2009 Phungo Cards - Bobby Abreu

2009 Phungo Black Frame Insert - Bobby Abreu Portrait

The Dodgers and Phillies are taking the day off today as their series moves to Philadelphia. This gives the staff here at Phungo Head Quarters a chance to catch our breaths and examine what is going on in the rest of the world - or at least elsewhere in Baseball.

Yes in New York, there is another League Championship Series happening. The junior circuit series features a match-up between the New York Yankees and the Nomadic Angels. Well the Angels are really not nomadic, they just have no idea what city/town/province/locale they hail. To make it easy on them perhaps we should refer to them as the Earth Angels.

This Bobby Abreu Phungo Card is a great way to rep this series. He is currently a member of the Earth Angels - see it's catching on - and he was also a Yankee.

This photo was taken during a Yankees game on May 3 2008. Late in the game the Fanvision displayed portraits of the batters done by students from an area art school. I have no idea who the artist was that drew this picture of Bobby Abreu was nor the medium - pencil or charcoal maybe?? - perhaps this information was displayed elsewhere on another scoreboard. Perhaps the Yankees video staff thought it more important to display the Adidas logo on the video board.

The Black Frames are the Phungo Card Inserts, and I looked for some oddball quirky shots for some of these. This is one of those oddballs.

Bobby Abreu has been recognized at Dinged Corners recently and there have been various debates over his Hall of Fame Potential. Bad Wax ran a column on Abreu as part of the Definitive Collection Series.

Abreu has always been a conundrum for me. I like what he brings to the table offensively. He hits well and has some pop, although much less than he did during his career peak with the Phillies. At age 35 he remains a good base stealer and is a plus on the base paths. And Offensively he knows how to work counts and draw walks. Among active players he is 7th all time in Bases on Balls. His .404 OBP ranks 8th. His .896 OPS ranks above Justin Morneau, Derek Jeter, and Carlos Beltran.

But Abreu just never seem to come through in the clutch, granted while I was watching him he played many years with some terrible Philadelphia teams, the opportunities were scarce, when they came up many a pitcher would give Abreu a free pass and take their chances with someone like Travis Lee.

In the field Bobby Abreu is basically adequate - he can cover some ground but does have that fear of the wall. He does have an above average arm and the Earth Angels consider him good enough to move the younger Vlad Guerrero to the DH Role.

Personally, I am hoping that Abreu sticks around a few more years and gets 3000 Hits. He was one of the players that I always looked forward to seeing. Yes, he was with the Phillies more marginal teams, and perhaps they needed to get rid of him to get over the playoff hump, but he was brought an awful lot to the table when he played here.

Phungo Cards - Opening Day!

2009 Phungo Black Frame Insert - Opening Day (Unnumbered)

Today is Opening Day for the Phillies. Even though it is their 3rd game of the season. Sunday was Opening Day for Baseball, but it really was a night game, Tuesday's game was also a night game. Today is a getaway day for the Braves, thus a good opportunity to schedule the Phils first day game of the year. Today's schedule also includes the ring ceremony for the World Champions - Pat Burrell even flew in from Boston for the event.

The Phungo Card above is from Opening Day back in 2005. I am sure the photo looks pretty familiar to Phungo Readers. It is also the picture that is in the Phungo banner, It was taken prior to the first game ever played by the Washington Nationals. The card is part of the unnumbered Phungo Black Frame series.

Unfortunately the Phils are off to a rough start today and will have to come up with some offense to avoid being swept.

Phillies release Adam Eaton

2009 Phungo Black Frame Insert - Adam Eaton vs Alfonso Soriano

It will cost the Phillies 9 Million dollars to let go of the ineffective pitcher. Eaton surely won't be missed partly due to his poor performance and also due to his rather surly attitude. He didn't handle a move to the bullpen well in 08 and this year rejected a request to pitch at the AAA level.

This Phungo card is part of the Black Frame insert set. This set features a couple of cards with a batter facing a pitcher. The photo is from a game that my girlfriend, Jo, took me to for a recent milestone birthday. It was a great week as she set up many fun activities for us and our friends. Chicago is definitely a fun city - if you're visiting for a game at Wrigley, I definitely recommend giving yourself some time to check out the city.

I suspect that I was trying to get a picture of Alfonso Soriano batting and am extremely happy with this shot. Anytime you can get the batter pitcher and ball in motion all in a single shot, thats pretty cool.

The Phils didn't completely cooperate as they lost my birthday game, but we went back a few days later to spend some time with the bleacher creatures for a day game at Wrigley and the Phils won!

Phungo Cards - Inserts! - Cole Hamels and Craig Biggio

Today Cole Hamels signed a 3 year 20.5 M dollar contract with the Philadelphia Phillies. I don't think that Hamels would have been FA eligible before 2011, but this contract will save the Phillies and Hamels the hassle of going through arbitration this winter plus the following two. The contract is a annual rate record for a pitcher of Hamels tenure.

This also give me an opportunity to post a Phungo Card of Cole. If you have been following Phungo since the beginning of the month you know that we have been involved in creating a 64 card set of home made baseball cards.

In addition to the base set, I have followed the example of the big card manufacturers and created an Insert Set. These cards are simply called "Black Framed Inserts". This is the first Black Framed Insert that I have chosen to present.

2009 Phungo Black Frame Insert - Hamels vs Biggio

While I was hoping for a little bit more from a lot of my photos, I have generally been happy with the pictures I have picked for the Black Frame Insert series. Most of the cards are similar to the one above with a photo including both the Pitcher and the Batter. I framed the shots in black for a cleaner classier appearance and used a gray font for the text to give a metallic/silver/chrome look.

The photo was from a game between the Astros and Phillies on Labor day of 2006. This is the game I look back upon as the day that the Phillies had arrived. The Phillies had worn out their new stadium honeymoon with fans, and were dealing with some pretty negative publicity. Fan Favorite Larry Bowa had been fired and the oftentimes befuddled appearing Charlie Manuel had been hired. There was no end to the harsh criticism of Manuel and the Phillies management.

Cole Hamels changed this as much as anyone. On September 4th 2006 He faced Roger Clemens in arguably the best regular season game I have ever seen. The weather, as you can tell from the photo, was perfect. The Pre-Mitchell report Roger Clemens was a Future Hall of Fame pitcher, pitching in the middle of what would be his last good season (He pitched in 2007 but was much less effective). Cole Hamels was in his rookie year making his 19th career start.

Both pitchers were fantastic, Clemens only gave up 1 hit and 1 run over the first 5 innings before being removed due to an injury (hamstring if I recall correctly). Hamels bettered him taking a PERFECT GAME into the 6th inning. But the Clemens injury contributed to the breaking up of the perfecto. Carlton Jimerson made his first career MLB plate appearance pinch hitting for Clemens....Jimerson homered to deep to center.

In the bottom of the inning the Phils retook the lead on a Ryan Howard solo homer. Aubrey Huff countered with a homer for the Astros in the 8th. Hamels would be done for the day after the inning. He gave up only three hits, no walks, with the 2 solos homers accounting for the only runs he Hamels allowed.

The game went to extras when with two outs in the 10th Chase Utley homered off of Dave Borkowski for the win.

The game had everything. A perfect day with 2 incredible pitchers, Clemens and Hamels, at the top of their games. A home run in a players first career appearance (Jimerson) , a go ahead dinger by Ryan Howard, and a Walk-Off homer by Chase Utley.

One final unfortunate note on the Phungo Card. This is the first card that I have found an error on. I took the shot with my old camera, which attached the date that I uploaded the photos to the file rather than the date the picture was actually taken. When I created the card, I propogated the inaccuracy. Still I like the card and I doubt I will have any more errors than Topps.

For more information on Phungo Cards read this post.

Sources and Links
Craig Biggio Hall of Fame Index
Baseball-ref