Game 105 - Phils Bullpen Can't Preserve Sanchez's Gem

1990 Fleer #650

Pirates 6, Phillies 4 (10 Innings)
Game 105 - Sunday Afternoon, July 30th in Pittsburgh
Record - 56-49, 3rd Place, 12 games behind the Braves

One Sentence Summary:  Cristopher Sanchez pitched a gem but the Pirates continued to battle back and the Phillies' bullpen couldn't hold them off in this 6-4 loss.

What It Means:  The Phillies dropped two out of three to the Pirates, which is not good.  Fortunately, we entirely missed this ballgame as our son Doug's travel baseball team played three games on Sunday, advancing all the way to the Championship game.  It didn't work out for either Doug's team or the Phillies.

What Happened:  Sanchez pitched five hitless, shutout innings before yielding to the Phillies bullpen.  It was pretty much all downhill from there.  The Phillies had led the game through 5 1/2 innings after Alec Bohm's two-run home run in the fourth.  Bryan Reynolds tied it in the sixth with a two-run home run off reliever Seranthony Dominguez.  The Phils went up again in the seventh, taking a 4-2 lead following RBI singles from Bryce Harper and Bohm.  The Pirates scored a run in the bottom of the seventh, aided by a Johan Rojas error in center field, then tied it in the eighth on a sacrifice fly.  All tied up 4-4, and with a ghost runner on second base, Josh Palacios homered off AndrewVasquez in the 10th to give the Pirates the win.

Featured Card:  I've been slowly updating my Phillies collection over at TCDB.com, going year-by-year through my many Phillies binders.  I recently polished off my 1990 Phillies binder, which contains this hybrid Phillies-Pirates card from the 1990 Fleer set.  My user name is Ringo73 at TCDB and after adding all 686 of my 1990 Phillies baseball cards to my collection, I'm ready to tackle my 1991 binder next.

2023 Virtual Phillies Wall / 2023 Season Summary Index / 2023 Chachi Set Checklist

1989 Topps Phillies - Missing Links (Incomplete)

I've mentioned in a few posts already how I began the process a few years back of creating Topps Phillies cards for those unfortunate few players omitted from the Topps base or traded series for the year(s) they wore red/burgundy pinstripes.  To date, I have created a complete run of missing link players from 1980 through 1988.  I got to 1989 . . . and completely stalled out.

There were 19 players who appeared with the Phils in 1989 who did not merit a Topps baseball card that year.  I started creating the cards and then, to be perfectly honest, I completely lost interest in the project.  I guess Floyd Youmans and Gordan Dillard and Jim Adduci will do that to a guy.  (As a side note, it was very difficult for me to replicate the curvature of the player's name on the 1989 Topps cards.  I found I had to rotate and adjust each letter to get the right look.  This probably contributed to the abandonment of the project.)

In any event, here are the five cards I did manage to complete.  The remaining 14 will hopefully be completed at some point.  After all, how could we live in a world in which Steve Stanicek doesn't have a 1989 Topps Phillies card?

PR2

PR3

PR7

PR9

PR10

And in case you're wondering, here are the 14 players still missing 1989 Topps Phillies cards:  Jim Adduci, Dennis Cook, Gordon Dillard, Curt Ford, Charlie Hayes, Terry Mulholland, Dwayne Murphy, Tom Nieto, Randy O'Neal, Al Pardo, Mark Ryal, Bob Sebra, Steve Stanicek and Floyd Youmans.