ANNIVERSARY: Phillies First World Championship - 1981 Topps #404

Another year has passed and once again I have pretty much failed in my goal of putting together my annual single subject series.

This year my target was the 1980 Phillies world championship team.

looks like I managed to add a grand total of four postings related to the 1980 Phillies – all in the middle of the field: Manny Trillo, Larry Bowa, Garry Maddox, and Dick Ruthven.

Today marks the 40^th anniversary of the Phillies cinching their 1980 championship.

 

1981 Topps #404 Phillies Win First World Series

Topps honored the Phillies Victory on card #404 of their 1981 set. The featured player is Tug McGraw.

Today the demise of starting pitching is frequently discussed, However even 40 years ago McGraw registered the 3^rd most outs of any Phillies pitcher for the series. His 7 1/3 innings ranking behind only Steve Carlton and Ruthven.

Even more importantly were the outs that Tug McGraw registered. Baseball-Ref has a new to me stat cWPA – Championship Win Probability Added. Basically the concept is how much each plate appearance affects the probability of winning a championship.

Tug McGraw led all pitchers in the Series with a cWPA of 18.05% (100% represents a single Win). For comparison Steve Carlton who Won 2 games in the series had a cWPA of 2.67%.

Among Phillies batters only Mike Schmidt (19.48) and..... Del Unser! (26.11) who had a couple of big pinch hits off Dan Quisenberry outpaced McGraw.

Perhaps I will dig deeper on this series in the future but for now we are likely on pause with the 1980 Phillies.

Sources & Links

1980 Phillies World Champs Index

Tug McGraw Index

Baseball-ref

ANNIVERSARY: Roy Halladay

Today marks the 10th Anniversary of Roy Halladay's NLDS no-hitter. I have discussed this game a number of times in the past. Today I will just simply state it was one of the greatest games I ever attended. 

Our original account of the no-hitter  can be found here.

2017 Topps Untouchables #U-18 Roy Halladay

This card is not specifically dedicated to that game, but it is definitely in the neighborhood. "Untouchables"  could be seen as a synonym for no-hitter, an that is the case here:

Flip

2017 Topps Untouchables #U-18 Roy Halladay (b-side)

On the backside of the card we see the top bullets are dedicated to his 2010 no-hitter pair - The regular season perfect game and the NLDS no-hitter.   

Untouchables

Untouchables is a 30 card insert found in 2017 Topps Update.  Halladay has two cards in the set, He reps the Blue Jays on the other card. The checklist contains one other Phillies pitcher, Steve Carlton.. 

Sources and Links

Roy Halladay HOF index

No-Hitters Index

Game Dated Cards

Cardboard Connection

ANNIVERSARY - Jim Palmer: 1971 Topps #197 ALCS Game 3

October 5th marks the 50th anniversary of the Orioles clinching American League pennant sweeping the  Minnesota Twins in 3 games. 

1971 Topps #197 (image swiped from comc.com)

I would normally dissetc this card and discuss the game box for the Orioles 6-1 victory, but last week I broke my arm and typing is a pain with one hand. 

The busted humerus did not stop me from finishing up my O's Orange version of this card.

1971T Jim Palmer Mows em Down

i changed the classic 1971T Black Border to the Orioles other team color,  added  Palmer's dominating pitching line, and tagged the game date.  Other modifications include making the baseball prominent and emphasizing Palmer's #22.

Box

ok I peeked at the box and Palmer's strikeout victims included future HoFs Harmon Killebrew and Rod Carew. Other notables were Tony Oliva and Phillies World Series manager Charlie Manuel. 

sources and links

Jim Palmer HoF index

Phungo Originals

baseball-ref