Dub Mentality: An Archives Post

In the blog world, there are not a ton of big college football fans. I mean, there are a few, of course -- and I won't try to list them for fear of leaving someone who should be obvious out. But, for about as long as I have been writing my blog (almost three-and-a-half years now!), I have not really come across any Georgia fans.

This year, though, I did. He's a popular man in the Twittersphere and the Blog World who goes by the nickname of Dub Mentality. He's a good south Georgia guy who is a Bulldog fan. Well, I say that, but he may consider himself as not being from south Georgia. You have to remember that to us big city people in Atlanta, everything south of about I-16 and Macon is considered south Georgia. 

Dub loves to open packs. If you check out his Twitter feed or his blog, it's filled with pack openings from current products to some extent but mostly he loves what some would call "junk wax."

His other love is music, specifically a band that I have listened to a little bit but not a lot: The Deftones. So, let's dig into some Deftones and show off the cards that Dub sent my way -- and a couple of things I sent to him that I got at a recent card show.

A website I found called this the best Deftones song at the same time as calling it the more commercially successful single. Yup, I have heard it, so it must have been reasonably successful on commercial alternative radio in the early 2000s. It may also be the most viewed video on YouTube.

In an interview cited in its Wikipedia entry, the band described the process of writing this song as a turning point for them -- when they really started working as a unit. To summarize what was said, they stopped making songs about themselves specifically and started incorporating their own storylines and dialogue into the music to make it a little less personal and more able to have multiple interpretations. 

Dub sent me some 2017 Topps Archives. This is the Ryan Braun 1960 Topps version. I don't particularly like the color choices for this card. First, you have an orange background on the bottom and a blue left side. That's just ugly because it is Florida or Auburn colors, and nothing good has come from those schools other than my wife graduating from Auburn in 1996. Plus, Braun's name is hard to read on that background. The red letters on an orange background is hard on the eyes.

Next up is an even earlier song from Deftones: "Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)." This was the Deftones first alternative hit, making it to number 29 on the mainstream rock tracks. The Deftones get cited frequently as employing loud-soft dynamics in their music. I get that, definitely. Nirvana really made that a "thing" in the 1990s with Nevermind, and other bands grabbed it and ran with it. 

The good thing to me is that the Deftones are nowhere near as obnoxious sounding as one of their cohorts in the "nu metal" world, Limp Bizkit. Limp Bizkit was catchy for a moment, but they got so full of themselves, and Fred Durst is such a complete tool, that they were simply unlistenable after a while to me.

The other two Brewers in the Archives base set are Orlando Arcia and Jonathan Villar. While Topps got close with its reproduction of the 1982 design, it didn't get all the way there. Let's compare briefly.

As you can see, the coloration is close -- but the orange on the current version is brighter. That may be a variation in printing on the Vuke card. So be it. It's not bad. The real issue -- and it is a minor one, really -- is the font used for the team and player names. It could be seen as picking nits, but the real 1982 set had a bolded font versus the Archives version.

Like I said, it's picking nits. 

The backs of the cards (which I did not scan) are far worse than the original, though. The print on the back of the Archives versions are damn near impossible to read. The originals weren't great -- trust me -- but the Archives ones are very bad. 

In all, I still like the idea of Archives. The problems with it are numerous, as I've mentioned before -- set composition and overloading with the usual suspects in teams and including Zack Hample as an autograph...well, just weird. Apparently, as an aside, Hample is buying up his autographs off eBay. For what purpose, only Hample knows.

Time for a more recent Deftones song. This one is called "Leathers." This song came off their album Koi No Yokan. This song is a lot harder than the previous two in this post. It comes across as angrier -- more visceral. This was the first song off the album, though it was not released as a single. 

I could definitely see this being one to listen to if you were frustrated and wanted to let off steam or, conversely, where you wanted to get fired up for a football game. It might be a little much if you were going out to play a round of golf, though.

 

Dub was kind enough to throw in a Milwaukee Brave for me in Warren Spahn. I think the 1992 portion of the Archives set is generally well done. Some folks have complained about the card stock being thin, but have you ever picked up a 1992 Topps card? They are on thin card stock. It was the first year that Topps went to the white stock. It took Upper Deck and its high quality cardstock and photography to convince Topps -- read as, Topps lost market share -- to change to the white card stock. 

I think this card looks good and "right" in part because Topps had incorporated the trademark superscript on the team names in its 1992 sets. Being picky, though: Topps did not follow the coloration here properly. I don't know if it is because Spahnie is a Milwaukee Brave here, but the 1992 set had the team name for the Braves on a bluish-purple background.

So, not bad, but not correct.

Finally, we have "My Own Summer (Shove It)." The website Loudwire -- from which I pulled the list of the best Deftones Songs -- calls this song essentially the archetypical Deftones song. As the website put it: "Most songs in the Deftones catalog are exercises in tension building. They build you up to break you down, like the Marine Corps!"

I don't know about the Marines. I will say that this song does remind me a bit of Tool, which I was listening to a decent amount in law school because a woman I was trying to date really liked Tool. My dating attempts did not go all that well, but she did give me a nice business card holder as a graduation gift that still sits on my office desk today. Of course, I should have followed up after she gave me that gift, but hey -- I have long been an idiot when it comes to women. 

I am not an idiot, though, when it comes to getting free autographs -- or at least nearly free. To thank Dub both for the Archives cards and for tipping me off about a small card show at which the Braves shown here, Alejandro Peña, signed autographs, I paid $6 total for the card and the photo above and got them signed. 

I mean, for $6, I'd get just about anyone's autograph.

Well, other than Zack Hample, that is.

Many thanks go out to Dub Mentality for the great cards. If you want to read a blog of a guy who really has a great attitude about collecting and life, be sure to check out his blog at DubMentality.com.

Buying From Brent

Tomorrow, thankfully, the election in my House of Representatives District -- the now infamous GA-06 about which every national political commentator suddenly has become an expert regarding demographics, voting tendencies, geography, and restaurants -- will come to a close. At least I hope so. It would be a terrible trick if the Russian hackers decided to intervene in the election and create a recount of some sort.

Just thinking about it makes me angry and think of punk rock. And yes, the Problem is You!

Perhaps it is funny, and perhaps it is appropriate, that I've only mentioned The Sex Pistols twice on this blog -- and the most recent of them was to highlight my purchase of 2016 Heritage from Brent Williams of Brent & Becca. I've taken the tack this year of finding more team sets on eBay to avoid some of the problems of putting together team sets through random finding at card shows. 

This time around, I'm going to show the result of a couple of purchase packages from Brent. Let's start with 2017 Finest:

While this looks like I bought two of everything, rest assured that the top three cards are the base cards and the bottom three cards are Refractors. I like the use of the gold on the card, but man -- these look like they were infected with that JPEG disease that haunts the base set this year: that Topps had its designers aim for something that would look good on the Bunt App and if it translates to physical cards, well, so be it.  

As an aside, if you would have told me when the season started that (a) Ryan Braun would have played 30 games by June 19; and, (b) Jonathan Villar would also be on the DL as of June 19 and be slashing .213/.283/.342 in 250 plate appearances, I would have guessed that the Brewers would be somewhere around Phillies territory. It's really been a great ride already for the team. Here's hoping that the ride can continue for a while.

Appropriately for showing Topps Finest, here's a song by The Boo Radleys called "The Finest Kiss." The Boo Radleys were definitely in that "shoegazing" thing that was popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s in England. Their best known song in the US is probably "There She Goes," which is actually a cover of a song by The La's but which the Radleys covered for the introduction to the movie So I Married An Axe Murder.

Earlier this year, I also bought a master set (probably) from Brent of Topps Bunt. Actually, I bought a little extra because, after all, I have to have two Brauns. I have been trying to place where I have seen that photo of Yount and have been unable to do it. I know I've seen it somewhere though.

When I got back into collecting in 2013/2014, I decided to have bunches of player collections to represent all the different years of the Brewers franchise. As part of that, I made the rule for myself that I needed two of each card -- one for the PC, one for the team set. As I have collected longer, I have started to realize what a fool's errand creating my collection that way is. I mean, it's not easy to find one card serial numbered to 250 from 2002 -- not to mention two. I'm starting to reconsider more and more that position. I may end up scaling it back just to base sets. 

That, or I may just decide that I want to collect all the cards from the 1980s. That appeals to me too. That would be a fun pursuit.

Needing music, I put "Bunt" into the search bar at YouTube and found this band called BUNT. (song is called "Coming Home") that sounds a lot like the song "Wake Me Up" by Avicii to me. There are definitely sound qualities within the song's bridge that strike me as very similar. So, if you are into a danceable sound like Avicii, you might like this song.

Next up: Archives. The Brewers pretty much are getting the same three players in all the sets these days: Ryan Braun, Orlando Arcia, and Jonathan Villar. I get it, of course -- the Brewers were not very good last year, turned over half their roster, and traded away any/all the mainstays that might otherwise engender being included in a set. 

Since the beginning of the season, of course, several players have emerged. For instance, there is former Korean Baseball star Eric Thames -- who is a hell of a lot more chill than I am about all the times he has been tested for drugs/steroids -- whose numbers here are pretty damn impressive: .265/.399/.607 for an OPS of 1.007. There is the Mayor of Ding Dong City, Travis Shaw, about whom I was cautious in light of his .251/.312/.442 slash line in Boston. It's still early days for him, but he, too, has looked fairly good and has learned to take advantage of the hitters' park that is Miller Park. 

Throw in pretty good performances from Hernan Perez, Keon Broxton, Domingo Santana, and the completely out-of-character run that Eric Sogard has been on, along with Manny Pina's play behind the plate and Jesus Aguilar's ability to play first while Thames is in the outfield, and you can see the real issue here is simply the fact that no one has heard of these guys. Now if only the firestarters in the bullpen would put down the torches, the team would be in even better shape.

I'm starting to think that there is a band with a name to match about anything I can think of at this point. This band is called Archive. Perhaps not surprisingly, they, too, are in the trip hop/shoegaze arena of music. To be fair, I had never heard of them before my searching today, but I feel like I should have. Their songs are well written and are driven by lyrics. That's a sure way to get my attention.

The final cards I got from Brent were randomly dispersed amongst various sets. We have the "Fortune Teller" tallboy insert from Gypsy Queen as well as the printing-mistake-made-parallel blackless version of Braun's GQ card. There's the Mauricio Dubon autograph from Topps Pro Debut in 2017 at the top, and then the Isan Diaz "Bowman Scouts' Top 100" insert from Bowman.

I'm still looking for a bunch of those "Top 100" inserts, if you might be willing to trade those to me.

Since, thankfully, there is not a song to go with "Pro Debut", I figured I'd go with "Fortune Teller" by The Rolling Stones. 

And I will not let an opportunity to post a Van Morrison song go past me, with his song "Gypsy Queen" popping up. Again, let's be fair: a song called "Bowman Scouts' Top 100" would suck.

Brent is a good guy to do business with, and I'll probably buy more from him in the future. If only he wouldn't save all the good Brewers cards for someone else, I'd buy much more from him.

Stealing a PWE

I'm getting closer to being caught up with posts. Well, what I mean is that I'm getting closer to getting into the things I've gotten in the month of May. I have two things left from the early part of the season to talk about, and first up is a PWE from my good friend Oscar a/k/a Stealing Home. To accompany these cards, I'm going with honoring the late Gregg Allman with some of my favorite Allman Brothers songs.

1.  "Midnight Rider"

Gregg Allman wrote this song in the midst of a pot-smoking binge in early 1971. He got stuck on trying to come up with lines for the third verse when roadie Kim Payne threw out the first two lines of the verse. Allman then wanted to get the song recorded so quickly that he broke into the studio in the middle of the night and laid the demo down himself.

This song came back into America's collective consciousness recently thanks to the fact that GEICO used the song in an ad for motorcycle insurance. This struck a lot of people as being in poor taste in light of the fact that band members Berry Oakley and Duane Allman both died in motorcycle accidents in Macon in the early 1970s about 13 months apart. As the article I linked to points out, it's rather incredible that both the ad agency and the surviving members of the Allman Brothers Band green-lighted that ad.

I'll start the PWE out with the card of the one player who is still with the team. Ryan Braun has been injured a lot this year with a calf problem that is becoming a real issue. Thanks to his lying about his steroid use, there is a significant portion of the Brewers fanbase who would like nothing more than to see Braun sold off for ten cents on the dollar in the interest of "rebuilding." 

I can see their point, but that thinking is short-sighted as well. Braun is entering the decline phase of his career -- yes. But just giving him away does not make sense either. He has value and, now, he has a full no-trade clause thanks to being a 10/5 guy. There are very few teams that he would play for at this point, and of those, I can't think of one that makes sense as a trade partner. In particular, Oscar's Dodgers as a destination makes a little sense but the Dodgers have a crowded outfield already. 

The Brewers surprisingly seem to have done better with Braun out of the lineup this year. Perhaps that will continue.

2. "Jessica"

Rock bands don't tend to have instrumental songs these days, and they never have instrumental songs that are 7-1/2 minutes long (album version) or 15 minutes long (pretty much every live version) like "Jessica." Guitarist Dickey Betts wrote this song, and named it for his daughter Jessica.

Wikipedia tells me that the song is really a tribute to legendary jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt because the song was designed to be played using just two fingers on his left hand. Reinhardt had lost the use of two of his fingers in a fire, but he was able to get past that to become one of the most influential guitarists in any genre.

Let's go to the Hall of Famers next. I've been seeing a lot of folks recently posting their "best players I've seen play" or "from my childhood" lists on Facebook and elsewhere, so I'll use this opportunity to put up my list of the best players from my childhood here:

C: Gary Carter: best hitting catcher of the 1980s

1B: Cecil Cooper: Yes, I'm biased, but it's my list

2B: Ryne Sandberg: Got to see him play in person in 1984 in Wrigley. Pre-lights. 

3B: Mike Schmidt: No doubt the best third baseman ever

SS: Robin Yount: Yount was the precursor for shortstops who could hit playing the position

LF: Dave Winfield: Never liked him because he was a Yankee, but he was damn good

CF: Willie McGee: Single handedly destroyed a 10-year-old's dream in 1982

RF: Jesse Barfield: You *never* ran on Jesse's arm. Ever.

DH: Paul Molitor: The best pure hitter of the 1980s. Not Boggs. Molitor was more complete.

RP: Don Sutton: Yes, really. An artist by the time I saw him pitch. Guile alone, almost.

LP: Ron Guidry: For hating the Yankees, I sure respect them.

RP: Rich Gossage: Almost always lights out, and so intimidating

Others considered:

C: Ted Simmons, Bob Boone, Carlton Fisk

1B: Keith Hernandez, Don Mattingly

2B: No one, really.

3B: George Brett

SS: Ozzie Smith.

LF: Jim Rice, Ben Oglivie

CF: Dale Murphy, Robin Yount, Gary Pettis

RF: Reggie Jackson, Dwight Evans, Dave Parker

DH: Wade Boggs, Reggie Jackson

SP: Nolan Ryan, Steve Carlton, Tom Seaver

RP: Bruce Sutter, Rollie Fingers, Jeff Reardon

Probably the most surprising to me is how weird right field was in the 1980s. Being a mostly American League fan, I didn't see much of Parker to be able to appreciate him. Jackson was a hitter mostly, not a fielder, and my dislike for him outweighed including him. Evans is a solid member of the Hall of the Very, Very Good. There are many worse players in the Hall of Fame, but that isn't an argument to include him.

3. "Ramblin' Man"

A necessity for any Allman Brothers post of their hits or greatest songs. This is one of the best driving songs around. I'm quite sure I fell asleep a few times with this song playing as I was on a roadtrip to wherever in the 1980s and 1990s. The song itself is heavily influenced by country music and was inspired by a Hank Williams Sr. song of the same name. It remains the highest charting Allman Brothers song ever, having hit number two on the Billboard Hot 100 charts.

I feel like Topps Heritage may be the only set other than the Flagship set that can withstand all the gimmicks and short prints and stupid sh*t that Topps does with literally every single product it puts out. 

For instance, I'm not sure that Archives will stick around much longer after this year's ridiculous checklist. A Skip Bayless autograph? Christ, everyone other than Skip Bayless hates Skip Bayless. 

Zach Hample gets an autograph in this set too. The guy who illegally crashed his way into the Braves game at Fort Bragg last year just so he could push kids away and grab a foul ball is not someone who should be celebrated in any way. The guy is a blight on baseball fans, but he gets a card? Hell, even that self-promoting idiot Marlins Man thought better of trying to go to the Fort Bragg game.

Then we get into announcers. Only John Sterling and Gary Cohen. What? Why does the guy who's called the Yankees games since 1989 or the guy who's called Mets games since 1989 get a card when Bob Uecker -- who has been the Brewers announcer since 1971 and is in the Hall of Fame as a broadcaster since 2003 -- has yet to be included in anything from Topps like this? The last time Uecker was included in anything other than a Buyback was in the 2001 Topps Archives -- the reprint versions. He hasn't even been in Allen & Ginter. 

Why the hell does some obnoxious Yankee fan Bald Vinny get an autograph card in a set like Archives? 

Even player autographs are a mess. Roy Oswalt gets a fan favorite autograph with the Phillies -- the team he pitched 36 games for in 2010 and 2011 -- rather than with the Astros (for whom he pitched 10 years)?

Frankly, 2017 Archives is a train wreck. There are as many Milwaukee Braves in the base set as there are Minnesota Twins -- even Twins legend Harmon Killebrew is shown on the Senators, for crying out loud. There are more Aaron Judge cards (including inserts and autographs) than there are Brewers or Twins or Rays or Padres. 

I loved the Archives set when I got back into collecting in 2014. Now, I hope it is euthanized.

4. "Statesboro Blues"

"Statesboro Blues" is actually a cover of an old blues song written in 1927 by Blind Willie McTell. The Allman Brothers Band made it their own thanks to the inspired guitar playing by Duane Allman on the At Fillmore East live album. Duane used a medicine bottle from medicine he'd used to treat a cold as his slide for the slide guitar part -- and played slide guitar for the first time ever that show. 

Statesboro, Georgia, is actually the home of Georgia Southern University. For a long time it was (and may still be) in a dry county, so students there would make liquor runs to nearby Metter. My brother-in-law worked at that liquor store during college -- the time he calls the best 7 years he ever spent.

Here are the last three cards from Oscar. Manny Parra was going to be the next great Brewer LHP, but injuries kept that from happening. 

Jean Segura has spent time now with four different organizations prior to turning 27 years old. I guess that reflects both that he is desirable and he is easy to part with. The Brewers got three players for him, including yesterday's one-hit hero, Chase Anderson.

Finally, I hate that Scooter Gennett card. It looks like he's been shot in the back or something based on the grimace on his face. 

Oscar, thank you very much for the great cards. And to the Allman Brothers -- get the band back together in the afterlife and start touring up there with Col. Bruce Hampton, would you?