Featured Card: 1984 Phillies Tastykake (no #), Dave Wehrmeister
A couple weeks ago, Slate ran an article suggesting that Bob Hamelin’s 1996 Pinnacle card may be the worst baseball card of all time. As far as major company releases go, it’s hard to argue with that selection. However,
I’m more than happy to argue that when you consider regional and team-issued releases, you would be hard to pressed to beat the Dave Wehrmeister’s 1984 Phillies Tastykake team issue card.
I suspect we’ll never know the circumstances that led to the creation of this card, but I can’t help but feel that at least a few individuals in the Phillies organization in 1984 really did not like Wehrmeister. I don’t know whether his allergies were bothering him, he had just finished a workout, or he had a drug problem, but the individuals responsible for this card clearly didn’t think he deserved a better picture. When I sent a scan of it over to Jim at The Phillies Room a few years back, he responded with the question, “They couldn’t have gotten the guy a tissue or something?” What makes this even worse is that this is his only card depicting him a member of the Phillies. So, if you’re a Phillies collector, this is the image you get to remember him by.
If there’s a photo on a Phillies card that worse than this, I’ve never seen it. (This is not to be confused with the ugliest card design of all-time, which will be a post — or series thereof — for another day.)
14,000 Phillies 