Game 129 - 2001 Bowman Heritage #295 Travis Lee

Marlins 3, Phillies 2
Game 129 - Sunday Afternoon, August 25th in Miami
Record - 67-62, 3rd place, 11 1/2 games behind the Braves

One Sentence Summary:  The Phillies couldn't contain the last place Marlins, losing the weekend finale, 3-2.

What It Means:  The Phillies need to be able to beat the bad teams, and they just can't.  In their last 11 games, they went 5-0 against the Cubs and Red Sox, while going 2-4 against the Padres and Marlins.

What Happened:  The only offense the line-up could muster was a two-run home run from Rhys Hoskins (25) in the sixth, which broke a streak of 85 plate appearances without a long ball.  Aaron Nola couldn't lock the Marlins down after that, quickly allowing three runs in the bottom of the sixth.

Featured Card:  Apropos only of the ridiculous black and white uniforms worn this weekend by the Phillies and Marlins, here's a card of Travis Lee looking perplexed by the whole situation.

Baseball Card Show Report - Valley Forge 4

1941 Play Ball #9

1957 Topps #174

1958 Hire's Root Beer #43

1959 Topps #338

On Sunday, Doug and I attended the Philadelphia Sportscard & Memorabilia Show in Valley Forge. Doug had actually saved Christmas money for this show and he's spent the last few weeks preparing his checklists.  We had a fantastic day, and I'm OK with the fact that Doug came away with way more cards than I did.  I'm always grateful to those dealers that give Doug some extra attention, especially when they realize that this kid is truly a collector and not just looking for the big hits.

There were four former Phillies signing autographs on Sunday, and Doug admittedly had never heard of any of them.  That being said, we still decided to buy four autograph tickets so that he could at least meet them and add to a growing autograph collection.  I'll have a separate post coming up to show off our new autographs.

Doug was very happy going through the bargain bins and he added a small stack of vintage (1970s is vintage to him) Hall of Famer cards to his collection.  He also came away with a bunch of newer Phillies cards and some more Mike Trout cards for his growing player collection.  He's within a few cards now of completing his 2016 Topps Opening Day set, and he needs just one more card (Johnny Bench) for a complete 2016 Topps Bunt set.  Not to leave out his brother Ben, Doug hunted down an autographed Ben Revere card and a signed 8 x 10 photo of Revere for his brother's collection.

1948 Philadelphia Bulletin Stand-Ups

1949 Philadelphia Bulletin Phillies

While we weren't adding cards to Doug's collection, I managed to add a bunch of cool cards to my collection as well.  The "newest" card I brought home was from 1971:

• I wanted to add at least one of the four following big stars to my 1971 Topps set:  Ernie Banks, Willie Mays, Bench or Roberto Clemente.  I came away with both the Banks and Bench cards along with several other semi-stars and a few high numbers.  I'm slowly making progress on this set and once it's completed I'll be the proud owner of a complete run of Topps sets from 1970 through 2015.
• I picked up a nice assortment of Phillies cards from the 1950s and 1960s, with the highlight being the addition of Sparky Anderson's rookie card from the 1959 Topps set.
• I found a gorgeous (and cheap!) Pinky May card from the 1941 Play Ball set.
• I found a few oddball Dick Sisler items from newspaper sets from the late 1940s.
• Finally, I added two 1911 T205 Gold Border Phillies cards to my collection, and I'll show these off in a future post.

It was truly a fantastic day and we're already making plans for our next big baseball card show outing!

Memory Lane

Valley Forge 1 - September 2010 - Thinking of my Dad
Valley Forge 2 - October 2012 - Doug's first baseball card show
Valley Forge 3 - September 2014 - Meeting Darren Daulton
Valley Forge 4 - September 2016

1948 Leaf #49 Del Ennis

When the news broke last Friday night that the Phillies were reuniting with Jim Thome, my immediate thought was to call my Dad to talk about it.  It was one of the moments I'm told I'll have for the rest of my life.  Dad passed away a month ago today, and I'm still dealing with the void it's left.  Strangely enough though, once I realized that it would be very difficult (logistically) to give him a call to discuss the Thome signing, the fact that I immediately thought of my Dad made my very happy, serene even.  I want to have those moments and I'm glad I'll think of him whenever there's a Phillies trade or whenever I'm opening my first pack of the year or when pitchers and catchers report in February.

I definitely thought of him when I recently won this Del Ennis card on eBay for less than it would have cost for a blaster of 2011 Topps Update from Target.  Ennis, along with Dick Sisler, were my Dad's two favorite Phillies and I've decided to try to add as many of their cards to my collection as I can.  Dad would have been only four when this card came out, so he wouldn't have had it in his baseball card shoebox* growing up.  But he would have loved the fact that I've now added it to my baseball card shoebox.

*There was an actual shoebox.  My Dad told me he once "had them all" - complete runs of Bowman sets from 1951 through 1955, early Topps cards, everything.  As was the case with so many collections stemming from that era, the shoebox found its way to the curb soon after my Dad left for college.  One of the first things I'm going to do, after inventing my time machine, is to head back to the mid-1960's and stop my Mom-Mom from tossing out Dad's shoebox.

1948 Bowman #24 Emil (Dutch) Leonard

I have a lot of Phillies baseball cards in my collection. Until recently however, the oldest cards in my collection were from the 1951 Bowman set, as my Dad has been slowly but steadily adding '51 Bowman Phillies cards to "his" collection. The Phillies were established in 1883, so this means there are 67 years of Phillies baseball cards missing from my collection. Now I'm not about to break the bank on a bunch of rare early 20th Century tobacco cards, but I have recently scoured eBay and won a few reasonably priced pre-1950 Phillies cards. I'll be featuring these cards in posts over the next few weeks.

Some readers of this blog would maintain that 1948 was a very good year. In this year of monumental debuts, Bowman released its first baseball card set - a 48-card black and white mini set. The set featured the first widely circulated baseball cards of Stan Musial, Yogi Berra, Phil Rizzuto and Warren Spahn. There are only two Phillies cards in the '48 Bowman set - this Dutch Leonard card and Emil Verban - so I'm half way to completing the Phillies team set.

Between 1933 and 1953, Dutch Leonard enjoyed a 20-year Major League career with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Washington Senators, Phillies and Chicago Cubs. He was a five-time All-Star, winning a total of 191 games behind an incredibly deceptive knuckleball. Wearing number 20, he pitched for the Phils in 1947 and 1948 back when the team originally wore the blue cap and cream colored uniform combo they presently wear as their day-game alternate uniforms. Over his two-year span with the Phils, Dutch's record was 29-29 with a 2.60 ERA. He completed 35 of his 59 games started - a testament to the durability of that era's pitchers. Dutch was traded to the Chicago Cubs in December 1948 with Monk Dubiel for Hank Borowy and Eddie Waitkus.

Dutch passed away in April 1983 in Springfield, Illinois, at the age of 74.

And one more thing: Ask for Blony Bubble Gum.