I have balked at picking up this card a few times, because I am fairly sure it was part of my childhood collection. On Saturday I finally broke down and brought the card back into the fold.
The card is noteworthy and should be in the hands of any good Phillies collector. It is the first solo Topps card of the Hall of Famer. The previous Mike Schmidt Card is a shared Rookie card which we featured a few months ago.
In addition to all this Hall of Fame goodness, the card has one other fun detail in the photo
A BULLPEN CAR
One of the great relics of 70s baseball. PHUNGO CHALLENGE - find other cards with Bullpen cars. This may be the only HoF card that features a Bullpen Car.
There is a bit of a mystery in this card though. At first I assumed by the colors that it was a Phillies Bullpen car. But Schmidt is wearing the Phillies powder blue road unis of the era, which leads us to this being an away game. Perhaps the Phils were at the Reds or Cardinals.
It also looks like a spring training or minor league facility. Did either the Reds or Cards host spring training in Florida during the 70s?
And finally, did they have Bullpen cars in the minors, or at spring training? seems odd.
sources & Links
Mike Schmidt HoF Index
2014 12 06 Valley Forge Card Show Swag Index
1 comment:
I'm surprised that nobody's commented on this yet.
That looks like the Shea Stadium bullpen to me, which is not out of the question because the visiting teams got to ride in bullpen carts with their own team's caps on top... if I'm not mistaken (Been a long time!)
I've always assumed that the carts had a hard cap-shaped shell that had a cloth covering... when the visiting team changed, you just changed the cover. Like I said, though, that's just an assumption on my part. I suppose they could've swapped out the entire cap.
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