Orioles Rise and I'm Falling Behind

I spent most of this weekend cataloging my oddballs on Trading Card Database. My card count of just Brewers that I have is up to 21,773...and I haven't really gone through my binders to catalog those properly. This is not to mention the fact that I probably should have been doing some work this weekend.

Oh well.

Of course, that means that I've been a bit of a quiet hermit today, even though all that cataloging has been a really good time.

Yeah, something good. 

Someone who always seems to be into something good is my pal Cliff a/k/a @oriolesrise on Twitter. Cliff is always going to auctions and sales and seems to always come away with tons of great, eclectic stuff. He says he collects everything, and when you follow him on Twitter, you know he is not exaggerating to say that. 

I was lucky enough to receive a package of random items from him around the beginning of the year, so let's see what showed up.

These "Baseball Rub Offs" are ones that seems like they should be easier to find than they are. In my four years back in collecting, I've gotten two Robin Younts and ... these two. For some reason, these two dredged up some hair metal from its last death throes in late 1990/early 1991:

The song: "Screwed Blued & Tattooed". The band: Sleeze Beez.

Embarrassingly, I actually owned that tape for a while. It had a song that seemed appropriate for one's freshman year of college: "When the Brains Go to The Balls."

Soon thereafter, I first heard Nirvana and life was much, much better musically.

Believe it or not, I did not have these two Mollys in my team collection. You'd think that major-brand cards from 1989 literally would be tumbling out of my closet (and they are) but these two were only in my Molly collection.

Thanks for Molly, Cliff. These two songs are not, however, 16 candles down the drain.

After these cards and tattoos, things got a little weirder. Much cooler too. Because oddities are the best.

Cliff took the matches out of these old matchbooks from the early 1980s. You have to love these things. So, the back stories? 

Merle Harmon was the first lead announcer for the Milwaukee Brewers when they first moved to town in 1970. He started up "Fan Fair" in Milwaukee around that time, and built it into a 140-store chain before selling the business. Harmon left the Brewers in 1980 to go to work for NBC. He ended up working with the Rangers after that. He passed away in April of 2009 at the age of 83.

Parker Pens are awesome pens, in case you're not familiar with them. They are high-end pens -- Wikipedia calls them a "luxury" pen -- which is now owned by Newell Brands/Newell Rubbermaid. The plant in Janesville closed in 2009 thanks to corporate downsizing.

Music to go with matches?

Of course, my head went to the very end of this song with the lighting of a very loud match starting a fire and burning this damn place down...ooh hoo...down to the grounds. Heh heh heh heh heh heh....

I love schedules. Back in the 1980s, I think I read an article in Baseball Cards Magazine that talked about collecting schedules, so I wrote to a number of teams and got schedules from them. I also grabbed as many schedules as I could find at local retailers. And yet, I don't think I had any of these. 

I was looking at the 1976 schedule and noticed that there was a Scout Day that year. I have a very faint memory of being at that game because my older brother (who would have been 8) was in Cub Scouts at that point. It's a faint memory because, well, I was only 4 years old.

If you're going to go to the game, you'd better know what time it is. I recently watched a documentary on Netflix about the band Chicago f/k/a Chicago Transit Authority that was fascinating. I have been watching a bunch of music documentaries lately there -- it's a fun way to hear the backstories of the bands that otherwise would have made a VH1 "Behind the Music" except that show doesn't exist anymore as far as I know. 

But I ramble.

In any event, if you like music and documentaries, check that one out.

The final item in the package from Cliff was this awesome 8x10 autographed by Don Money. Money is a PC, and I have a couple of his autographs from later in his career. Money is a guy whom a lot of fans today don't know but who had a really good career. He was with the Phillies from 1968 through 1972, when the Brewers traded Ken Brett, Jim Lonborg, Ken Sanders, and Earl Stephenson to Philadelphia and, in return, got Money, Bill Champion, and John Vukovich. 

He arrived in Milwaukee at the age of 25 and got plugged in at third base for the most part. He was a four-time All-Star for the Brewers, and while he was never going to be a Hall of Famer, he was an excellent player through 1978 for the team. From 1979 to 1983, he was a platoon DH with Roy Howell and occasionally played some third base, second base, and first base. He got the short end of the stick when the Brewers got Sal Bando and Cecil Cooper in 1977 and, then, lost his spot at second base thanks to Paul Molitor's emergence in 1978.

Don't mind if I take the Money and run at all.

Thanks, Cliff, for the great package and for the patience in my not even writing it up for 6 weeks!