Johnny's Trading Again

Over the four years I've been blogging, I have been the recipient of tons of cards and bobbleheads and all kinds of other stuff from John at Johnny's Trading Spot. He is a megacollector. Not only does he want all the Braves ever -- as he puts it, he only needs "like 108,000 more Braves cards" -- but he also puts sets together too. So, it looks like I definitely need to send him some cards again soon.

This is especially true because he sent me yet another package of cards about a month ago with some fantastic Brewers to add to my collection. Let's start with a short print from 2017:

Eric Thames seemed initially to be a very inspired signing by the Brewers early last year. Of course, he was not that much of a different player than when he went to Korea. It helped him early on that teams did not know whether he could handle what they were serving up to him -- especially the Reds. 

These days, Thames's playing time is getting squeezed a bit by the Brewers surplus of outfielders and corner players -- it's tough to find room for Christian Yelich, Lorenzo Cain, Domingo Santana, Ryan Braun, Brett Phillips, Keon Broxton, Jesus Aguilar, and Eric Thames on the same roster. Of those, Phillips and Broxton have options remaining, and Aguilar was a waiver wire pickup last year who might find himself there this year if the Brewers can't clear that logjam.

We'll see how good David Stearns is in that trading process. So far, he's made me a Believer.

Strangely enough, 1981 Kellogg's seem to elude me. 1982 and 1983 are plentiful, it seems, but 1981...maybe kids just didn't want to remind themselves about the strike by buying baseball cards. Still, these two Brewers stalwarts were both very much needed for my collection. 

The Greatest American Hero was one of my favorite TV shows in 1981. William Katt as the everyman superhero who screwed up and made mistakes but in the end always beat the bad guys was kind of an inspiration to me as a 9-year-old, because I always screwed up and made mistakes. My visual memory of that show tied to this song is the scene where he flies into a billboard and crashes. He was also about as graceful as a rhinoceros high on LSD. Plus, Connie Sellecca was hot.

Now, though, she's just married to John Tesh. That was after being married to Gil Gerard (yeah, Buck Rogers from that three year show at the end of the 1980s).

Gotta love these snowflake/holiday cards from last year. Well, actually, you don't have to love them. To be honest, I'm sort of agnostic. They are cool and all, but I'd prefer them if they weren't a glorified parallel. I guess they are pretty cool. They do put me in a holiday spirit, even though the only holiday really upcoming right now is St. Patrick's Day. Guess I'll have to drink a Guinness.

Sort of like the cards, I'm a bit agnostic on Madonna -- especially her early career. If you didn't live through that era, well, imagine if Taylor Swift spurred on an entire army of teenage wannabes who dressed like her and you have the feel of what it was like when Madonna first got big. This was really one of her first hits, and she became a phenomenon.

John has been sprinkling these Fleer Excel cards throughout the blogosphere. You have to love that El Paso Diablos card of future Brewer and Astro Mark Loretta!

I am still working on putting together my minor league want lists for the Brewers. I'm working on refining my Milwaukee Braves want lists currently, so that's taken more of my time recently. That and listening to tons and tons of different podcasts. 

If you have any podcast recommendations, let me know. 

When I think of 1995, I think of the time when I met Oasis. Speaking of which, I really need to find my signed concert ticket from that day. Of course, they were gobshites then and are gobshites now. Time has certainly revealed that Noel was the more talented of the Gallagher brothers. 

Oh, and f**k Man Citeh, Noel & Liam. 

It might seem weird that my favorite item from this box (which had a ton more things in it!) is a media guide, but I love media guides. Part of me thinks I should go back to my efforts to buy up as many old (but good) baseball books as I could. The other side of me, though, thinks I should stick with the Brewers but buy up every Media Guide in sight of every team. I know I have the Brewers from 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1990, 1991, 1992, and 1993 at a minimum.

And maybe I should do that. I enjoy the background about the players and all, and I also enjoy tidbits like seeing Fred "Chicken" Stanley showing up to work for the Brewers in 1992 -- one of the 1970 Brewers came back home.

John, thank you very much for the cards and ESPECIALLY for the media guide.