Bad Brains with Brent & Becca

I should really go on eBay more often to find team sets for recent issues rather than flailing around trying to find them at card shows. I know -- that's anathema to many people in the hobby. But, you have to get lucky at card shows to find what you want. On eBay, though, you just have to look.

Certainly, you can pay a premium on eBay. That's the argument against it, of course. There are times it is okay, at least to me.  In particular, I don't mind it when I support someone whom I "know" (at least in internet terms) -- Brent & Becca. Brent was selling a few Brewers team sets at a discount, so I picked up several sets that, with combined shipping, cost me maybe $15 total. 

Those cards arrived this week, and I wanted to show them off. But how? This is an easy one.

Outside of the presidential crap, one of the major stories that I've paid attention to this week was the announcement of the final nominees for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The list of 19 nominees includes a fair number of bands/acts that a lot of people have heard of -- Journey, Pearl Jam, Steppenwolf, The Cars, Janet Jackson, and Tupac Shakur, for example. But as the list went around, there was one band I saw a lot of people discounting because they had never heard of them: Bad Brains.

So, to show off the cards, let's listen to one of the seminal bands of the punk rock era.

Bad Brains started in Washington, DC. A group of African-American boys -- H.R. a/k/a Paul Hudson, Dr. Know a/k/a Gary Miller, Darryl Jenifer, and Earl Hudson (Paul's younger brother) formed a funk cover band called Mind Power. They were playing jazz fusion covers of Chick Corea and funk covers of Parliament Funkadelic. 

Then one of them saw a show on PBS about the new punk movement in England where the show talked about the Sex Pistols and, in particular, the Dead Boys. They heard it and were hooked on the sound and the idea. So, after listening to a Ramones song called "Bad Brain," they changed their band name.

But, they wanted to be the loudest, fastest, most bad ass punk band out there -- and with a twist. Rather than being nihilists like the Sex Pistols -- where everything sucks and should be destroyed -- Bad Brains came at music with positive ideas and attitude. At least at first.

So, let's go for some positive stuff right now:



One of the first things I picked up was a team set of Brewers Allen & Ginter minis. Sure, I need to get a couple more of a few of these, but I wonder why I haven't gone down this path before and picked up team sets? Okay, I have in the past, but perhaps I should go back to this.

I mentioned that Bad Brains came at music at first with a positive message and attitude. After a couple of years together, though, they all got influenced heavily by the Rastafarian movement. Their music reflected it too -- picking up a lot of Jamaican spirituality and grooves with it.

They didn't give up their speed punk, though, because, well, they enjoyed playing it most. 




As often happens with teams in transition, the Heritage High Numbers this year contained nearly as many Brewers as the main set did. It's a pretty cool thing to have cards for this year's National League co-champion in Home Runs (Chris Carter) and this year's Major League stolen base king (Jonathan Villar) showing up in the set. 

Another guy who is making Brewers fans excited -- if he can stay away from the outfield walls and not break his wrist again -- is Keon Broxton. Broxton struggled badly in his first two stints in MIlwaukee in 2016. He was sent down to Colorado Springs on July 1 with a major league slash line of .125/.253/.188. Yes, a .188 SLG. Clearly, what he was doing was not working. 

So, he went down to Colorado Springs and changed his stance and mechanics a bit. He was called back up on July 26, and things fell into place. Yes, he had an unsustainably high BABIP (.425) over his last 169 plate appearances, but his hitting had clearly turned a corner: slash line of .294/.399/.538 with 8 HR, 25 BB, and 16 SB. Even if his batting average walks back a bit, he could be a real sleeper for next year. Of course, he's going to be 27 years old next year too, so he needs to make it happen to have a career.

Over the course of their career, Bad Brains got a reputation of being some of the coolest, nicest dudes in the business. On more than one occasion, they would finish a show as the headliner somewhere and see a fellow band -- new guys -- in the audience. They would bring the new guys up on stage, hand them their guitars and drumsticks, and tell the new guys to play -- just to help them out and give them a bigger stage than they may have had in the past.

Indeed, in the early 1980s, they had new bands come open for them. So, for instance, they had some Jewish kids from Brooklyn open for a show for them in New York. Those kids? They were called The Beastie Boys and it was their third show as a band. No kidding. Later, when The Beastie Boys were huge and went on tour for Ill Communication, they returned the favor and had Bad Brains open for them. 

One of the benefits from buying from Brent is that he sells "master" sets. Oftentimes, the inserts can be tougher to track down than the base cards. Being able to knock out the inserts with the base cards at the same price is even better -- and that's what I got to do with both the full-size Allen & Ginter set and the Bunt set. I still need one more "Program" card though.

When I think about why a band should be in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, one of the main things that should be considered in my opinion is the influence that the artist had on later artists. I've already mentioned the fact that Bad Brains gave The Beastie Boys a big break. There is a great documentary about Bad Brains on YouTube where luminaries such as Henry Rollins, Dave Grohl, and Anthony Kiedis talk very personally about how Bad Brains influenced them. 

For example, Grohl admits that the drum opening to "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was a riff that he basically ripped off from Earl Hudson playing "How Low Can a Punk Get". As Grohl says, it's not exactly the same -- but you can definitely hear it in the intro here:




Some other bands that Bad Brains influenced? Anthrax, Deftones, Faith No More (whose lead singer actually filled in as the lead singer for Bad Brains when H.R. was walkabout in the mid-1980s), Jane's Addiction, Living Colour, Rage Against the Machine, Sevendust, Soundgarden, Sick of It All, Sublime, and 311, to name a few.



The final team set I got was the Series 2 Gold Parallel. Man, I wish I had thought ahead of time to get Series 1 from Brent too. I figured I'd highlight Corey Knebel here. Knebel didn't have a great 2016, but he had some bad luck (FIP of 3.58) combine with some control issues (BB9 lept from 3.0 in 2015 to 4.4 in 2016). He's such a high-end arm, though, that he's been a key part of two big trades (for Joakim Soria and Yovani Gallardo). Here's hoping he can continue to develop and be a big part of the team next year.

I don't know if Bad Brains will make the Hall of Fame. I personally think they should, of course -- otherwise I wouldn't have spent all the time putting this post together. Other than Bad Brains, I'm voting for Tupac, Pearl Jam, and Depeche Mode for sure. I'm waffling a bit on the last vote -- either ELO or Kraftwerk, though Yes was good too.

Who do you think should be inducted?

I Don't Have the Words

Yesterday was a difficult day in the baseball world for the obvious reasons. Jose Fernandez's untimely death was terrible news to wake up to -- for me and everyone else. Losing someone with that much promise and that much joy at that young age unfair. It's cruel -- cruel to his family and friends, and most importantly, it is cruel to his unborn daughter. 

It is a reminder that we do not live in a just world. 

Thankfully and in a tasteful move, Topps refrained from issuing an "In Memoriam" card as part of its ToppsNow series. If I had to make an educated guess, I can think of a few reasons that they did not:

1.  Without having a cause for the accident, there could be the potential for a later embarrassment if the cause was anything illegal.

2. The concerns many people in the card world on Twitter had over the optics of profiteering off a man's death.

3. Related to number 2, a potential inability to determine what charity or fund any profits should be the beneficiary of any card sales.

4. Potential legal issues over the use of his image since he had passed away and it would be unclear whether the contracts in place would allow use without clearance from his family.

I'm not going to rank order these potential reasons. Not today. My cynicism has some boundaries.

Before I start getting too deep into a religious and philosophical wormhole from which I would never emerge intact, let me move on to something more frivolous: cards I've purchased recently off eBay.

I've severely limited my card buying lately for a number of reasons -- finances, interest in recent issues, and time for collecting, to name three. But, I did make a couple of recent purchases of more recent issues. 

First is this Rollie Fingers "Archives Snapshots" from the "Topps Photograph Vault." This card was one of the "online exclusive" cards issued 12 to a box. Each box comes with a guaranteed autograph and one black & white parallel, and they run $25 a box -- so, a little over $2 a card. 

It's pretty clear when this photo was taken, if you have a memory for pictures. Just take a look at the 1981 Topps Traded set card for Rollie:

With thanks to COMC for the image

Rollie is not quite as jolly on the photo used for the card, but it's quite clearly a photo taken during Rollie's first spring training at Sun City -- the long-since demolished complex where the Brewers held spring training through 1985.

I picked up Rollie's card for just about the price of an average card with shipping thrown in. But, that seller was a good man/woman and added in a bonus card for me:

Yes, I got a bonus card from the Bunt set. This is great for me because it finishes off the need for a Yount card. I still need a couple more from that set...and man, am I behind on getting my player collections updated!

In another purchase, I was looking for a copy of Ryan Braun's National Baseball Card Day card from this year to buy. Everyone was asking $0.99 for a starting price on auctions, and all the buy-it-nows were running at least $4 with shipping.  Then, I saw a sale where I'd get nine of them for a total cost of $4.

I didn't need nine of this card, but I did need two of them and getting 9 ended up far less expensive for me than getting two of them did.

Sometimes, buying in bulk is better.

Thanks for stopping by for this abbreviated version. I'll have an update on Ray Peters coming up this week along with a bit of a surprise out of the blue that came about recently for me.

In honor of Jose Fernandez, here's his at-bat music:

Cards from The Lost Collector

AJ a/k/a The Lost Collector is one of the good guys in the hobby. There are plenty of people who are nice to others, and, frankly, there are a fair number of complete trolls unfortunately. 

By trolls, I'm not talking about people who just complain all the time -- I mean, why would I call myself a troll? -- but rather I mean the people who feel the need to denigrate others and what they collect. I complain too much about Topps and especially about Topps Now, but it's not because I don't want Yankee collectors like AJ to get 35 cards in every set Topps produces. Well, actually, that is why I complain -- I want a little more equal time for the Brewers. 

The people I am talking about are those who call others names, make unwarranted claims about people's collecting, or, as one person did, say that a good guy like AJ is only in the card collecting hobby for money. Stuff like that actually annoys me. If given the opportunity with a card with value, I'll sell something. I do it very rarely, and I haven't done it in a couple of years -- choosing, instead, to send whatever I get out to folks in trade rather than selling. Plus, if AJ is only in this for the money, how can random troll explain all the money AJ spends on postage and supplies to send out packages -- as he did recently -- to people like me?

I'm in a theme music mood today, so let's get Lost with the Lost Collector and the cards he sent to me.

Getting lost in the shuffle with Drivin' N' Cryin', first of all. I've mentioned in the past that I listened to Drivin' N' Cryin' a lot during college -- especially their album Mystery Road, but also their "big" album called Fly Me Courageous. I listed to both albums enough to know all the words to all the songs back in the days when I actually had to listen to CDs rather than streaming music. "Lost in the Shuffle" always felt a bit like a filler song to me. It isn't bad, but it isn't nearly as good as other songs.

Now, I'm not saying that any of these cards are "filler" cards. But, there's a bit of "filler set" about the "First Edition" sets Upper Deck put out as well as the "Opening Day" set that Topps puts out every year. Same goes for those parallels that came out for a while that were exclusive to a particular store. I view those as ridiculous.

Brendan Katin in a prospect set like Bowman Heritage was definitely filler, though. Katin never made the major leagues -- not even for an at bat. He got closer to setting records for the Nashville Sounds than he should have. As this article from 2011 noted, he was within 24 homers and 47 RBIs at the beginning of the year to set career records in each for the franchise. 

Sadly for Katin, he was denied even that bit of fame, as hit hit only 11 homers and drove in just 25 in 34 games for Nashville that year before knee injuries and knee surgery shelved him. In late 2011, this story noted that his knee was so bad at the time that he might have to get a partial knee replacement. He is known now more for the fact that he appealed a 2007 drug suspension successfully than anything else.

I enjoyed finding a version of Top Gun with Spanish subtitles. This scene is weird on so many levels -- not the least of which is that the song makes no sense to sing in an effort to pick up a woman since it's a breakup song. I did enjoy hearing Leah Remini's story about Tom Cruise apparently serenading Katie Holmes at their wedding with this song too. 

Of course, Tom Cruise is weird.

1990s cards are weird too. Even the cool ones like Stadium Club went down paths that are best seen only in the context of what everyone else was doing -- like that Pinnacle Aficionado card that I thought, at first, was completely coming apart. 

Strange days indeed. And, the less said, the better.

The song "Lost On You" is by LP -- the stage name for singer Laura Pergolizzi. The model in the video is Laura Hanson Sims.

I had never heard of either before writing this post. But, I wanted something new to go with three new cards that AJ sent.



The Topps Bunt physical cards were a very good idea by Topps. Sure, they bear a resemblance to some cards from the 1990s, so design-wise we may be going back to that crazy era. But the reason these were a good idea is because kids play on their parent's phones and their own phones constantly. Tying a physical card product to the successful app that it has already is a great way to get at least a few kids to cross over into physical cards. 

At least I hope so. I want cards to continue being issued.

For the next set of cards, I needed something appropriately 1990s. It's not that these next cards are the weird crazy cards from the later 1990s, either. No, I needed grunge.



1990 was the last year that Topps issued its "big" cards. By the look on Bill Spiers face, you can tell that some fatigue had set it by that point with the cards. I'm still trying to figure out, though, who thought that Paul Molitor should be given a portrait that makes him look somewhere between psycho killer and annoying little brother.

And, finally:

Yeah, Bastille is pretty morose at times but their moroseness is couched in such catchy songs that I can't resist their music. Plus, they are so very English. That's worth a lot to me too, oddly enough.

I don't think that the song really relates to the cards below, other than the cards and this song both being from the recent past.

The highlight here is the Gilbert Lara green refractor parallel serial numbered 3 of 99. Seeing this card reminded me that if the Brewers do follow through on reports and trade Ryan Braun for Yasiel Puig (which is an interesting idea, but the Brewers must get more than just Puig), then I will not have any current Brewers players or prospects as PCs. 

I have a thought on a guy I'd like to develop as a PC, though I almost don't want to mention his name. The guy is Isan Diaz. Diaz was the real gem in the Jean Segura trade to the Diamondbacks (well, other than getting 3 months of Aaron Hill and the only Topps Now card for the Brewers in the first half of the season). Diaz is Puerto Rican and went to high school in Springfield, Massachusetts. He was the D-Backs second round pick in 2014. In 2015, he put up video game numbers in the Pioneer League -- in 312 plate appearances, he hit 13 HRs, stole 12 bases (but caught 7 times), and slashed .360/.436/.640. Yes, you read that right.

I have two fears about Diaz, though. He is still a ways away from Milwaukee, having just finished up his first full-season experience in A ball in the Midwest League. Granted, he did incredibly well again -- 20 HRs, 75 RBI, 11 SB (out of 19 tries...) and slashing .264/.358/.469 at the age of 20. But, that's a long ways away. 

The other fear is that his doing this well over the past two years -- and being likely to be named the Brewers Minor League player of the year this year -- will cause his cards to go skyrocketing upwards in cost. Heck, I may be too late for that already based on looking at eBay.

But, hey, if you guys want to send me his cards, I'll definitely take them.

And, speaking of taking them, I am glad that AJ sent me these cards and that the card package did not have an invoice. I mean, after all, he's supposedly all about the money.