Night Owl Sent Me Cards

During my recent work-imposed blogging break, I've still been able to sneak on Twitter for a few minutes here and there. About the only thing I have had time for doing other than liking and retweeting some posts here and there has been to try to remember to post a song for the 30 Day Music Challenge, which came to my attention thanks to erstwhile baseball card blogger Marcus:

As you can see, these categories provide a way for us musicophiles to dig into the recesses of our brains for songs that we may have forgotten, or which may be in the front of our minds or, even for songs on Google that we have no idea came out during the year of our birth. As an aside, that last category provided a strange confluence for me in that I had no idea that The Doors "Riders on the Storm" came out the same year as Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven". The Doors seem so very 1960s, and Zeppelin is the epitome of 70s metal to me...for them to overlap in 1971 is interesting.

Every so often, Night Owl will reply to my post with a song of his own. Since I could use some good music today, let's look at the cards that Night Owl sent me around the beginning of February highlighted by his musical responses.

1.  A Song that is a cover by another artist: 
"Take Me to the River" by the Talking Heads

I have to admit that I did not realize that this was a cover song. In fact, until now, I did not have the opportunity to look for the original song that the Talking Heads were covering. Then, thanks to YouTube, I found it:

Thing is, both versions are just excellent in their own ways. Al Green's version is a horn-driven funk tune that I almost certainly would have enjoyed playing in jazz ensemble back in high school. 

The Talking Heads version is slower and is driven more by the bass line and keyboards. It is the same and yet entirely different. Add in David Byrne's completely different vocal interpretation, and you get a classic of an entirely different breed.

Speaking of classics of an entirely different breed, Night Owl sent me some great cards from the early and mid-1970s. Those days in Brewers history were pivotal in that the drafts from those years helped build the teams of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and some of the players on those teams started showing up in the big leagues -- such as the 21-year-old Jim Slaton on that high-number 1972 Topps card that is impossible to find at a reasonable price anywhere...unless, of course, Night Owl happens to have an extra and sends it to you.

All of these were cards that were significant upgrades on condition to the ones I had in my collection already. More importantly, these cards are an excellent reminder that porkchop sideburns rocked in the 1970s.

2. A song to play at one's wedding: 

"Groove is in the Heart" by Deee-Lite

This probably gives us more insight as to the date that Night Owl was married more than it tells us what music he'd prefer to hear. At least that is what I am guessing. This song was literally ubiquitous in 1990. You could not go to a dance club or turn on Top 40 radio without hearing this song and having every woman/girl in earshot digging in and dancing their hearts out.

For my song, I selected "Chasing Cars" by Snow Patrol because that was my wife and my first dance song at our wedding. We cut it off at the part where it got more upbeat than would otherwise support a slower dance, but it still is "our" song.

That Ben Sheets card took me a bit by surprise. Again, since I was not collecting at the time when it was issued, I did not realize that Topps's folks apparently decided to trade Sheets to the Padres without the Brewers or the Padres having any knowledge of such a trade taking place. As best I can tell, this also was not one of those situations where Topps was echoing an error that actually occurred in the original set being mimicked (here the 1958 Topps, which has tons of variations). Nope, just a straight up "small markets don't care" as best I can tell.

Boy, if I had been collecting in 2007, I'd have been as upset about that as I get about the Brewers having three cards in the Opening Day set.

3. Name a Favorite 70s song: 

"Signed, Sealed, Delivered" by Stevie Wonder

Night Owl is a few years older than me. Not many, mind you, but when it comes to memories of pop culture, those years get to be important. I'm a child of the 1980s for sure -- I turned 9 years old in 1980 and graduated high school in 1990. Night Owl is a child of the 1970s. No doubt about it. 

I say that because my favorite 1970s songs tend to be songs that I did not hear until much later after they were released. I don't have a ton of contemporary knowledge. Night Owl, on the other hand, replied to my choice of "Clash City Rockers" by saying he could pick a different 70s song for literally every day of the year but settled on this one. 

I hate to admit it, but this is the first time I have listed to this song. It's a solid, straight ahead Stevie Wonder song. My memories of Stevie revolve around the soft-rock pablum of "I Just Called To Say I Love You." That song got overplayed so badly that I just can't listen to it anymore. 

On the other hand, this melange of 2016 Archives Gary Carter (wrong logo, Topps...it was just the team name in 1991...), 1989 O-Pee-Chee of Dale Sveum (whose career was inexorably altered in 1989 by a collision on a popup which broke his leg), a 2008 Topps Update Salomon Torres (who finished his career in MIlwaukee with 80 decent innings in 2008), and two 2008 Topps Chrome cards. 

As was the case with the Warren Spahn card yesterday, I always appreciate it when someone sends me a Gary Carter card. Carter was my first real player collection in the 1980s, and I still enjoy getting his cards for my collection.

4. A Song from Night Owl's Preteen Years

"Afternoon Delight" by Starland Vocal Band

I selected "Blue Bayou" by Linda Ronstadt, but this one was right up there for me too. The song was released in April 1976, and it was still getting airplay well into 1977 in Wisconsin. That, or its catchy chorus got stuck in my head as a 4-year-old. That's possible too.

It took many years after that for me to realize what this song is really about. One commenter on YouTube wrapped it up well, though: as Melo Fran said, "At the time we thought this song was soooo racy lol!!!!! Now it looks like a bunch of nerds ..."

These cards are kind of nerdy too. But I like them anyway. 

Someday soon, after I get done putting my Topps parallels, inserts, and oddballs binders together (I've made it to 2004...only 13 more years to go!), I'll get started with the cataloguing and bindering of the Brewers minor league sets. 

Before that, though, I can tell you that Mike Grayson, unfortunately, passed away in May of 2016 in Tampa at the age of just 48 years old. His obituary said his passions were baseball and music -- playing in 1988 and 1989 in the Brewers system and being a wedding DJ. He died from a brain aneurysm, so that allowed his organs to be removed to help others get a second chance at life. The outpouring of love on his Legacy.com page really touched me too. Guys like him are common throughout the minor leagues, yet each has a life that goes beyond baseball.

Maybe we should crowd source a "30-day baseball card challenge"...

Meet the Brewers #36: Dave May

In this series of biographies, I've talked a number of times about how Marvin Milkes seemingly started making moves simply for the sake of making them. Just like the cliched "blind squirrel," it seemed inevitable that Milkes would make a decent move eventually. Perhaps that move came on June 15, while the team was in Baltimore, when, at the trade deadline, Milkes sent minor league pitchers Dick Baney and Buzz Stephen (both of whom had pitched in the majors before) to the Orioles in exchange for Brewer #36, Dave May. The Brewers also optioned outfielder Hank Allen to Baltimore's Triple-A Rochester team on some sort of loan deal.

1971 Topps

David LaFrance May was born in New Castle, Delaware, on December 23, 1943. His parents had nine children in total, and Dave was the fourth. May signed two contracts to play major league baseball -- one with San Francisco and one with Philadelphia. He became a Giant because the Giants were the first to get their contract to MLB. He did not stay in the Giants system for long because the Orioles snapped him up in the old "first-year draft," which allowed teams to draft minor leaguers away from other teams after just one season -- a 249 plate appearance season in the Appalachian League where he hit .379/.457/.561.

1971 Dell Today's Team Stamp

May moved up in the Orioles system fairly quickly thanks to his hitting ability, and he made his major league debut in 1967 at the age of 23. The problem for May was that he was with a team that had the outfield covered quite well already with 23-year-olds Curt Blefary and Paul Blair in left and center and future Hall of Famer Frank Robinson in right. As a result, in 1967 and 1968, May was on the Rochester/Baltimore shuttle, splitting time both years between Triple-A and the majors. 

1972 Topps

May's offense suffered, though, as an Oriole. He was not getting to start many games in the field and was used mainly as a pinch-hitter. As May said in The Sporting News when talking about his trade to Milwaukee, "It was tough playing for the Orioles because when you weren't in there every day, it was hard to get into a groove." Indeed, in the first two-and-a-half months of 1970 before his trade, May had started only two games of his 25 appearances.

1973 Topps

Freed from the Orioles at the age of 26, May was inserted immediately into the Brewers' starting lineup in centerfield. In Milwaukee, May was at home in many respects. He was an All-Star in 1973, which was his best season by far -- he led the American League in total bases and Win Probability Added. Part of that season left its imprint on the Brewers team record book as he hit safely in 24 consecutive games. That streak stayed on the books as the Brewers best until Paul Molitor's 39-game hitting streak in 1987.

1974 Topps

May struggled in 1974. He had the flu in spring training and may not have been right the whole year. It didn't help that Del Crandall decided to move May to right field, ostensibly to help May out after losing weight thanks to the flu. But he never broke out of the season-long funk. As a result, the team decided to trade him away, and May became the answer to a trivia question: Who was the player that the Atlanta Braves received when they traded Hank Aaron to the Milwaukee Brewers?

1974 Kellogg's

May later was traded two years later by the Braves to the Texas Rangers. The Braves sent May, Adrian Devine, Ken Henderson, Roger Moret, Carl Morton, and $250,000 to the Rangers for 25-year-old Jeff Burroughs. Dave spent one year and a month in Texas before he came back to the Brewers in May of 1978. May was nothing more than a bench player behind Larry Hisle, Ben Oglivie, Sixto Lezcano, Jim Wohlford, and Dick Davis -- yes, the team carried six outfielders then -- and ended up having his contract sold to the Pirates in September of that year.

1974 Topps Stamp

By that point, though, May had left his mark on the team record book for the first decade of its existence. Just look at this "team top 10" list from the 1980 Media Guide:

May was 4th in games, 4th in at bats, 4th in runs, 5th in hits, 6th in doubles, 6th in homers, 6th in RBI, 7th in extra base hits, 5th in total bases, and 5th in stolen bases. Yet, in the popularity contest that was the selection process for the 2000 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Brewers All Decades Team for the 1970s, May was overlooked in favor of Larry Hisle, Sixto Lezcano, Gorman Thomas, Hank Aaron, and Tommy Harper. Of those, Aaron was more of a sentimental choice than one actually based on production for the team, and Hisle probably made the team solely due to his being the first big-name free agent to sign with Milwaukee. May deserved better.

1994 Miller Commemorative Set

Dave passed away in October of 2012 at the age of 68. He suffered from diabetes for the last decade of his life after he moved back home to Delaware. May's son Derrick also played in the major leagues in the 1990s, spending 32 games with the club in 1995. 

Just before Father's Day in 2014, Derrick and his older brother David Jr. talked with each other in the form of a wonderful blog post about growing up with dad being a major leaguer on a website called Instream Sports. Derrick and David Jr. were a little more than a year apart in age, so they were partners in crime often. They played catch with the ball that Dave had gotten signed by the entire 1973 AL All-Star Team -- scuffing it up and getting grass stains on it. 

Derrick laughed about riding his bike to the White Hen Pantry and buying Bazooka and Topps baseball cards before going to the games with their dad in Milwaukee. Derrick also recalled one of their early neighbors in an apartment complex in Milwaukee where a lot of pro athletes lived. Their neighbor Lew was a little younger than Dave was, but Dave and Lew became fast friends. Then one day, the boys were told that Lew was no longer Lew -- that he had changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Dave May has 18 cards in the Trading Card Database showing him as a Milwaukee Brewer. I have the 8 shown here. I do not have the two Brewers picture packs from 1970 and 1971, any of his three O-Pee-Chee cards, the 1972 Topps Venezuelan Stamp, the 1973 Jewel Foods photo card, the 1973-74 Linnett Portrait, the 1974 Topps Deckle Edge, or his 1986 TCMA All-Time Milwaukee Brewers card.

Meet the Brewers #32: Ken Sanders

With the placement of two pitchers on the DL and Marvin Milkes's incessant chopping and changing of the roster, additional bodies were needed in Milwaukee at the end of May in 1970. Thus, a reliever with a checkered history in major league baseball received the call up to the major leagues -- Ken Sanders. Sanders's first game in Milwaukee came on May 30, 1970. 

The Brewers had raced out to a five-run lead in the first-inning of the game -- thanks in large part to a hit by Brewer #30, Roberto Pena...an inside-the-park grand slam home run (a play on which Al Kaline almost choked on his own tongue and died on the field) -- but starter Lew Krausse faltered and gave up 6 runs and the lead. Thus, in the fifth inning, the call to the bullpen for Sanders came. He pitched okay -- giving up one run in 2-2/3 innings -- and the Brewers came back to win the game after that.

1971 Topps/O-Pee-Chee

Kenneth George Sanders was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on July 8, 1941. He grew up there but signed with the Kansas City Athletics pretty much right after high school in 1960. The A's sent him to the Florida State League and, as an 18-year-old, the A's had him pitch 240-2/3 innings. That year, he lead the FSL in wins (19), innings pitched (by only 9 2/3 innings), and complete games with an incredible 22. Imagine if those numbers got put up now by an 18-year-old kid at any level.

Sanders was not a big man -- standing 5'11" tall and weighing 180 pounds in his heyday with Milwaukee -- and, as a result, he was not a fireballer or ever threatened to lead the league in strikeouts. Indeed, the 22 complete games he threw in the Florida State League represented 44% of all of his career complete games -- all in the minor leagues. He never again threw more than 166 innings in a single season after that, and he never completed more than 8 games in any particular season.

1971 O-Pee-Chee back

Still, Sanders fought his way to the major leagues by 1964. Oddly, between 1960 and his making the major leagues in 1964, he spent only 7 games in Triple-A...and that was in 1962. He didn't stick in the majors in '64, though. In 1964, he spent most of the season in Double-A in Birmingham, Alabama. That team was noteworthy as well -- as being the first integrated sports team in state history thanks to the inclusion of pitcher John "Blue Moon" Odom and outfielder Tommie Reynolds on the team. A book called Southern League was written about the team; oddly enough, Sanders appears to have missed the team photo (probably by being in the majors at the time).

He went back to the minors -- this time to Triple-A -- before being drafted away from the A's by the Red Sox in the Rule 5 draft before the 1966 season. He pitched okay in 24 games in Boston -- 3.61 FIP/3.80 ERA (about league average) in 47-1/3 innings -- before the A's apparently thought, "you know what, we need Sanders back." So, they traded future Seattle Pilot Jim Gosger, pitcher Guido Grilli, and Sanders to the A's for Rollie Sheldon, John Wyatt, and Jose Tartabull. While this was pretty much a trade of spare parts, Tartabull did play 115 games for the Miracle Sox of '67. On the other hand, Sanders pitched the rest of 1966 in Kansas City -- finishing 6th in appearances with 62 -- before spending '67 in the minors.

Dell Today's 1971 Milwaukee Brewers Stamp

Sanders pitched a little bit in 1968 for the A's -- now in Oakland -- but he spent most of 1968 and 1969 at Triple-A. He finally got the break he needed when the still-Seattle Pilots traded for him with Mike Hershberger, Lew Krausse, and Phil Roof in exchange for Ron Clark and Jaybarkerfan favorite Don Mincher. His pitching earned him the nickname in Milwaukee -- perhaps from Bob Uecker -- of "Bulldog" and rightfully so. Brewers manager Dave Bristol stuck Sanders in the bullpen and kept letting him pitch. 

And boy, did Sanders pitch well in 1970. He finished 30 of the 50 games he pitched, throwing 92-1/3 innings. He became the Brewers closer before teams seemed to care about that title. Relying more on pitch movement and location, he still managed to strikeout 6.2 batters per 9 innings while walking only 2.4 and giving up just 1 homer all season.

1972 Topps

By 1971, though, Sanders had become a bona fide stud. He led the American League by appearing in 83 games that season. He threw 136-1/3 innings in relief -- probably burning him out, but what did Milwaukee care, right? -- and had a sparking 1.91 ERA (thought that was a bit of a mirage, since his FIP was 2.97). He also paced the American League in Jerome Holtzman's pet statistic, saves, totaling 31 of them.

Of those 83 games in which he pitched, he finished an incredible 77 of them. That total was, at the time, a major league record by a ways -- by 10 games over the previous record held by Dick Radatz in 1964. It is still good enough for fourth best all-time behind two seasons by Mike Marshall and the 2002 season from Oakland's Billy Koch. To compare, though, Koch's season destroyed him. Koch performed his feat at the age of 27. After that, he pitched in a total of 102 games and was never the same pitcher -- with his walk-rate spiking upward terribly. On the other hand, Sanders -- who was 29 in 1971 -- pitched another five seasons with a 3.50 ERA. It took its toll -- his K-rate dropped propitiously from 6.2/9 in 1970 to 5.3 in 1971 to just 3.8/9 over the rest of its career -- but he still was a lot better than Koch.

1994 Miller Brewing Commemorative

1971 was a tough act to follow, and Sanders struggled some. His ERA went up to where it probably should have been in 1971 -- to 3.12. He appeared in 62 games and threw 92-1/3 innings. After the 1972 season, the Brewers decided to cash in and threw him in a trade to Philadelphia with Ken Brett, Jim Lonborg, and Earl Stephenson in order to get John Vukovich, Bill Champion, and eventual franchise stalwart Don Money.

Sanders never played in Philly, though, as the team flipped him a month later to the Minnesota Twins in a trade. From there, Sanders played just a couple of months in 1973 with the Twins before they waived him and the Indians claimed him. He stuck around in Cleveland for basically a season before being released in June of 1974. 

The California Angels picked him up, and Sanders spent time there and in Triple-A in 1974. In 1975, the Angels traded him to the New York Mets, where he enjoyed something of a late career revival of a 90-inning stretch with a 2.60 ERA (despite 2.4 K/9!). His contract was sold in late 1976 to the Kansas City Royals, who pitched him 3 innings and then released him. He tried to hook on with the Brewers for the 1977 season, but he did not make the team out of spring training. Instead, he spent 30 games in Triple-A Spokane for Milwaukee before finally calling time on his career.

2000 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 1970s All Decades Team

Sanders really was the only real relief ace that the Brewers had before Rollie Fingers joined the team by trade after the 1980 season. He was an easy selection as the relief pitcher on the 1970s Brewers All-Decades Team on the team's 30th anniversary.

Thanks to his Midwestern upbringing, Sanders and his wife Mary Ann felt very comfortable in the Milwaukee area and settled in Hales Corners, Wisconsin, permanently. After his big league career ended, Sanders became a real estate agent. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article from 2013 notes that his claim to fame as a real estate agent was to list and sell the "Field of Dreams" in Dyersville, Iowa.

Again, at least as of 2013, Sanders still golfed every day he could in Wisconsin, which means from late April to early October. He still has the little book he kept on hitters as a pitcher, and, as he correctly notes, his first ever major league strikeout was of Mickey Mantle. When Sanders told Mantle about that fact, Mantle said, "big f**king deal -- you and 1,000 others kid!"

According to the Trading Card Database, Sanders appears on 8 total cards as a Brewer. I have the 6 you see here. I am missing the 1971 Milwaukee Brewers Picture Pack and his 1972 O-Pee-Chee card.

Meet the Brewers #27: Skip Lockwood

In the first six weeks of the 1970 season and as one might expect for a second-year expansion team in the pre-free-agent era, the Brewers had struggled. Attendance was not great -- after all, the team had about 5 days to sell season tickets once the bankruptcy court approved Bud Selig's purchase of the team. On May 5, 1970, the Brewers returned to MIlwaukee after a two-coast, 15-game road trip which featured two doubleheaders. On that road trip, the team went 2-13 and got swept in back-to-back four-game series by the Washington Senators and New York Yankees. 

GM Marvin Milkes met with manager Dave Bristol, the coaching staff, and director of player development and procurement Bobby Mattick (who later managed the Toronto Blue Jays in 1980 and 1981) and decided that a few changes needed to be made. The first change that the team made was to call up young starting pitcher Claude (Skip) Lockwood from Portland and, in a corresponding move, the team put Rich Rollins on waivers for purposes of giving him his unconditional release.

1971 Topps

Skip Lockwood was a bonus baby signed by the Kansas City Athletics directly out of his suburban Boston high school in 1964. In his SABR biography, the story is told that the A's came to his house and said they would match any offer for Lockwood to sign with the team. The Colt .45's were the high bidder, agreeing to give a $35,000 bonus. Lockwood -- then 17-years-old -- wrote in an extra "1" in front of the bonus number and asked the A's scout, Pat Friday, if getting $135,000 was okay. Friday made a call, and the A's agreed to the tripling of the bonus. It was, at the time, the largest bonus ever given.

The A's decided that Lockwood would play third base for them. His first step was to travel to Burlington, Iowa, and play in the Midwest League for a while. But, as a bonus baby and under the rules at the time, Lockwood had to spend all of 1965 on the A's bench. He made a total of 42 appearances that season, starting just two games and appearing in the field at third in just 7 games. It took him until June 13 of that season to get his first major league hit, and he only totaled 4 hits in 33 at bats (41 plate appearances) all season.

1972 Topps

In an effort to hide Lockwood away from the Rule 5 draft after the 1966 season, the A's had Lockwood go to the Arizona Instructional League as a pitcher. That worked poorly -- the Astros took Lockwood as a pitcher in the draft. But, the Astros did not see enough that spring of Lockwood as a pitcher, they returned him to the A's. The A's figured out that, perhaps, Lockwood had more of a future as a pitcher and had him split time between pitching and playing third base in the minors in 1968.

Apparently, the A's lost interest, or thought no one would take a soon-to-be-22-year-old without a true position, so they left Lockwood unprotected in the 1969 Expansion Draft. With little to lose, however, the expansion Seattle Pilots selected Lockwood and sent him to Double-A. Near the end of the 1969 season, the team called Lockwood to the majors. In 6 games, Lockwood started three and finished three.

Lockwood's stay in Milwaukee lasted until the end of the 1973 season. The Brewers used Lockwood mainly as a starter until 1973. In his five seasons in the Brewers/Pilots organization, Lockwood posted a 28-55 record in 132 appearances (103 starts). He threw 729-1/3 innings -- nearly 60% of his career total -- with a 3.75 ERA (3.78 FIP). To tell you how bad the Brewers have been at developing pitchers over their 47-season existence, that 3.75 ERA still ranks ninth in Brewers history, his hits allowed per nine innings of 8.638 ranks eighth, and his home runs allowed per nine innings of 0.728 is third.

1973 Topps

After the 1973 season -- at which point Lockwood was still only 27 years old -- Lockwood found himself on the move. The Brewers packaged Lockwood with Ollie Brown, Joe Lahoud, Ellie Rodriguez, and Gary Ryerson, sending that group to the California Angels in exchange for Steve Barber, Ken Berry, Art Kusnyer, Clyde Wright, and cash.

The Angels deployed Lockwood mostly as a reliever, which is where he would find great success going forward. His time in Anaheim, though, was not as successful. He bounced around a bit after 1974, getting traded to the Yankees for Bill Sudakis. The Yankees promptly released Lockwood after spring training in 1975, so he hooked on again with the Oakland A's. The A's didn't need him, so they sold his contract to the New York Mets in July of 1975.

The move to the Mets was exactly what Lockwood's career needed. He pitched extremely well over the last half of 1975 -- 1-3 record but with a 1.49 ERA (2.48 FIP) and 2 saves over 48-1/3 innings, walking 25 but striking out 61. Over the next three years, Lockwood was the Mets closer -- even finishing 2nd in the National League in 1976 in saves with 19 (and doesn't that say how much times have changed?).

Lockwood spent 5 years with the Mets and played out his option in 1979. As a result, his hometown Boston Red Sox signed him to a two-year, $725,000 contract for the 1980 and 1981 seasons with a no-trade clause -- the Red Sox's first-ever free agent. That included a $250,000 signing bonus, a $200,000 salary, and a $125,000 option-year buyout for a third year. Lockwood was not good with the Red Sox and was released after spring training in 1981. He hooked up with the Expos for the 1981 season, but he spent the entire year at Triple-A Denver. 1981 was Lockwood's last in baseball.

1994 Miller Brewing Commemorative Set

During his career, Lockwood worked regularly in the offseason on his college education, eventually graduating with his B.S. in Speech from Emerson College in Boston. He then graduated from MIT with an MBA in 1983, and he added a master's degree from Fairfield University. His post-baseball career has focused on sports psychology and, in his SABR Biography, he expressed his envy he had not gotten his psychology license while former major-league pitcher Bob Tewksbury had and was working (in 2012) with the Boston Red Sox.

These days, Lockwood has a website through which he can be contacted for speaking gigs and corporate motivational speaking. 

Despite spending most of five seasons with the Brewers, Lockwood has just 9 cards in the Trading Card Database of him with the Milwaukee Brewers. I have the four cards shown here, while I am still looking for the corresponding O-Pee-Chee cards of Lockwood from 1971, 1972, and 1973, the 1971 Dell Today's Team Stamp, and the 1973 Jewel Foods photo card of him.

Team Set Holes

As you have come to expect from me, I like to break my card show purchases into a number of posts so that I get a good week's worth of posts from my day at the show. This card show was no different, either.

This one is my final post from that last show. Basically, it's random Brewer cards that I needed for my team set collections.

Let's start with the most recent ones -- Aramis Ramirez and Mark Reynolds from the Update set.

Escobar played every single game for the Kansas City Royals this year. He was in the Greinke trade with Lorenzo Cain.

Now, for the fun stuff -- Hostess! That Bando card looks like the photo is from the Old Comiskey Park and was taken in front of the old exploding scoreboard.

Those two were from 1978, while this next Bando is from 1977. Along with the Fosse, it shows that Topps wasn't the only company to employ airbrushers back in the 1970s to put guys on different teams. All three of these cards were a quarter each.

This 1979 Dick Davis card was a condition upgrade. Davis reportedly was a major cocaine user in the early 1980s, according to Lonnie Smith's testimony during the 1985 Pittsburgh Drug Trials.

Before I bought this copy of the 1983 RBI Leaders from the 1984 Topps set, I already have at least two copies of it. It's just that one of them is autographed and both of the other two are in my Cooper player collection.

These next four were all great finds from the first dealer table at which I stopped. Three of the four are from the higher numbers in the 1972 set, so they did cost a little bit more (50 cents or $1) than a basic common, but all of them are in good shape and were needed for my team collection.

As was the case with the Cooper RBI leader, I have this card already. It's just in the Ted Simmons player collection.

I used to have this card somewhere. I think it was in the 1984 Donruss set I sold in 1989. No matter. Found another one for a quarter.

Randomly, two former Brewers prospects in the 2008 Donruss Elite Extra Edition were in the quarter box. I guess it was because they are former prospects. Gindl was DFA'ed in September by Milwaukee, while Adams got to the Single-A Midwest League before getting blown up for an ERA near 6 in 2009.

In one "star" box, I found three 1984 O-Pee-Chee cards of three former Brewers now in the Hall of Fame. For a quarter a piece, I made sure that I got two Molitors for myself as well.

Finally, I picked up this chrome-y reprint of the 1976 Topps Hank Aaron card from 1999. I may not collect him as a player collection, but his appearances in both my Brewers and Braves team sets mean that I have to chase all of his cards for one copy.

As it was, I was slightly underwhelmed by the show this month. I spent more money this month on fewer cards. Certainly, that was because I loaded up on some more expensive vintage cards, but the dime boxes just weren't as productive this time around. So, I had to turn to the quarter boxes which means higher prices and fewer cards.

I may just need to shake things up and attend one of the other shows. Or, I may just need to take a few months off from the show.  We'll see how things progress, as I have some big changes in my life coming up.