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Tuesday, March 13, 2012

2004 Fleer Platinum #99 Jim Thome

Phillies 4, Pirates 1
Spring Training Game 11 - Monday Afternoon, March 12th in Bradenton
Record - 5-5-1

One Sentence Summary:  Vance Worley dominated the Pirates, pitching four perfect innings and striking out eight, as the Phils won 4-1.

What It Means:  I didn't see or listen to any of this game, but by all written accounts, Worley had his nasty stuff working yesterday.  Worley will either be the team's number four or number five starter, depending on where manager Charlie Manuel slots him and Joe Blanton.

What Went Right:  To go along with Worley's fine performance, Pat Misch contributed two scoreless innings and lowered his spring ERA to 2.25.  Hector Luna and Jimmy Rollins each hit solo home runs in the victory.

Featured Card:  Probably one of the more interesting side stories from yesterday is Jim Thome's starting nod at first base in a minor league game.  He played four innings in the field, marking the first time since 2007 that he had donned a first baseman's mitt in game action.  And of course, he booted the first ball hit to him.  With Ryan Howard expected to miss significant time at the start of the season, the hope is that Thome can provide some occasional relief at first while getting the opportunity for more at-bats.

Appropriately enough, most of Thome's baseball cards feature the slugger . . . slugging.  For this post, I had to spend some time flipping through my 2003-2005 Phillies binders to find a nice card featuring Thome playing the field.  I settled on the Fleer Platinum card featured here since it features Thome in an awesome throw-back uniform and the card itself is loosely based on Fleer's own 1984 set.

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