New Hall of Famers

A lot can be, has been, and will continue to be said about who deserves to be in the Baseball Hall of Fame. You won't find that kind of post here.

Instead, here are some of the cards of the newest Hall of Famers in my collection. None of the players recently elected ever played for the Cubs, but that doesn't mean they avoided Wrigley.

Chipper Jones and Trevor Hoffman were just featured here very recently.

This Vladimir Guerrero card needs an upgrade as it looks like it stuck to the card in front of it at some point. The Ivy is brown in this early season shot out of 2002 Fleer Ultra. It's card #27 so you'll see it again in a few weeks with a deeper breakdown.

And look at that, a little interleague action with a Cleveland Indians card. Unlike the specks on the Vlad card, these are legit, kickin'-up-dirt specks. This Jim Thome card is horizontal and therefore falls under my Por Que No Los Dos niche. This means it isn't considered for my Frankenset, so let's give this one a little more attention today.

I'm going to be honest. I can't tell the difference between most Fleer Ultra cards in terms of what year they are. This one, however, jumps right out at me as 1999 because of the Harry Caray caricature patch on shortstop, Jeff Blauser's sleeve. The Cubs wore those during the 1998 season after Caray passed away preseason. 

Heading over to Thome's Baseball-Reference page, we can see that he played two games at Wrigley in 1998, on June 22 & 23. I'm looking for a play a second, probably a tag play like a stolen base or a double. 

In the first game, Thome went 1-4 with a walk. The game started at 7:05 local time so I highly doubt this is the game. But here's a quick run down anyway, just to be sure. His first at bat resulted in a flyball out. His walk came next but the inning ended with a 6-4-3 double play. This does not look like that to me. A pop foul out and a ground out to first leads us to his fifth and final plate appearance. A one out single by Thome was followed by two popfly outs, no tagging up attempted. As I suspected, nothing in this game. Let's try the 23rd.

This is an afternoon game and Thome went 3-4 with another walk. I could have my work cut out for me here. His first plate appearance was a groundout to the first baseman. Well, that's out of the way, on to his four reaches.

In the 4th inning, Thome singled. That was followed by a Henry Rodriguez (former Cub) single to right field. It is noted as a line drive to short right. With only one out, a hard hit ball to shallow outfield could make a runner hold up to make sure it drops, thus allowing for a close place at second. Blauser, the shortstop, would have been the man to be cover second in that play.

His next at bat came in the 6th inning when he led off with a double to right field. Again, Blauser would have been the man to cover second base in this situation. There's no way to know from the boxscore if this was a hustle double resulting in a close play or one of the standup variety.

Later, in the 7th inning, Thome walked but did not advance to second.

And in the 9th, he singled again but also did not attempt to advance.

Dang, I was hoping for a clear cut play but looks like this will be a tossup between the 4th and 6th inning plays. Short of finding a tape of the game, this one remains a mystery. Oh well, at least I'm pretty sure of the actual date, June 23, 1998.

Thome ended up having a pretty decent career at Wrigley Field. Well, I guess not just at Wrigley, he's in the Hall of Fame now after all.

Congratulations to these four guys and thanks for adding some HOF credentials to the Ivy collection.

EDIT: Woohoo! Thanks to awesome reader Phungo, we can be 99.99% sure and put this one to bed as the 6th inning double. See the Getty photo below: