NBA? I loved watching the Bucks on TV as a kid during the days of Marques Johnson (before he was traded), Sidney Moncrief, Paul Pressey, and Terry Cummings. I grew up listening to Jon McGlocklin as the color guy on the 10-15 games a year that made it to TV. But, all those guys got old at around the same time in the late 1980s, and then the team was marked by draft decisions and ownership choices that made them easy to discard when I went to law school.
NFL? I was a Packers fan by 1980, watching every fall weekend with family. I still follow the Packers...but not as closely. I stopped paying as much attention to the Packers due to fantasy football, and I stopped paying much attention at all to the NFL in 2016 when I quit fantasy football. It's been freeing not to care.
College basketball? I liked Marquette as a kid. That changed when I went to college at Vanderbilt and I became a huge Vandy fan. Then Eddie Fogler left and Jan van breda Kolff ran the program down, and Kevin Stallings settled for good and mediocre. With VBK at Vandy in the mid-1990s and me studying a lot more thanks to law school, college basketball was not something I watched from that point on. And don't even get me started on college baseball -- Vanderbilt only got good well over a decade after I left.
College football? I had moments as a kid when I cared -- the 1981 Garden State Bowl between Wisconsin and Tennessee, for example. Between Wisconsin football under Dave McClain being awful and being a high school debater with debate competitions every Saturday, I really didn't care about college football until I got to college. Then, by the time I left Vanderbilt, I hated college football because Vanderbilt had about 12 fans who were serious fans and came to every game like the rest of the SEC. Then I went to Georgia for law school and I became a serious Georgia fan. But I am still not a big time "collector" when it comes to that part of my sports fandom -- despite some great items I have received.
Finally, professional soccer? I played a little pickup soccer in college, and I even watched highlight shows in 1994-1995 on cable. But I did not start to watch pro soccer until 2003, when I had Fox Soccer Channel show up on my cable system and my dog would wake me up early to go for a walk in the morning. That led to my Manchester United fandom, but, once again, it's not a major collection thing for me.
But baseball has been a constant. It's like the Thomas Mann soliloquy in Field of Dreams. Even as life moved inexorably forward, the one constant in life has been baseball. As a fan, I've attended NL and AL playoff games, a World Series, and an All-Star game. I've been to games in California, Illinois, Georgia, Pennsylvania, New York, Florida, Ohio, and Canada. I have come back to collecting baseball cards after nearly 25 years away.
And yet...current cards are...well, just okay. Perhaps it's my age and that baseball cards are a nostalgia game. What else explains the popularity of Topps Heritage and (to a lesser extent) Topps Archives and the inserts based off old card designs? It brings us collectors back to the days when we collected the original design.
Collecting baseball cards and other memorabilia is something I do as a hobby. It's my pastime. It's fun. Sometimes I start losing the fun, though, and I get cranky. Irritable. Pissed off at Topps for ignoring my favorite team. Unhappy that there are no other options except Topps for properly licensed cards.
So, my focus here is shifting. Of course, I want to complete team sets. That's why I have tried to put together my Brewers want lists in such meticulous and exhaustive order. What I really want, though, are the players from my youth.
I find myself inspired by blog commenter extraordinaire Mark Hoyle. His devotion to the 1967 Impossible Dream Boston Red Sox is legendary. While I am not going to say that getting everything for everyone on the 1982 Brewers is where I am going with my collection, I am saying that I really want everything related to the Milwaukee Brewers from the 1980s.
Matchbooks, schedules, pins, programs, pennants, stickers, oddball cards, police sets, photos inserted from pizza packages -- you name it, I want it.
And yes, I want the stuff that the Brewers keep putting out to celebrate that wonderful season that is now 36 years ago. Stuff like these cards inserted into the middle of the 1992 Brewers yearbook to celebrate the 10th anniversary, which I just bought this past week on eBay for a few dollars:
It's easy to see how much I really enjoyed the 1982 Brewers -- just look at those cards next to my player collection list. 14 of the 18 cards are of guys that are player collections. Only Rollie Fingers, Don Sutton, Pete Ladd, and Pete Vuckovich are not.
It is difficult to put into context how well that team hit compared to the league and historically. For example, 2017 was a hitter-happy environment; the highest scoring team was the Houston Astros, who averaged 5.53 runs per game. Joining the Astros in scoring over 5 runs per game in 2017 were the Yankees (5.30), the Indians (5.05), the Twins (5.03), the Rockies (5.09), the Cubs (5.07), the Nationals (5.06), and the Diamondbacks (5.01).
The Brewers averaged 5.47 runs a game in 1982. The only other team in the major leagues to join Milwaukee at over 5.0 runs per game were their ALCS opponents, the California Angels, who averaged 5.02 runs per game. The MLB average runs scored per game per team in 2017 was 4.65; in 1982: 4.30.
That's just one average. In terms of individual performances: Robin Yount had a 10.5 WAR in 1982. That led the majors by 1.9 wins over 2nd place Gary Carter. Looking only at the AL now, the Brewers had 4 of the top 9 players in offensive WAR -- Yount, Molitor, Cooper, and Thomas. Three players -- Molitor, Yount, and Cooper -- scored over 100 runs, with Molitor first at 136 and Yount second at 129. Those three teammates each had over 200 hits that season; no one else in the AL had over 194.
Robin Yount's season was truly unbelievable. He was second in AVG behind Willie Wilson but was 10th in OBP, 1st in SLG, 1st in OPS, 2nd in runs scored, 1st in hits, 1st in Total bases, tied for 1st in doubles, 3rd in triples, 11th in HR at 29 (his teammates Thomas, Oglivie, and Cooper all had over 30 in a league where only 10 players hit 30 or more), and 4th in RBI. Even in advanced stats his season was excellent -- 5.5 Adjusted batting wins, .731 Offensive win percentage, 5th in power/speed number, 1st in base-out runs added (RE24, whatever the hell that means), 5th in win probability added, 1st in situational wins added, 1st in base-out wins added and first in OPS+. He was truly a dominant player that year.
I could go on and on and on. That 1982 team should have won a Championship. There were no missed calls to blame, though -- no Don Denkinger moments on which to rest our complaints. No, the Brewers just couldn't win the four games they needed to win against the Cardinals. It's a shame as a Brewers fan of that era that this team was not a Series winner so as to get the level of respect that such a win would have provided.
All of this is to say that I don't mind duplicates from the 1980s. This may lead to a "project" and maybe eventually I will have as many projects as Night Owl does. At this point, though, it's just a recognition that I am more focused on the past for my collecting because it makes me happy. Just like Oddballs make me happy, and like knocking cards off my want lists makes me happy, and just like my Warren Spahn and Harvey Kuenn collections make me happy.
Just as I wish current cards could make me happy. But those are just different. Not bad. Just different.
I remember McGlocklin as a player.
ReplyDeleteI've got nothing to add what a great post.
ReplyDeleteA healthy Rollie Fingers might have helped in the World Series.
ReplyDeleteThe '82 Brewers were an easy team to like. I've been to Wisconsin once in my life, when I was like 5, and I loved that team all the way from the Northeast. ... It's difficult to explain to people that are too young to know teams like the '82 Brewers but they were one-of-a-kind. Nothing that's ever come since has been able to match them.
ReplyDeleteI love all of this. The '82 Brewers are my favorite team of all time. Like Andy said earlier, if only Rollie had been healthy for the WS...
ReplyDeleteThe '82 Brewers were stacked. Simmons, Gantner, Oglivie, Thomas, Molitor, Yount, and Cooper. They're straight up scary.
ReplyDelete