This is Tim Wallach's jersey from the 2014 National League Divisional Series against the St. Louis Cardinals. I picked it up from MLB.com auctions. Sort of. I actually didn't bid on it. I deemed the opening bid to be too much. Apparantly everyone else did too, because nobody bid on. But after about a day of making rationalizations in my head after the auction ended, I emailed MLB.com to see if they would still sell it to me. Obviously they did, and that's it above.
The reasoning that finally won over my frugal hesitations was that I don't have a #29 Wallach Dodgers jersey. I have a home and away #26, but not #29. This jersey was actually cheaper than buying an authentic one off of the MLB.com shop. Assuming of course, they would even allow me to custom order one, which they don't. When one tries to do so, they are met with a message about former players not being available for purchase due to a contract of some sort. I feel like coaches should be in the drop down bar the way current players are on the MLB Shop, but rather than argue this point I just went ahead an purchased this one.
The big revelation for me with this jersey is the tagging MLB uses in the neck now. It's one of those square bar codes with the the players name, number, size, and the year printed on it as well. I much prefer the old method of the stiching a mini name-plate in the neck. When you scan the bar code you get a very generic message. I included a screen shot below. If it linked to something a little more exciting, I might be more accepting of this new modern tagging. But it doesn't, and I'm not.
In all likely hood, this will be a walking around jersey for me. I know collector's of game used stuff see this as some sort of unforgivable sin, to which I have a couple of retorts. I need, or least want, a #29 Wallach Dodger jersey to wear to games and the like, and MLB won't sell me one. Framing is wildly expensive, and I have a finite number of walls in my house. And finally, shut up. If I want to wear it to a ball game, I'm going to wear it. Were not talking about Abner Doubleday's first ball being used for a game of beer pong at a undergrad rugby social. We're talking about a jersey worn but a bench coach for two games nearly two decades after he last played in a Major League game. It's not like I'm defacing centuries old priceless art (no disrespect to Coach Wallach).
If anyone has any photo matches from the series with the Cardinals last year, please share them.
Here are some more pictures of the jersey:
Nice. Yeah, wear the thing!
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