No Disguise for That Double Vision

After all that rich, fattening blog fodder from the card show, I was worried that I would once again run out of things to write about. I've been terrible the past few months about getting packages out in the mail. The usual result of that is that packages don't come to me in the mail.

Strangely, though, a number of bloggers have sent me cards anyway. One of the odder sights, however, was getting not one but two PWEs on the same day from Gavin at Baseball Card Breakdown. 

As Lou Gramm sings in this song, he wants his eyes filled with double vision. Weirdly, Gramm said the song resulted from watching New York Rangers Goalie John Davidson getting a concussion and experiencing double vision as a result.

I rather thought it was about getting drunk, or maybe pitching like Bill Wegman.

Gavin personalized that Collector's Choice card for me on both the front and the back:

Now, I opened the envelope with this Breakdown special first and saw that Wegman DUR. My first thought was to laugh, and I did. My second thought was, "Oh God, I think I still need that card for my Brewers collection...I hope that there is another one in this envelope."

There was not.

My third thought was, "I can imagine what is going to happen years from now. Some baseball card collector -- one of three left who still cares then about paper cards and not those wonderfully easily transferrable 'BUNT' cards that everyone else will be collecting because 'technology WHEEEE!' -- will be looking at that Wegman card and think, 'why the hell did someone do that?' I mean, first there was that George Sherrill card that someone optimistically crossed out and wrote Hall of Famer Clayton Kershaw's name on it, and now this?"

Okay, maybe I didn't have the George Sherrill thought, but my mind did wander and think about this card's potential future owners.

Of course, being the strange collector that I am, this personalized card now becomes a Baseball Card Breakdown 1 of 1 in my collection.

Thankfully, in the second envelope, this was the first card I saw:

Also thankfully, Bill Wegman was not the only player whose cards showed up in the PWEs from Portland.

One card making its debut in my collection was this 2000 Bowman card of Ben Sheets. It is the first Ben Sheets rookie card to find its way into my possession as well.

Gavin also fed my maudlin side about the life and times of Rickie Weeks, about whom I seem to be waxing nostalgic on a semi-regular/nearly daily basis.

Perhaps my tortured soul with respect to Rickie will be the start of my novel:

"It was the best of wrists, and it was the worst of wrists."

Gavin jammed -- carefully, of course -- a number of other similarly well-aged Brewer cards from the late 1990s and early 2000s into those two PWEs and sent them to the ATL. Here are the cards for guys who don't get links because I don't have player collections for them.

That does not mean that they are less important to me than any other Brewers. It just that some Brewers are more equal than others.

Levitating Spiers

J.J. Hardy was traded for Carlos Gomez.
The Twins turned that into Jim Hoey and minor leaguer Brett Jacobson.

The easy highlight of the two envelopes, though, belongs to the rather well-fed face of Jeromy Burnitz. His chiseled chin from earlier years went missing by the time that 2000 rolled around. Taking its place was a rounder, plumper, more....Milwaukee physique. Still, his home run power was prodigious, though no one wanted him stealing bases any more.

More to the point and what the scan above does not make clear is the fact that this was a Bowman Gold Parallel, serial numbered 63/99. See, I can prove it:

These two great PWEs gave me Double Vision that got the best of me.

Thanks, Gavin -- they are greatly appreciated, and your return envelope is on my desk awaiting the time when I get to a post office to mail it.