I Wanna Baseball All Night

Peter from Baseball Every Night has been extremely generous to me. Hopefully, my latest envelope that was sent to him -- now, for a second time...thanks USPS! -- gets to him so that he can drink in all the Strawberry cards I've sent to him. 

Of course, with the title I've used here, there can only be one theme song for the second batch of cards Peter sent my way last week:

Here's the setup: the past two years, I have come out of the gate rockin' when it comes to collecting the Brewers for the Topps flagship set. By that, I mean that both in 2015 and 2016, I bought into case breaks for Series 1 and ended up with about a dozen of each of the base cards, about a half dozen of any inserts, and even a relic or two. 

By the time Series 2 rolls around, though, I miss it. I don't even notice it. Series 2 sneaks out into the world like the stealthiest of leopards, unleashing itself on an unsuspecting collecting public.

Or, at least unleashing itself on me.

I mean, I think I still need a Jason Rogers from 2015 Series 2 at this point. Seriously. I haven't found one at my local show, and no one has sent me one either. I mean, I'll probably just end up getting it eventually if it doesn't show up, but that is pretty indicative of how Series 2 usually treats me.

Since that first song got me in the mood, how about a KISS-powered post to go with the 2016 Topps Series 2 cards that Peter sent my way?

Perhaps the most appropriate KISS song for the 2016 set -- I'll call it forevermore the "smoke" set -- this song from Animalize (which I owed and may still own on a 33-1/3 RPM record):

Let's go for the basic ones first:

That top card -- the Brewers Team card -- features Ryan Braun giving third base coach Ed Sedar a low five after hitting a homerun and passing third base. I'm now tied up in knots thinking of all of the terrible Passover puns (pass, seder/Sedar...) so I'd best move on.

Ariel Pena lasted one outing with the Brewers this year to start the season before getting sent to pitcher's hell, er, Colorado Springs. Interesting trivia tidbit: Colorado Springs is the highest elevation stadium featuring professional baseball. It's a full quarter mile higher in elevation than Coors Field. The Brewers ended up with a Triple-A team there thanks to the classless organization that is the Nashville Sounds -- which used the Brewers to get a new stadium built then promptly changed affiliations. 

Michael Blazek just returned to the bullpen from the disabled list. He's the rare player who started in St. Louis, left, and got better instead of worse!

Finally, Keon Broxton suffered one of the worst starts to a major league career that I could imagine. He went 0-for-2 last year with Pittsburgh, then went 0-for-16 to start the season this year with Milwaukee. He got sent down on April 16. He came back on May 20, and he went 0 for his next 6 before finally picking up his first major league hit in the 13th inning against the Atlanta Braves on May 25 (and giving Michael Blazek the win). Broxton's big problem so far is making contact. In 71 plate appearances, he has struck out a ridiculous 33 times. That is no way to make a major league career take off.

Okay, we need some help to get through these next cards...

How about a little Cold Gin? 

To be fair -- and I'm sure to the chagrin of at least a couple of you -- I'm not a huge KISS fan. This is probably the first time I've heard this song. It's not awful. It's okay. It's too repetitive in the guitar licks for my taste, though.

Peter sent me a couple of gold parallels as well. Topps has been doing these gold parallels for what -- fifteen or sixteen years? They are okay, I suppose. It's sort of like that guitar in Cold Gin. 

These two cards are of two guys having very different seasons. Jeremy Jeffress wasn't the experts' pick to be the closer this year -- Blazek, perhaps, might have been, or Will Smith, or maybe even Tyler Thornburg. But Jeffress ended up being the guy coming out of spring training almost by default being the only one healthy and pitching well. Lo and behold, as of June 27, Jeffress is in fifth place in the NL with 21 saves in 22 opportunities. Not too shabby.

On the other hand, Wily Peralta has been a train wreck wrapped in a volcano eruption thrown into a hurricane hit by a tornado. He looked like he might be a stud in the making in 2014 as his numbers looked pretty good -- 17-11, 3.53 ERA (4.11 FIP) 9 H/9, 1.0 HR/9, 2.8 BB/9, 7.0 K/9. He was hurt in 2015 and his numbers all went the wrong way -- 10.8 H/9, 1.2 HR/9, 4.84 FIP, 3.1 BB/9 and 5.0 K/9. 

Then, this year...UGLY: 6.68 ERA (5.60 FIP), 13.2 H/9, 1.6 HR/9, 3.7 BB/9 and 5.7 K/9. All of those numbers are terrible. Every single one of them. It has a lot of folks in the Brewers organization scratching their heads. It also is likely to end up with Wily getting non-tendered, joining the Cardinals, and winning the Cy Young in 2019.

I need a pick me up now.

  

At least it is an uptempo song. The more I listen to old KISS, the less I like it, to be honest. I know -- sacrilege, right? But the music is kind of...mediocre. Sorry guys and gals who have devoted your lives to KISS -- basically they are an average band with a great gimmick.

I'm probably wrong about that, so please -- attack me at will for that comment in the comments below. 

Speaking of repetitive and mediocre, I sure am glad that we have our 948th version of Robin Yount's rookie card making an appearance in the Berger's Best/Cards your Mom Threw Out/whatever the excuse is this year insert set. I think the real reason this is in the Series 2 inserts is to make up for the typo in Series 1 which said this card was from 1974. 

Of course, it also said that the mini 1974 version was highly sought after. And that is so true. I am still looking for it.

Peter -- thank you again for the great cards, and I hope that KISS isn't one of your favorite bands since all I've done here is call them average, mediocre, repetitive, and gimmicky.

Then again, I'm a baseball card blogger. What do I know about gimmicky or being repetitive?  

All Cardinals Sends All Brewers

I've gotten a lot of mail with cards enclosed this week. A couple of those were eBay purchases, but the vast majority were cards from bloggers. After the large pile of envelopes that I sent out in February -- which I'm lucky that my wife takes to the post office for me -- my wife commented to me that all my hard work in putting those together has paid off recently.

I don't view it that way, to be fair. I view it more as just the normal back and forth of blind trades in the blog world. Even the whole #SuperTraders thing to me is just a consolidation of that thought. I enjoyed breaking the boxes that I bought for that group (and, depending how things work out with the group, I may buy a few more to break later this year), but I will always try to trade with whomever is interested.  

Someone I've swapped cards with a couple of times in the past is Ray at All Cardinals All the Time. This time, a great PWE arrived from Ray with a few recent parallels and inserts that I needed either for team collections or player collections.  

We start with the foil parallel of Ryan Braun from this year. This one will go to my team collection, which now features a grand total of about three cards right now. All the parallels can be frustrating sometimes, what with some of the cards barely looking any different from their main set counterparts.

When it comes to team sets and parallels, I am certainly trying to put together team sets of any un-serial-numbered parallels and even those that are serial numbered anything above 100. That said, I have my doubts about trying to complete team sets of parallels from anything high-end. Even the ones numbered to, say, 325 -- which should be at least somewhat available -- can get expensive quickly simply because they come in boxes with a total of 14 cards that will run you around $180 a box.

You know, like Triple Threads....

Funny thing, though. For whatever reason, this card has been very accessible to me. This is my third different amethyst parallel of Braun from the 2013 Topps Triple Threads set. With serial numbers, though, every card is a different addition to the player collection -- even if one may find its way into a team set for the parallel for that set.

Another tricky issue as a team collector are the inserts. Some inserts are easily obtained -- you know, the ones that come in practically every pack of the flagship set, like the ever-present reprints of past cards repackaged as Cards Mom Threw Out, or 60 Years of Topps, or Berger's Best. 

Then, there are the "cross-trainers" of inserts and even the Archives set -- putting current players on older designs. This Braun insert from last year's Topps Finest set reuses the 1995 Finest design but for some reason numbers the cards with a "94F" prefix -- which, strangely enough, is the same prefix that Topps used in 2014 for its 1994 Finest inserts. 

That's a small thing, but we all know that details are important in life. Not paying attention to the details has become commonplace for Topps as of late, what with the issues with the Cubs that Wrigley Wax has detailed and even the reference to Robin Yount's nonexistent 1974 Rookie card ("especially in mini form") on the Berger's Best inserts this year. It seems that Topps is more concerned with coming up with more photo variations than it is in getting things on its cards correct.

And that is truly a shame, because some of the parallels and sets Topps puts out look really sharp.

Like this purple refractor from 2015 Bowman Chrome of Khris Davis serial numbered to 150. As much as Bowman has way too many parallels of the same photo and same card and as much as the Bowman sets would be far better if the parallels were cut in half, the shiny refractors are still quite the draw and look sharp together in a binder.

I'm not as sure that the same can be said of the Gold Parallels over the past two years.



With the very colorful borders in 2015 and the general lack of borders in 2016, these cards just are not very attractive. I have a particular worry, though, about the honeycombed look on the 2016 Topps Gold Parallel cards.

My concern is that Topps is going to use the pattern to create more parallels that we don't need in the hobby. Maybe not this year, but next year, would it surprise anyone if suddenly we had a short-print variation in the flagship set based around these textures or backgrounds in the fashion of Topps Hi Tek or the old school Topps Tek? This year it's honeycomb in flagship, next year it will be spiral icebreak parallels.

Or worse -- I could see this coming up later this year in Topps Chrome, where the white clouds in the corners are transformed to even more parallels beyond simply the color parallels. We'll have orange honeycomb, orange spiral, orange brick, orange peel, and orange Kool-Aid refractors, each serial numbered to between 123 and 129 or something ridiculous like that.

In the end, though, I definitely appreciate these cards greatly from Ray. It's a great day when an envelope arrives, and it's an even better day with over half the cards being serial numbered and needed for team sets and player collections.

Thank you, Ray!

Crackin' Wax Case Break: Topps Flagship Series 1

The last two years, I have participated in case breaks for the Topps Series 1 cards. Last year, I went with Nachos Grande. This year, I saw Crackin' Wax's charity break first and decided to join up there. That's not meant to be a statement on either breakers' offerings. That's more along the lines of my collecting ADHD: First in time, first in mind.

Anyway...it was fun catching a few boxes of the case break live as the man known as Topher and his wife a/k/a Literal Quirk bantered with those of us assembled in the peanut gallery. 

Nearly everyone who collects baseball cards and blogs has weighed in on this set and its design already. In fact, I've provided my $15 worth of commentary on a few blogs already (actually, it's more than that, because I bill in 6-minute increments and nothing less! :-|  )

So, here are the 9 base card Brewers. I think I got about 10 of each of these, so let me know if you need any of these (CB?):



I am not a fan of the "dramatic effect clouds" on the card. Also, I'm not sure why Jonathan Lucroy's number looks pink or red.  The original, from Getty images, is a little reddish, but it's not pink.

Otherwise, I don't mind this design all that much, except that it's just the same old complaints: the cropping is poor (too close), pitchers are always shown mid-delivery grimacing, everyone but Maldonado is hitting (and, let's be honest, Maldonado can't hit so that's for the better), and I swear that Ryan Braun is always shown with his eyes bulging in his hitting follow-through. Perhaps when I need an idea for a post, I'll show you the Ryan Braun follow through photos. I guarantee that post will quickly become the most popular post ever on Off Hiatus. 

I've never watched that TV show, but the quote fits.

Back to 2016 Topps.

I did pretty well generally, though, in the case break. I got all the inserts I would have expected to get.  I received several of the Braun "Perspectives" card, though I'd already gotten one of those thanks to the Cardboard Junkie; I also got about 4 each of the horrendous looking dissolving player "back-to-back" inserts:



I don't mind getting new Younts and Molitors every year, but man, that card is not a good look for anyone. And Fielder/Braun works, but again, it just looks like a printing error rather than a cool effect.

Former Commissioner/Franchise Destroyer Bud Selig's First Pitch card also showed up.


I am pretty hard on Bud thanks to his decision in the 1990s to make Milwaukee the poster child for small market teams. Bud may have been the ultimate baseball reactionary and, at the same time, the ultimate baseball socialist. He wanted a return to the early 1970s in labor relations -- before the reserve clause had been interpreted as it was written rather than as perpetual indentured servitude -- and, at the same time (and, to be fair, there's much more sense in this than in the reserve clause), he wanted much greater revenue sharing. 

For people who cheer for teams like the Dodgers and Yankees, keep in mind that the great local TV and radio contracts your teams have require your team to have someone to play against...so, the revenue should be split more equitably. Of course, that's a bit socialist.

Can you tell that these cards don't exactly grab my attention all that much?

Also showing up about 4 times in the case is the Berger's Best of Robin Yount...you know the one...the one on which Topps forgot that it had a mini set in 1975 and not 1974 (and that Robin Yount did not appear on a 1974 card because why would he?)?



The final insert is one that seems harder to pull, apparently. Only one of them in the entire case:



There's that post-swing puffed cheek look again.

Now for the cooler stuff. A couple of parallels:



The Braun is a foil parallel (not that you can tell it from looking at it, of course). The Taylor Jungmann is one of those photo negative parallel things. Except it really isn't, because if it were a photo negative it would look like this:



Which is a hell of a lot cooler than a black and white card that I can't read the player's name on at all. Oddly enough, I did not get any gold parallel cards as best I can tell. I'm guessing these are seeded more frequently in retail rather than hobby boxes in an effort to get us to spend our hard-earned dollars chasing in both arenas rather than picking one or the other.

I hit on a couple of player collection buybacks as well -- one for Jim Slaton and one for Prince Fielder:



In the world of pointless buyback cards, these are two of them. At least the Slaton card from 1983 has sharp corners.

Finally, I did receive one card that is very cool. It was a great hit for the break for me:

It's a Fielder and Braun Back-to-Back base relic serial numbered 97 of 99, and it looks great in hand. Yes, the photos aren't any better here with their dissolving pixelation than they are "back to back", but throw in a couple of swatches of fabric, and it's almost forgiven.



All in all, it was a pretty good break for me. I can complain about the designs and the cheesy buybacks all I want, but I'm sure Topps would eventually like to get rid of all the 1989 cards they have laying around just like the rest of us would.

Thanks go out to Crackin' Wax and Literal Quirk for the break and for a couple of enjoyable hours watching other people open baseball cards. Everything's more fun, after all, with a Death's Door Gin & Ginger Ale drink with a squeeze of lemon juice. 

After all, I'm from Wisconsin. We're all "Wisconsin-Proud" and Death's Door is from Door County!