2022 Card-vent Calendar: December 11

December 11, 2022:

1999 Team Best Baseball America's Top Prospects Silver Scott Krause (070/150)

The broken bat has got to be one of the rarest images of a fairly common event to be caught on cardboard.  From what I can gather, MLB bat breakage reached its zenith in the 2008 season, occurring about once per game.  Since then, the league has taken measures to curtail the breaking of bats, and the numbers have declined and held steady at a rate about half of the former peak.  

 

There are a lot of moments of peril that find their way onto baseball cards, and it's always exciting to see one.  An outfielder crashing into a wall to make a catch and a close play at the plate are probably the most common, but there's also the brushback pitch, the HBP, and a foul ball off the catcher's mask.  These are harder to capture because there's no real lead-up event that tells a photojournalist to get the camera ready, it's just a random occurrence taking place during the split-second delivery of any of the few hundred pitches taking place in a typical game.  This card is great because we get the handle and the barrel a mere foot apart in the same shot.

If you know of other broken bat cards, feel free to link to them in the comments.