Cards JayP's Mom Kept

I'm coming up on my two-year blogging anniversary next month, and it's been an eventful two years. Trades have happened, envelopes have been sent and received, and even priority mailers have shown up and been received.

I've even seen two people who started out as commenters start their own blogs.  Now, I did it pretty much backwards -- I mean, I saw that blogs existed and said "that sounds like fun to me." In fact, the reason I found out that blogs existed were thanks to Fuji cross-posting his blog posts to one of the online chat forums.

It's probably a more likely scenario that people start out as readers and commentators, though. Personally, I've seen Angus at Dawg Day Cards go from sending me O-Pee-Chee to blogging about the foibles of the Cleveland Browns. I can relate to that level of futility thanks to being a Brewers fan.

I've also seen a recent commenter, JayP, start up his blog as an apparent homage to the "Cards Your Mom Threw Out" insert set in 2010 Topps.  His elegantly named blog, Cards Mom Didn't Throw Out, has started up very recently. He introduced himself to me through email and comments, and now he introduced himself to all of us. The best thing is that he has a wantlist up already -- always a good idea in my book.

Anyway, I was lucky enough to get a nice envelope full of cards from JayP. Since he is about to become the man who gets a bunch of Diamondbacks from me, how about we use some Arizona bands to introduce the cards? Sounds good to me.

Let's start with Ben Sheets -- including a great card of Sheets with a Brewers hat and a United States jersey from the 2000 Futures Game in Atlanta's Turner Field. What's great about that is I actually attended that game!



Ben Sheets cards from the early part of the 2000s deserve music from that era. Let's go with a band from Mesa that formed in 1993 and is still going strong. Their biggest hits came off their 2001 album Bleed American. Of course I am talking about Foghat.

Oh wait. That was Sunday's post.

I'm talking about Jimmy Eat World. The song I always think of by them is "The Middle."

Next up, some singles from the 1998 Stadium Club set, including PCs Jose Valentin and Cal Eldred (along with Gerald "Ice" Williams):



While not an exact analog timewise -- in fact, not really all that close to be fair -- I like Meat Puppets and wanted to post one of their songs. To be fair, I like the Nirvana unplugged version especially, so that's what I'm putting up:

Old school throwback cards have been all the rage for quite a while now, once Topps figured out that its old designs still draw people in. Some of the attempts at "Heritage" cards missed the mark though.

Here's a good one and a not so good one.



On the left -- Tony Gwynn Jr., er, Anthony Gwynn in the "not-so-good", and, on the right, Taylor Jungmann's 2015 Heritage High Numbers card. I still need a few of the high-numbers from this year, in case you have some Brewers you'd like to trade.

As for a musical accompaniment, I don't think I could have Arizona bands without featuring the big baseball fan musician from Arizona:

Alice Cooper, of course. I mean, the guy owns a sports bar in Phoenix called "Alice Cooper'stown" -- I had to include him.

Okay -- last two groups of cards. The first group is another early 2000s pairing -- again from Stadium Club. Man, these 2001 Stadium Club Cards look GOOD:



As I have looked for bands to feature from Arizona, I knew of a few that I would definitely feature. This next one is an odd one because I had never heard of them before this blogpost. Still, it's pretty interesting music from a band called Audra:

That's Audra's paean to Syd Barrett, one of the founding members of Pink Floyd who passed away about 3 years before that album was released. Of the tracks from Audra to which I listened, there were some reminders of the band She Wants Revenge, whose song "Tear You Apart" was one of my favorites from 2006.

But, if you're an Arizona person, please tell me one thing: how does a state with so much sunshine produce such dark music? There is a ton of death metal from Arizona. Seriously -- does the heat make people want to thrash? 

Anyway, I digress because, well, most of the time I'm writing a blog that's Seinfeldian in its nothingness...

Okay, last group of cards -- two guys of recent vintage:



Braun and Fielder, of course. The guys who powered the 2008 Wild Card run and the 2011 division title will almost certainly have their defenders in Milwaukee. I'm among them, obviously, since these guys are both PCs for me. 

So, music? Yeah, it has to be done...

Mainly because I really and truly quote from this song's chorus about once a week, I think. This is a true classic to me -- I mean, how can you not quote the line "Everybody knows, that the world is full of stupid people"...especially when you find yourself in rush-hour traffic?

JayP -- thank you very much for the cards. I'm working on the return package to you.