Pirates 8, Phillies 5Game 80 - Sunday Afternoon, July 4th in Pittsburgh
Everything was fine until the 7th inning. The birds were chirping, the bees were buzzing and a breeze was serenely blowing. The Phils held a 5-2 lead and Joe Blanton was cruising, having not allowed a Pirates' hit since the 1st inning. A July 4th victory seemed within our grasp and I shut my eyes for a few minutes to contemplate whether or not I wanted a hot dog or a hamburger or both for dinner. I may have taken a short nap . . .
I awoke to find the Pirates in the midst of batting around in the 7th, scoring 6 runs off Blanton, Jose Contreras and Mike Zagurski. Deflated, the Phils went down easily in the 8th and 9th innings and the series with the Pirates ended with 1 win to 3 losses. The Pirates! The worst team in the National League! The Braves also lost their game, so this loss kept the Phils at 5 back in the NL East with the 1st place Braves coming to town tomorrow. I have a bad feeling about this.
Spirit of '76: With the Phils loss today, I thought I'd post a baseball card showing a member of the '76 team wearing a Phillies pillbox hat. (It seemed like a festive and patriotic thing to do.) From the wonderful resource, Marc Okkonen's Baseball Uniforms of the 20th Century: "To commemorate the 1976 bicentennial, many clubs decided to occasionally wear the old striped, 'pill-box' style cap - a reminder of earlier days in baseball history." The Phillies, Mets, Reds, Cardinals and Pirates wore pillbox hats throughout the season, with the Pirates keeping the hats until 1987. Much to my disappointment, I couldn't find any Phillies baseball cards showing an example of the pillbox Phillies hat worn during the '76 season. Instead, I'll feature a classic '77 Topps Mike Schmidt baseball card clearly showing the commemorative patch worn by the Phillies to celebrate the bicentennial. Here's hoping the mojo from this inconic Schmidt card rubs off on the '10 Phillies.
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