Saturday, May 4, 2019

Dawn of the Blue Rocks

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.
1993 Classic Jon Lieber.
Jon Lieber card back.
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!

3 comments:

  1. 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).

    Minor league teams have gotten a little too fancy. They were a big deal back then but some are starting to get too "big league."

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  2. Curt Simmons played for the Wilmington Blue Rocks in 1947.

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    1. I don't think there are any cards from the original incarnation of the Blue Rocks!

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