A simple one-card post today. When I was graduating high school, we got a local minor-league team. I'm from Newark, Delaware, just a few short miles from Delaware's largest city, Wilmington, with its population of about 70,000. And in spring of 1993, the Wilmington Blue Rocks debuted as a Class-A affiliate of the Kansas City Royals.
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| 1993 Classic Jon Lieber. |
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| Jon Lieber card back. |
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I wanted to get a Blue Rocks card into my binder to recognize them; I actually did have two Blue Rocks cards among the very few minor
league cards I already had, but they were players I hadn't heard of
otherwise, so this Classic Jon Lieber makes a better addition to my
binder, I think.
This was a big deal for us, having a team in town, albeit right before many of us were leaving town to start college. I picked Jon Lieber as the Blue Rock to go in my binder because I think he was the first Blue Rock I remember making the majors. One nice tidbit on the card back is the old, original logo just below his picture -- it's a picture of a player (who might also be a kind of miner?) against the outline of Delaware, with Wilmington Blue Rocks written around it. It's nice that it's the logo I remember from 1993, but it's funny because the artwork is so amateurish. In the 25+ intervening years, they've upped their marketing game and now have professional-looking logos and mascots.
Thanks for reading!
I remember the feeling of having a minor league team in town and wanting a few cards of theirs because of it (every minor league team didn't have its own set like they do now).
ReplyDeleteMinor league teams have gotten a little too fancy. They were a big deal back then but some are starting to get too "big league."
Curt Simmons played for the Wilmington Blue Rocks in 1947.
ReplyDeleteI don't think there are any cards from the original incarnation of the Blue Rocks!
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