Tribute to 1998 Flair Wave of the Future - Eric Bruntlett
Featured today is Eric Bruntlett, role player for the Phillies. Every year my wife and I seem to key in on one or two players in the playoffs, and he was our guy this year.Eric has no power or batting average, but he does just about everything else very well.
1) He plays defense
2) He can steal when you need him to
3) He even plays middle infield!*
* Heck, Bruntlett has played every position except for catcher and pitcher and would probably do those too if you let him
Contrast that with his teammate (and favorite of my wife) Matt Stairs, who does none of these things particularly well but hits for power and is very disciplined at the plate.
So even though he's kind of a scrub, Bruntlett was a lot of fun to watch this postseason and has become a new favorite of my wife, who insists she's going to draft Bruntlett for her fantasy team next year. Somehow I think she's bluffing, but you never know.
Regardless of Bruntlett's fantasy value, he is a fun player to watch.
I have featured him here in my first tribute card from 1998. It's a Flair Wave of the Future insert card. I was lucky enough to pull one of these back then, probably in my yearly Christmas pack of Flair. I thought they were great. The cards are made of translucent plastic and filled with a bubbly, goo-like substance that you can squish around by pressing on the card. It's quite fun actually.
I chose this design for Eric Bruntlett because it is one of my wife's favorite card designs.
Nice card. I remember when I first saw Bruntlett this year with the beard. I was looking at him thinking "who the Hell is that?". The beard just threw me off. Then he would come up to bat or make a play and I would see or hear his name. I recognised the name, but I couldn't remember anything about him because of the beard. I had to go look him up remember that he was an Astro.
ReplyDeleteThat's sounds like a cool card. I was out of collecting around that time, so I have never seen one of these cards. They do sound like fun, though.
Yay! Thank you, Dave! That looks awesome! Now I want to touch it and squish the water around inside. Do you think we can get Flair to print one for us?
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