16 February 2015

a memorial patch for twins' broadcaster herb carneal

here's a 2007 upper deck sp rookie edition alexi casilla card
in addition to casilla turning two, the card is significant because it shows the memorial patch (a microphone with the name 'herb') that the twins wore during the 2007 season for their longtime radio broadcaster herb carneal.  carneal joined the twins' broadcast team in 1962, and worked through the 2006 season although his workload had diminished by that time.  he was the recipient of the ford c. frick award in 1996, and the twins' press box had been named in his honor in 2001.  counting his work with the a's, phillies, and orioles prior to joining the twins, carneal had a 51-year career in baseball broadcasting.  

the 83-year old carneal died of heart failure just a day before the 2007 season began, and the twins wore black armbands in his honor for the opener.  i couldn't find a card with the armband, but here's a getty images photo of justin morneau wearing the armband.
here's a 2008 upper deck sp authentic card of morneau showing the patch that was developed soon after
and here's the other half of the twins' version of the m&m boys, joe mauer, who is also displaying the patch on his 2008 upper deck sp legendary cuts card

during some home games in '07, the twins wore jersey vests, and so the patch moved to the right chest as seen in this getty images photo of casilla
card companies didn't bother to send photographers to the metrodome in 2007, i guess, because there really aren't very many cards of the twins in their home whites outside of spring training that i could find.  anyway, here's the card that sits in my memorials binder for this one - it's torii hunter's 2008 upper deck first edition card
torii's back in minnesota, by the way. it will be interesting to see how that goes.

3 comments:

Brian said...

Herb Carneal was awesome. The current radio team is not terrible, and Dan Gladden sometimes has some great stories to share about Kirby, Kent Hrbek, and the rest of the championship winning Twins' Teams. But they can't hold a candle to Herb.

gcrl said...

brian, i agree, although i am much more familiar with john gordon's work than carneal's. i had heard at one time that the twins were looking to bring ryan lefebvre back, but that obviously didn't come to pass.

Brian said...

When Gladden gets time off and the booth is Kris Atterbury and Cory Provus, the game is described very well, and there's an added bonus (in my opinion) that those two are big stat geeks. Gladden has great anecdotes and usually some good insight from a player's perspective, but his play by play is terrible.