts for the team name.

Recently added to The Phillies Room - 2016 Season Summary page with game results and links to game summary posts.