Happy (Belated) Birthday, Robin Yount!

All humans go through slumps. The only question is how the slump manifests itself. 

I get into slumps where I just don't feel like writing. I was in that slump most of this past week. Even at work, writing was extremely difficult for me. The words did not flow. The thoughts did not flow, and they were jumbled. 

Yesterday, though, things cleared up a bit. I was able to focus a bit more and I got things done. I don't know if it was just a little "end of week" focus or something else, but things were clicking. The other thing yesterday, though, was that my wife and I had a "hang out" night last night -- catching up on some TV shows together, playing a little backgammon, talking, listening to music, and drinking a little wine too. 

So, this post should have been made yesterday -- on the day of Robin Yount's 61st birthday -- rather than today. 

Better late than never.

It is difficult to state or even overstate how important Robin Yount was and still is in Milwaukee Brewers history. While Hank Aaron and Rollie Fingers were enshrined in the Hall of Fame before Yount, Yount was the first player to wear a Brewers hat on his plaque. 

When he retired suddenly at the beginning of the 1994 season, it caught Milwaukee as a city -- and probably as an organization -- by surprise. It led off the local news, of course, giving such cringeworthy coverage as this:

In honor of Yount's 61st birthday, though, I thought I'd pick out a few of my favorite Robin Yount cards from my collection, in no particular order.

1975 Hostess

I love oddballs. At some point, I may decide to try to collect complete sets of the Hostess cards, even as difficult as that may be, thanks to this love for oddballs. 

This card makes my "favorites" list for a couple of reasons. First, my love of oddballs meant that at least one (and actually more) would make this list. 

Second, thanks to the continual reprinting/reusing of the 1975 Topps version of Robin's rookie card by Topps -- seeing as it appears in nearly every throwback excuse set that Topps prints -- I'm actually kind of tired of that photo and that card. It is an iconic card, but even icons can lose meaning if they are everywhere. I appreciate the fact that Robin keeps getting cards, but I don't appreciate the laziness that pervades Robin's getting cards from Topps.

But I complain too much about Topps, apparently.

2015 Baseball Card Breakdown Cardsphere Heroes

By now, most people in the blog world know about the prowess that Gavin from Baseball Card Breakdown has with making custom cards. This photo is such a favorite of mine that it is my avatar on Blogger and on Twitter. 

I've already mentioned all the emotions I had on the day on which this picture was taken (the welcome home parade after the Brewers lost the 1982 World Series), and I've already called this my favorite custom card in Post #500. So, including this one in my list of favorite Yount cards was a natural move.

1983 West Bend Police Department

It wouldn't be a favorite card list from me of anyone who played in the 1980s without including a card from a police department. West Bend is the bigger city closest to where I grew up -- where city means, "more than 15,000 people", that is. As a kid, I literally would spend days near my house on my bike watching for police cars to go by and hope that they would have to stop at a stop sign near where I was so I could flag them down and get baseball cards. 

What can I say -- it was 1983, I could only play so much Atari before my thumbs and wrists got sore, and I was an addicted card collector.

I can't remember at this point if this is a card I got myself back in the 1980s or if I bought this on eBay. It doesn't matter.

2016 Topps Allen & Ginter

Looking through all my scanned cards, I have a bunch of Yount relics, a few autographs, and a ton of inserts and base set cards of Yount from after his playing career. For whatever reason, this one really grabbed me today. It's a different photo from the usual ones Topps seems to use regularly, so that helps. The artwork is well done here also. 

To be honest, if I did a list like this tomorrow, this card might not make the cut. But, today it did.

1983(?) O'Connell & Sons Ink

And finally, another oddball. The art quality on this one is not very good -- the drawing is pretty amateurish (even if it is far better than I could do). The reason I like this one is that chasing it down was about an 18-month obsession for me when I first got back into collecting. I searched and searched and searched, and then one showed up on COMC for a reasonable price about a year ago. I snapped it up immediately.

It seems strange that Robin Yount is now 61 years old. I mean, he's not supposed to age and get old because if he does then there is no hope for me.

Then again, I'm pretty sure a lot of people would already agree that there's no hope for me -- after all, I'm a Brewers fan.

Happy birthday, Rockin' Robin!

Some eBay Pickups And the First (only?) Topps Now Brewer

Writer's block -- and feeling blase generally -- can be detrimental to blogging. I have had two parts writer's block, 2 parts of blase, and 2 parts not having anything really new to write about lately. I have found myself watching TV more in the past few days -- a decent amount of baseball, but also some old episodes of Mythbusters and some reruns of American Pickers have dominated, but sometimes even Rehab Addict (yes, because Nicole Curtis is an attractive woman but out of interest in the renovations as well) or a random soccer game.

But baseball cards have been lacking a bit here. I've been trying to save up a bit with a goal of taking a good chunk of change to one of the North Carolina shows run by Inside Pitch some time in July or August. That means that I've barely paid any attention to any of the new cards coming out from Topps -- and, to be fair, why would I pay attention with how few Brewers feature in any of Topps non-flagship sets?

I've been pretty outspoken on Twitter about the Topps Now concept and card selection process. I enjoy the concept generally -- I think the idea of capturing the previous day's events on a card is a fun idea. It's a damn shame, though, that Topps's execution of this concept is as flawed as about everything else Topps does. 

I mean, it is still inexplicable to me that Topps could overlook a team turning a triple play so that David Ortiz could appear on yet another card. 

But, as much as I loathe Topps and how it essentially refuses to note Milwaukee's existence in the past four or five years (hey, I get it...y'all are still mad about Ryan Braun. Get over it. You've lionized F**king Bartolo Colon -- who tested positive for steroids too!), I'm still a Brewers collector and an obsessive at that. So, when Aaron Hill hit three homers in a game including a grand slam that helped to win the game in the 10th inning on May 7 in Cincinnati, I had to get the card. 

I mean, I did it angrily, though. Aaron Hill hopefully will be traded away soon for a lottery ticket to a contender. He's not the future, nor does he have any particular tie to the franchise generally. He's just a guy we had to take in a salary dump.

Hopefully, the Brewers won't have any more Topps Now cards. Seriously. I'm happy to get one, but like many of Topps's releases, I'm glad that Topps is draining the pockets of Yankees and Red Sox and Dodgers and Cubs fans. 

Other than this Topps Now card, I have picked up a few things on eBay. For just about $20, I bought a lot of six complete or nearly complete police card sets from the 1980s and early 1990s. As I mentioned, I'm obsessive, so I still harbor this dream of collecting every single set. Here's what I added this time:

Four of the lots were from the Milwaukee County Sheriff's Department. As in many places, Milwaukee has both a police force -- which is the entity that gave away the cards for the Stadium Giveaways -- and a Sheriff's Department. The only downside to the 1991 lot is that it did not include a Robin Yount.

The other two sets came from West Bend -- a city about 15 minutes from where I grew up -- and West Allis -- the city that abuts where Miller Park is located and where the State Fair Park is located.  I'm always looking for new departments to add to my collection, so keep your eyes peeled for me!

Finally, I added a couple of Jonathan Lucroy cards/items. I've been on a bit of a Luc spree lately. I'm not sure if it is in hope of him not getting traded or if his cards just give me someone to chase at a more reasonable price than the Ryan Braun items go for these days. I got two pretty cool items:

This is a 2014 SI for Kids card. I didn't realize that SI for Kids was still a thing, and I certainly didn't realize that they still do cards. Or maybe it was still a thing in 2014. 

 

And, finally, I've continued to be able to find Jonathan Lucroy printing plates for a reasonably inexpensive price. Again, I think it's because it's Lucroy and not Braun or Yount or Molitor, but this one stayed under $15, if I recall correctly.  

All in all, not a bad week of mail coming in thanks to my purchasing stuff online. Of course, that runs counter to my attempt to save money, but...oh well.

Thanks for reading, and let me know if you want to trade!