Most everyone knows Matt from Bob Walk the Plank. He and I started blogging within about 10 days of one another back in 2014. That means that I forgot to celebrate my four-year anniversary of blogging earlier this month. Hey, I remembered my wedding anniversary for the 7th straight year -- cut me some slack. There's only room for one anniversary in my brain, I guess. At any rate, Matt sent me a couple of cards as maybe a blog birthday gift or just because or since I decided to post more than once a month after college football season finally ended for UGA. And while the envelope Matt sent was small, the cards he sent packed a punch. Let's start with the card that wasn't serial numbered first:
The man Haderade. Josh Hader is an interesting pitcher for the Brewers this year. He came up through the Orioles, Astros, and Brewers systems mostly as a starter. Sure, both the Orioles and Astros had times where they controlled his innings-pitched by having him work out of the bullpen, such as his first season as a pro back in 2012 and his two seasons in the Astros organization (2014 and 2015). But with Milwaukee, he has been groomed as a starter -- all 44 of his Brewers MiLB appearances have been as a starter. Then, he makes it to the majors throwing gas out of the bullpen in an Andrew Miller-type role last year. It would be nice to see him get a shot at the rotation this year, but that does not appear to be something that the team is considering right now. Is he more valuable in the pen, or in the rotation? It's a fine line.
Or a Thin Line, even. Huey Lewis and the News were totally among my favorite bands in the mid-1980s. Sports is a great album, and every boy I knew wanted that basement that is pictured on the cover. You can tell this because all the yahoos with "Man Caves" have almost exactly that set up as their "man cave."
Next up is Ben Sheets Fleer Box Score parallel from 2002 serial numbered to 100. Where do you find these cards, Matt? Just trolling on eBay for cheap serial numbered stuff? Picking up an extra card to save on shipping? I guess I don't spend enough time on eBay (despite my recent spree of random items bought there).
Anyway, this one is a great addition to the Ben Sheets collection. I'm still thinking about where my collecting goes from where it is now and going into the future in large part because Topps these days really isn't about anything but maximizing profits for themselves and for their favored breakers. I mean, they threw their own industry convention last week. Is that normal?
I guess it is and has been for years. I know that baseball cards is not what Kanye is rapping about here, but it really is true that "most of all we at war with ourselves." The divisions are weird and growing. I used to talk by email and on Twitter with Matt all the time, and my falling away from the hobby has made it feel like a division built up there.
There isn't one, mind you, but sometimes it feels like there is. That's what's weird about it.
To prove there isn't a division, how about a clear parallel from 2015 of Adam Lind serial numbered to 10. Lind only spent the 2015 season with Milwaukee, and he put up a pretty good season for the crew.
Even better is the fact that the Brewers then flipped him to Seattle and got pitcher Freddy Peralta for him. Peralta is a small Dominican -- 5'11", 175 pounds -- who has some issues with control but who strikes out seemingly everyone he faces. Last year in a season split between high-A Carolina and AA Biloxi, he walked 4.7 guys per nine innings but struck out 12.7 guys per nine while giving up just 5.8 hits per nine. That's electric stuff. Peralta struck out 33.4%of the batters he faces last year, trailing only A.J. Puk. And Peralta is a year younger than Puk. Peralta is high risk, high reward -- either a number 2 starter, or bullpen fodder.
I do hope that Lou Reed does not become Peralta's theme song and that Peralta can get his wild side under control. Also, I hope that we're not talking about Peralta coming from Florida and shaving his legs to become a she.
Matt, thanks for the great cards and the excuse to dive into some Walk songs.
During my time in law school in Athens, the band Man or Astro-Man? played seemingly once a month. If you have never heard of them, they were/are a garage/surf rock band that formed in 1992 in Auburn, Alabama, and their shows are a thing to behold. Man or Astro-Man?'s music often sampled from old, long forgotten Sci Fi movies, and their stage shows would incorporate everything from a theremin to a Tesla coil along with clips from the movies running in the background.
I got to thinking about Man or Astro-Man? thanks to the fact that Bru a/k/a Marc from Remember the Astrodome sent me a package of cards in late May. Marc had to do some downsizing in his collection recently because, as you can see on his blog, Marc and his wife welcomed a new baby girl into their lives in late May.
Since I have never done a music post to accompany cards from Marc, I thought for about three seconds and MOAM? came to mind from 20 years ago almost immediately. That's how my brain works. So, let's get to the cards and the music.
In early 1996 and probably at the height of the whole 1990s Alternative music boom, an album called Schoolhouse Rock! Rocks was put out to benefit the Children's Defense Fund. The original "Schoolhouse Rocky" song was included, but thereafter a number of artists covered the great Schoolhouse Rocks! songs. For example, one of Blind Melon's last records while Shannon Hoon was alive was their cover of "Three Is a Magic Number."
On the album, Man or Astro-Man? covered "Interplanet Janet." The album really seemed to try to feature bands that were not necessarily well known at the time. Sure, you have Blind Melon and Better than Ezra and The Lemonheads, but you also had Buffalo Tom, Goodness, Pavement, Ween, and Skee-Lo.
Incidentally, I bought this CD back in 1996 and really enjoy it. If you ever watched the fantastic Schoolhouse Rocks! cartoons as a kid, you'd enjoy it too.
Marc sent me a whole host of great Brewers cards from a number of different sets and years. These are some of the cards from the early and mid-1990s.
I especially appreciate the Mariners Chris Bosio card because that is the kind of card I miss when putting together my want lists. Perhaps some day, when I have finished putting my want lists together completely, I'll go back and review all the photos from all the sets looking for cameos and "traded" cards like this one where the card issuer didn't try to repaint the player into his new uniform, as Topps almost always does.
Kenny Felder's Gold Topps card is in here as a reminder to everyone who watches drafts that not every player who is drafted makes it. Most don't, in fact. I feel like teams have gotten better at making first round selections count, but there are always guys who either provide high upside or who look good on paper and then don't pan out. The Brewers picked Felder 6 picks after the Yankees selected Derek Jeter and 11 picks before the Pirates selected Jason Kendall.
Even so, Felder was not the biggest bust in the 1992 draft -- that was probably 3rd overall pick B.J. Wallace, who also never made it to the major leagues and was arrested for manufacturing methamphetamine in 2011. I can't find anything on how those charges played out, though I did find another arrest in 2013 for Amber McKenzie, the woman whom Wallace was arrested with, for drug possession. Sad things can happen when people fail spectacularly.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, MOAM? performed a cover of the "love theme" from Mystery Science Theater 3000. It would seem to be a natural crossover, after all -- MST3K's movies matched with MOAM?'s sound makes complete sense. As MOAM?'s Wikipedia entry notes, the band had MST3K's creator, Joel Hodgson, appear on stage at a show to sing the theme in 1996, and Joel's character on MST3K later claimed on show to have been a pyrotechnics roadie for the band.
Some more recent vintage cards here. The Yount Perspectives goes right into my team collection, as does the Braun Fortune Teller.
Mike Rivera is a guy I don't think I've ever even given a second thought about. Rivera spent 120 games over five different seasons on the Brewers bench (2006 to 2009 and again in 2011) and hit .261/.333/.421 -- not too bad, really, but he was behind Damian Miller (2006), Miller & Johnny Estrada (2007), and Jason Kendall (2008 & 2009) so he was never going to get much playing time even if (whisper it) he probably would have been a far better hitter than Kendall during those years.
Finally, the Yount Prizm gets highlighted here because Panini Prizm looks like a card idea that Panini designers came up with while eating psychedelic mushrooms and watching MST3K.
Man or Astro-Man? also supplied some music for Space Ghost Coast to Coast. This alternate theme featured in the clip above is a MOAM? creation. They also provided the show's closing credits. After he left the band in 1998, guitarist/singer Brian Causey a/k/a Star Crunch composed and performed the theme song for the Nickelodeon show The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron.
Star Crunch?
Yes. Like all good/weird concept bands, MOAM? members adopted stage personae with appropriate names. The main members of the band included Birdstuff (Brian Teasley), Star Crunch, Wizard (David Scholtz), and Coco the Electronic Monkey (Robert del Bueno). Other guitarists for the band included Dr. Deleto, Cap'n Zeno, and Dexter X. When Star Crunch left the band (he started his own album label in Athens in 1998), they plugged in other guitarists such as Trace Reading and Blazar the Probe Handler.
The Brewers picked up Ray Durham for the 2008 stretch run, and he performed fairly well over those 41 games -- .280/.369/.477 over 122 plate appearances at second base is not bad at all. The Brewers picked him up in trade for a minor leaguer (Steve Hammond) and Darren Ford, who played in 33 games as a pinch runner/defensive replacement in 2010 and 2011 (16 plate appearances, four hits, 1 walk, 1 HBP, and 9 stolen bases in 15 attempts). I will always associate Durham with the Chicago White Sox and, to a lesser extent, the San Francisco Giants. This 2009 Topps card of his qualifies as his "sunset" card. He retired after the 2008 season.
I see the sticker of Adam Lind, and I am reminded that Adam Lind spent one season as a Brewer. When you turn over the roster in the way that the Brewers did, a lot of different players come and go in rapid succession. It can be somewhat jarring to see them in your team's uniform as the reminder of days gone by. Indeed, the Adam Lind year was only 2 years ago -- in 2015 -- but it seems like it was eons ago.
To get a real feel for what MOAM? are really like, you need to watch a live show. I have no idea where the guy who posted this last year found this show -- it's a show from Tempe, Arizona, from 1996 -- but it is a good way to get a feel for the live stage act that MOAM? put on. Lots of strange voiceover clips, weird TV feeds, random motorcycle helmet costumes -- it's all there.
Along these lines, Man or Astro-Man?'s website at astroman.com is well worth checking out. The website has a timeline that allows people to post MOAM-related events and the like, so I could see, for example, that I might have seen them play in Athens in 1996. I know I saw them play at least once with my roommates from my first year of law school. At that time, I found them really weird.
Now, I find them really weird.
To end on an appropriately weird note, let's look at some ProCards minor league cards for three former Brewer "prospects." Okay, Doug Henry panned out probably more than he could have ever been expected to pan out -- making 582 appearances in an 11 year career that didn't start in the major leagues until he was 27 years old.
Shon Ashley was drafted in the third round of the 1985 June Draft by the Brewers out of high school in Meridian, Idaho. He made it as high as noted hitters' paradise El Paso in Double-A in the Brewers system, but he stalled out there -- spending three years (1989-1991) in El Paso.
His stats were pretty good, so it makes me wonder why the Brewers did not at least give him a shot at Triple-A in 1990. I mean, the outfielders in Denver in 1990 were Bill Moore, Darryel Walters, Mario Monico, Jim Olander, Mark Higgins, Matias Carrillo, retread Mickey Brantley...good God what a bunch of terrible crap. It makes no sense at all now why Ashley didn't at least get a shot. None at all. It appears that Ashley moved back to Idaho after his career based on this LinkedIn bio showing he owns Ashley Glass in Boise, Idaho.
Finally, Bo Dodson was a third-round draft pick in the June draft in 1989 out of Christian Brothers High School in Sacramento, California. Bo got as far as Triple-A with Milwaukee in 1995 but never made it to the major leagues. After 1995, he played in Boston's system for a couple of years, followed by one year with Rochester in the Baltimore Orioles farm system.
He moved back home to Sacramento after that. I'm guessing that this is him on LinkedIn serving as the personnel director for All Phase Security, Inc., in Sacramento. His son Tanner plays at Cal and will be eligible for the 2018 draft. Tanner started as a pitcher as a freshman, but struggled and got moved to the outfield, where he showed himself to be a very good hitter as well.
My thanks go out to Bru for the great cards and for making my brain remind me of the existence of Man or Astro-Man?!
Have you ever watched TV ads and tried to determine what the demographic the advertising company is attempting to reach? Or, more to the point, have you ever watched an ad and wondered who actually gave the green light to the particular advertisement? Car insurance ads, in particular, seem to want to be cutesy so as to make people like the pitchman in hopes that that people remember and like the company. Liberty Mutual has an ad that appears to be an attempt to appeal to millennials, perhaps, and probably millennial women. It's about an Asian-American woman who names her car "Brad." You have probably seen this ad -- the woman stands with the Statue of Liberty ostensibly behind her talking about how she went through everything with "Brad" before she totaled her car and then breaks into her happy dance in the end.
It all seems rather trite if someone is going to break into a happy dance after destroying their car that they named.
It probably goes without saying, but I have never understood the whole giving names to a car thing. Anthropomorphizing a car just makes no sense. Then again, this ad is even more disturbing if you treat Brad as a person...
"Nothing can replace Brad!"
I agree -- here in the Blog World, nothing can replace Brad's Blog. After all, he's the Phillies representative in the SuperTraders group. Brad sent me some great cards in a recent mailing, so let's take a look at some of them.
Let's start with some little Allen & Ginter from last year. Both of these cards have the A&G backs on them, so they are parallels of the parallel.
I really did not like the look of the cards last year. I've taken to calling it the Measles set. I showed the cards to my wife and asked her what she thought. Her first response was, "Do those guys have measles?"
Sure looks like it to me. I'm not the only one to say this either.
A few other cards that Brad sent appear to be less contagious.
Then again, these are from the 1990s. There may be parallels proliferating in a warehouse somewhere in Philadelphia, or England, or somewhere...wherever Gavin Rossdale is these days as his ex-wife dates a country singer.
Speaking of the 1990s, here are a few more additions to the Greg Vaughn collection. It's funny how some of my player collections have grown while others have been more stagnant than a swamp. I mean, I haven't added a new card or item to the Jerry Augustine collection since December 17, 2014. Then again, that's largely a function of how few Jerry Augustine cards there really are. I think the only one of his cards that I am missing is the 1981 Fleer error version of his card that actually shows Bill Travers on it. That's largely a function of the fact that Augustine simply wasn't a very good player, I suppose. Brad sent me a couple of true highlight cards -- one a relic and one autograph. Let's see the relic first:
J.J. Hardy is still a very good player for Baltimore, and this nice blue swatch is a cool addition to my collection that I needed. Well, pretty much every relic or autograph is "needed" in some way, I suppose. Let's see that autograph:
A Leaf Certified Materials of Scott Podsednik! Very cool. Podsednik parlayed his baseball stardom into marrying a Playboy Playmate named Lisa Dergan. Seems like a good excuse to me to post a photo of her.
That will do nicely.
Many thanks to Brad for the great cards and the great excuse!
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!
When people move houses, it is often one of the few times in their lives where they strongly consider whether some particular item, box, or piece of furniture is worth keeping. My wife and I moved into our house three years ago. Even though we were moving into a larger house, we still made choices on what to bring along and what to let the vultures that were our neighbors pick through. Brad of Brad's Phillies Blog is moving this weekend. To aid in his move, he asked the blogworld to help him out by taking cards off his hands. Many of us -- all in the interest of helping a fellow blogger, of course, and not from any selfish desire to get more cards...of course -- signed on to help. I was the recipient of a fantastic load of cards mostly from my Achilles' heel of collecting: the late 1990s. There were other, more recent cards too, though. In fact, let's start with cards from this year:
I'm still playing catch-up with some of the run-of-the-mill sets from Topps from 2015. I picked up a case break and box break of Heritage, so I'm good there. And, I have most of the Topps flagship set covered other than short prints and needing one more copy of the Brewers Team card. Now, I'm starting to get closer on Ginter. By the way, farewell to Adam Lind, who was traded today to the Seattle Mariners for three teenaged pitchers. Basically, the Brewers picked up Marco Estrada off waivers, flipped him to the Jays for Lind (where Estrada suddenly became a competent pitcher again), and now flipped Lind for three international-signing pitchers. I mean, it's not the Braves stealing ex-Vanderbilt Commodore Dansby Swanson, but it's a pretty good trade for a rebuilding Brewers team. Now the Brewers need a first baseman. Rumor has it that they might sign their bench coach's son-in-law -- former Vanderbilt Commodore Pedro Alvarez. Damn, if that happens, I kinda hope Alvarez tears it up and forces the Brewers to re-sign him. I kinda want a Vandy guy to collect. Okay, we need music:
That is "Twist" by a late '90s/early '00s Atlanta band called Ultrababyfat. The blond you see playing bass in that video is Britta Phillips. Her claim to fame is that she was the singing voice for Jem in the original cartoon series in the late 1980s in addition to later being in the bands Luna and Dean & Britta (with her husband Dean Wareham). The lead singer is Shonali Bhowmik. Shonali is both a fellow Vanderbilt graduate and a fellow law school grad. She went to Emory, and I went to Georgia (though I started at Georgia the year she graduated, and she probably graduated college before I started there too). And, she also hosted the NPR show "Ask Me Another" before current host Ophira Eisenberg. ... Wow, that was a digression. I always wondered why Ultrababyfat never got bigger than they did -- which was being a really good local band. I saw them a couple of times here in town and loved their sound. Anyway, I'd better show y'all some cards before you leave.
How about a couple of prospects? Or, perhaps non-prospects. Giacalone was a 16th round pick in 2012 out of Neosho County Community College. He hit very well in the Pioneer League in both 2012 and 2013, but struggled a bit in the Midwest League to start 2013. When you're a 16th round pick, you don't get second chances, and the team just discarded him. Now, he's 23 and just finished his second season in the independent Frontier League in Joliet, and he's trying to pitch. Nicky Delmonico started with Baltimore in 2012. He came to the Brewers in 2013 in the trade that sent Francisco Rodriguez to Baltimore for a half season. Delmonico missed time in 2014 for some personal issues, then got spanked with a 50-game suspension for amphetamine use (Adderall, in fact). The Brewers then cut him because, as then-farm director Reid Nichols said, "We couldn't contact him. He wouldn't return calls. We couldn't find him." Delmonico now has clearance to use the Adderall for his ADD, and he played in the White Sox organization last year. Now, how about the 1990s? How about THAT mid-1990s goodness? Everything from 1996 Circa to 1995 Score Gold Rush to 1994 Score to those Topps knockoffs of Kellogg's cards that Topps called "IIID". These are awesome and awful and cool and car crashes all at once. Just like the mid-1990s really were.
I mean, I had to put a song from Brad here, right? Everyone's heard of Brad, right? You know, the Stone Gossard/Jeff Ament side project? I saw them play in a basement club here in Atlanta on a Wednesday night in 2001 before about 50 people. It was a great show -- well worth it. Brad, thank you very much for all the great cards and good luck with the move. One hint: make yourself and your wife empty all the boxes and get them out of the house and THEN figure out where stuff goes. Seriously -- it works!
