Game 60 - Wednesday Afternoon, June 5th in Philadelphia
Record - 30-30, 2nd Place, 7 1/2 games behind the Braves
One Sentence Summary: Cole Hamels, Domonic Brown and a five-run seventh inning led the Phillies to a 6-1 win over the Marlins and a series sweep.
What It Means: It means all sorts of things. The Phillies are at .500 for the first time since April 14th. Hamels recorded an 11-strikeout game and the Phillies scored six runs in their fourth consecutive game for the first time since September 2010. The Phils open up a ten-game road trip in Milwaukee tonight.
What Went Right: Hamels improved his record to 2-9 by allowing just a run on four hits over seven innings. It was another low-scoring affair until the Phillies exploded in the seventh with five runs on five hits, including a Ryan Howard two-run triple and two-run home run (his 18th) from Brown.
Featured Card: My Topps Archives team set arrived yesterday, and my only wish is that Topps would expand this offering into a larger set. There are only six Phillies base cards and three Phillies short-prints in the 245-card set. Some collectors might balk at this idea, but I wish Topps would retire one of its premium sets or its Gypsy Queen set and just give us two series of Topps Archives each year.
Topps did a decent job reproducing its 1982 set design for the Hamels card featured here. For some reason, the reds, pinks and oranges don't clash as much here as they did when I tried my hand at a 1982 Topps inspired Chachi card a few years ago.
I am loving these Archives cards even more than the Heritage sets! I was a big fan of the original Archives sets in 2001 or so, but they were just reprints. Then they came out with the awesome Fan Favorites set (but was it only for one year?) where they made up cards from old sets using unused photos from those years. Even better than the original Archives, IMHO. And then it went away in favor of these Turkey Red, Gypsy Queen, T-205, T-206, etc. (all of which, sorry to say, bore me, and none of which I generally collect).
ReplyDeleteSo the return of Archives last year was great. I do wish they would put a little more effort into finding period-appropriate photos, like the 1972 Schmidt card for example. They used a 1980-82 or so photo; compare that to one made by the Dick Allen blog with an amazing 1972 photo (with Schmidt wearing #22 and manager Paul Owens in the background). It is worth Googling to find that card. That said, I still love the series!
And, by the way, the better paper used makes the cards all that much sharper. Dig out any 1982 card in your set and compare the relatively dullness of the card (because of the cheaper card stock) to the sharpness of the Hamels you posted. Great work by Topps. Not perfect, but great nonetheless.
I agree - Topps did a nice job with the Archives set this year.
ReplyDeletePutting my money where my mouth is, I just landed the entire set, 1-245, plus the All-Star, Tall Boy and 4-in-1 sticker insert sets, on eBay for a great price. And I got all but 2 of the 1972 Basketball-style insert cards in two other (nicely complementary) auctions. I'm figuratively standing at the door and waiting for the mailman. I haven't been this excited about a set in awhile.
ReplyDeleteLast year I bought 5 or 6 blaster boxes of Archives but still ended up way, way short of a set (and I did get some random relic and autograph cards that I really didn't care about as well). It was fun opening them, but ultimately I am a set collector (in addition to being a Phillies collector), and it is far cheaper and more effective to let someone else buy them by the case and open and collate the cards.
I miss the 1970s and 1980s when I bought packs, though. And man, if packs were still 10 cents each like when I started really collecting in 1977, or even 50% higher like they were in 1978...the damage I could do with my salary today in lieu of my puny allowance then!
That's great Steve. I'm thinking about trying to put together a base set, without the short-prints, with my son. I think he'd like the fun of opening the packs and sorting the cards. If we need any extras we can take our list to the next local baseball card show.
ReplyDeleteMaybe a visit to Target tomorrow is in order . . .