December 13, 2021:
1998 Pinnacle #77 Ray Durham
What an awesome shot of a collision at the plate. Catcher's mask in the dirt, both helmets airborne, the moment of impact. It's everything you could want from a baseball card, and nobody in their right mind would charge you more than a nickel for it. The only question is, how do we get back to this aesthetic of baseball? In the three true outcomes era, a play like this grows increasingly rare. And that's too bad.
If anyone with superior baseball knowledge can identify the catcher on this card, let us all know in the comments.
I'm fairly certain it is Todd Hundley of the Cubs.
ReplyDelete#9 on the '97 Cubs was Scott Servais. 1997 was the first year for Interleague play; a good a reason to break out the Throwback jerseys.
ReplyDeletePaying attention to the year of the card would have helped. It was Scott Servais.
ReplyDeleteChallenge accepted. Here's what I have to go on:
ReplyDelete- The pic is probably from 1997, if customary photo use at the time remains normal
- The White Sox are wearing throwback "Field O' Dreams" style unis
- The baggy, plain dark blue uni on the catcher seems also to be a special event throwback
After a little research, the catcher looks to be Scott Servais (#9) of the Chicago Cubs, in the first ever Interleague game on June 16, 1997:
https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CHA/CHA199706160.shtml
The box score even mentions an outfield assist against Ray Durham at the plate.
Looks like Scott held on to the ball and Ray was out on that one.
Also, makes sense that Pinnacle would want to commemorate a then-novelty like interleague play. Nice that they did that on a player's regular card, instead of making a whole dramatic subset about it...
I guess that Pinnacle did try to have an interleague promotion with their premium Pinnacle Plus set that year, but they went bankrupt right after releasing it and no redemptions for interleague play baseballs ever happened:
http://www.baseballcardpedia.com/index.php/1998_Pinnacle_Plus
Sorry, didn't see the other posts before I made mine.
ReplyDeleteOh well, at least my research counts as independent verification?