Cards from JT at The Writer's Journey

See, guys and gals? I'm really trying now. I am. I know I need to get better about posting if I want to call myself a blogger, so here I am. 

As a lot of you know, I got lucky in winning a box of 2018 Topps from Steel City Collectibles on Twitter. So, I made it my goal to send as much of that out the door as quickly as possible. One of the beneficiaries was JT at The Writer's Journey. JT sent me cards about two years ago, at which time I confessed that his blog was one of the first ones I'd really ever read. 

Since then, I've been lucky to interact with him on Twitter on a regular basis and have really gotten to like his understated nature. He's a great guy to follow there.

Perhaps thanks to me sending cards to him or him just having too many Brewers lying around his house, I got a package from him. And since his blog just covered that his favor song about memory is Skid Row's "I Remember You" (which I've posted twice here and I won't do it again), I'm going with other great hair bands/songs from that same era.



Let's start off mostly in the late aughts, but with a Donruss thrown in. First off, it's Bill Hall, whose random 35-HR season in 2006 in the context of his career looks more and more suspicious every day...positively Brady Andersonesque. 

In the midst of that 2006 season, a random blogger -- whose blog still exists has not been deleted -- made one of those "Bill Hall is superman" posts. That blogpost included such statements as, "There are no steroids in baseball, only players Bill Hall breathed on."

Um, okay. Even funnier to me, though, is that the post has 20 comments. No kidding -- three legit anonymous posts, one from someone named Jamie (Easterly?), and then 16 spam comments. 

First song out of the box is Alice Cooper's "Poison." I remember hearing this song in my high school band room and thinking it was pretty cool. Like, cool enough that I asked the girl who owned the tape if she would dub it for me (which she was nice enough to do). I later found out that this song was really Alice Cooper trying to take the rough edges off his persona so he could become a member of the celebrity golf tour. Sort of.

Incidentally, the actress who appears in this video is a woman named Rana Kennedy, who is now a masseuse and pilates trainer to the stars in Carlsbad, California. 

I do love me some oddballs. JT's actually been interspersing these Baseball Champion packages around the blogosphere over the past month. For me, though, these two stay packaged. After all, a clear plastic card package with a player collection member on the top is another item to add to my player collections for Ben Oglivie and Cecil Cooper.

Then there is that wannabe 1959 Topps Paul Molitor. Baseball Cards Magazine almost got their font right for it. They messed up the font spacing on the name. Close, though. 

If you were a teenager alive in 1989 and you weren't really into garbage songs by Debbie Gibson and New Kids on the Block, you probably thought that Living Colour was one of the most awesome bands on the face of the planet thanks to their album Vivid. Now, Corey Glover's choice of a bright yellow Body Glove surfing outfit as stage wear is a bit dated, but this song is just as awesome today as it was then. 

For what it's worth, Living Colour just released a new album last year called Shade. I haven't checked it out yet...I will be soon.

While I hate to do scan dumps, I also am trying to focus more on posts that don't go on for 18 pages. So, sometimes, that will mean a scan dump will result. Lots of Bowman, some old school Upper Deck (please let them make cards again, MLB. Please. Limit them to 5 sets and 2 parallels if you're worried about market saturation. Seriously.), and even some Topps too.

One last song:

Please recall that I was 17 and turned 18 in late 1989, so you'll understand when I say that this song, too, reminds me of a girl I knew then. Actually, it was a girl I went out with a few times who was from a different school from me. She was from a good Irish-Catholic family and was a very good student. I was from a non-Catholic family and enjoyed having fun, but I was totally a goody goody too and was a good student. So, we got along well and had fun with each other and our mutual friends. 

She was almost 6' tall, had long, curly black hair, and really long legs too. And I had troubles sometimes describing her eye color because it varied greatly depending on the sunlight. So, this song totally reminds me of her. She is now the CEO of a company based in the Midwest, so she did quite well for herself. 

Me? I'm a baseball card blogger. Again. Finally.

JT, thank you very much for the cards.

P-Town Tom: #SuperTrader

Jaybarkerfan started the SuperTrader concept earlier this year as a way for folks to have built-in trade partners for almost every team. JBF included me in the group as the resident Brewer receiver, and I was quite happy to be included. I mean, unlike many folks on that list, I have only been in the trading game online here for not much more than 18 months at this point.

Whether the appellation of "Super Trader" should be appended to my name is a reasonable question to ask. For whatever reason, I find myself thinking like I'm Wile E. Coyote being introduced as "SuperGenius" instead...always losing and never able to catch the speedy roadrunner.

Then I saw this recently, and my whole thought process changed:

So, let's talk about a real SuperGenius -- and SuperTrader too. His name is Tom and he hails from Peoria, Illinois. The man is incredible. He's a math teacher, a coach, and a food lover too! Seriously, Tom juggles so many different roles and hats that I wonder how he has time both to put together the great packages that he sends out and also write such a good blog.

Speaking of the great packages, Tom dropped one in my mailbox a couple of weeks ago now.  Here are the highlights, set to Peoria music because, well, I need music.

Mudvayne: Happy?



Mudvayne formed in Bloomington, but is now apparently from Peoria. It is not a band I've listened to at all. Having listened to this song, I can tell you that it's okay, but I'm not a huge fan. It just doesn't sound any different from any one of a number of different bands. 

On the other hand, Tom sent me a bunch of great oddballs, such as the three cards here from Baseball Cards magazine/Sports Cards Price Guide magazine and the Topps UK Mini of Paul Molitor.




REO Speedwagon: Time for Me to Fly, written by Gary Richrath 




REO Speedwagon -- I think the kids these days would call this "Dad Rock," maybe -- featured Gary Richrath on the lead guitar until 1989, when he left the band. Richrath wrote this song in 1981.

Richrath reunited with them briefly in December of 2013 in Bloomington, Illinois for a benefit concert for families in central Illinois affected by a massive tornado.  That would be the last time that he played with REO Speedwagon, as he passed away on September 13, 2015 at the age of 65.

After that fairly depressing story, we need some happiness and celebrations.

The Nyjer Morgan card was featured on a Sports Illustrated cover in 2011. Ah, those halcyon days of 2011 -- before Braun was busted for steroids and when the team was at its best before Prince Fielder waddled out of town to greener bank accounts.

The Forecast: And We Return to Our Roots




Before this post, I'd never heard of the Forecast. Now that I've heard this song, they sort of remind me of Evanescence crossed with Jimmy Eat World. There's a strong female vocal that definitely sounds like Amy Lee's powerful sounds, with the rest of the vocals and sound being sort of typical indie rock from that mid-00s period.



Speaking of returning to roots, I'm pretty sure that Topps only has photos of Ryan Braun hitting that feature his eyes bulging out of his head. Or, maybe that's just another side effect of the steroids?

Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys: I Write The Songs




Bruce Johnston joined the Beach Boys in 1965, taking future country music star Glen Campbell's place as the touring bass player and vocalist (filling in for Brian WIlson) for the band. Though he didn't write any noteworthy songs for the Beach Boys, he won a Grammy Award for Song of the Year for writing "I Write the Songs" for Barry Manilow.

If the fact that Manilow did not write "I Write the Songs" isn't ironic, I am unsure what is. Seriously, that makes me laugh, because for the longest time I was pretty sure Barry wrote the songs.

He said he did, right?



Thankfully, the package that Tom sent me had two guys who (hopefully) wrote their own names on their cards. There's a Bowman signature from Eric Arnett and an in-person or TTM signature of former Clemson Tiger and 1987 First Round Draft pick Bill Spiers. I was glad to add the Spiers because I don't think I ever saw young William signing autographs in 1989 or so when I was still chasing them at Milwaukee County Stadium.

Dan Fogelberg: Leader of the Band





Fogelberg was always way too folky for my tastes. He's a good singer and a very good musician, but I just never really liked his music. Fogelberg died very young -- just 56 years old -- in December of 2007.

And now, for something completely different:



It's a Trent Clark mini-collection! Clark was a first round pick for the Brewers in 2015, selected 15th overall despite being identified as anything between the 7th to 10th best player in the draft. Kile McDaniel of Fangraphs called Clark "the best pure hitter in the draft." This article on Fansided's "Reviewing the Brew" labeled Clark the Brewers third-best prospect. 

His performance last year supported the hype. In 43 games in the Arizona Rookie League, Clark slashed .309/.422/.865 (WOW) with 1 HR, 16 RBI, and 20 SB (WOW).  Then, at Helena in the Pioneer League in 12 more games, he slashed .310/.431/.381 with 1 HR, 5 RBI, and 8 more steals. The kid even hit for the cycle in Arizona.

He may only be a future left fielder based on an average to so-so arm. Some reviews say his stolen bases come as much from his baseball intelligence as it does from pure speed, and they compare Clark as in the mold of Christian Yelich.

That's a fine upside.

Many thanks again go out to P-Town Tom for the great cards. 

As for Peoria's music, though, well...y'all be the judges.

A Few Random Items from Milwaukee

It's been a busy week. On top of being busy, my mental capacities with respect to sports have been focused more on the selection of the first new football coach for the Georgia Bulldogs in fifteen years than anywhere else. Granted, it didn't take much more than a third-grade education to figure out who would be the Georgia head coach (so long as Kirby Smart wanted the job, it would be his). Still, with Georgia, there's always an element of thinking that they could still screw this up somehow -- and that nagging suspicion will continue until Kirby signs on the dotted line.

At any rate, my mother and younger brother came to Atlanta for Thanksgiving. They brought with them a few things that I didn't know I had remaining at my mom's house -- in large part because, well, the stuff mostly wasn't mine to begin with but really belonged to my younger brother.  

Such as, for example, a complete set of 1999 Milwaukee Brewers police cards issued by the Village of Jackson Police and Volunteer Fire Department.

And, hey, thanks, Blogger for the update that allows me to drag and drop scans into my blog posts over the three-step system of having to click the little photo icon, select the cards I want to use, wait for them to upload, then rearrange them in the post! Now, perhaps they will work out a way next to embed videos by using a URL rather than having to find them on YouTube. Then again, why would they do that, since Google owns YouTube and Blogger?

But, I digress.  I like these 1999 cards for their backgrounds. Using photos from old Milwaukee County Stadium as the background in what was supposed to be the old Stadium's final year (before the Big Blue Crane fell and killed people and damaged the work in place) was a nice touch. 

Also found in the box from Wisconsin were some of those Dover Reprints. For my interests specifically, I got a couple of great perforated oddballs from the early 1980s books on which Bert Sugar put his name:





Reprints of Warren Spahn's 1950 Bowman card and of Lew Burdette's 1952 Bowman card. I'm disappointed that the book didn't include a 1952 Topps Eddie Mathews.  With the cost of that card being what it is, a reprint may be as close as I'll ever come to owning it barring some sort of lottery-like windfall in my future.

My next find came in the form of a 1989 Milwaukee Brewers yearbook. In 1988, 1989, and 1992 (I think this is true for 1992), the Brewers inserted pages of perforated cards that are slightly larger than the regulation size cards we are all used to. I decided "to hell with it" and pulled all the cards from this yearbook apart.  Here are the pages in their unperforated glory:

I like how there are only 18 cards that they issued. Imagine being one of the eight guys on the 25-man roster (since one of these cards is manager Tom Trebelhorn) from the year prior who was still on the roster who didn't get a card issued. "Yes, we love your skills. You've got a spot on this roster. It's just that, well, none of our fans really like you or care about you or know who you are. No, we're not planning on cutting you for that non-roster invite guy! Not right now, anyway..."

One last Brewers item, and then one last oddball.  First the Brewers item.  Back in 1984, the major-league minimum salary was $30,000 a year. According to this inflation calculator, that salary today would be just shy of $70,000. For comparison purposes, the minimum salary in 2015 was $507,500 -- the equivalent of $218,940 in 1984.  Baseball players are doing a lot better these days financially than they did in the 1980s for sure.

But, does it excuse dressing like you shopped with Macklemore at the thrift shop?

Former Brewers reliever Tom Tellmann is captured in this night photo in action, signing a card for me or some other kid. You can tell it's from the mid-1980s because he still thought a bubble perm and massive mustache was a good fashion idea. Then again, the way he looks in this photo, perhaps he was a hipster before his time with the track pants and tavern t-shirt.

Even more humorous is the fact that, at some point in my life, I thought it was a great idea to have him autograph this photo.

Finally, the box from Wisconsin yielded one more Baseball Cards Magazine complete with the baseball cards inserted:

Other than the Cardinals Rookies card complete with Brian Jordan and Dmitri Young, this was clearly from the Closers Edition. What great early 1990s names we have here -- Lee Smith, John Franco, Brian Harvey, Tom Henke, Bobby Thigpen, Dennis Eckersley, and Jeff Reardon.  It's a Who's Who of the early 1990s fascination with Jerome Holtzman's pet statistic, the save.

I feel assured that these oddballs will find their way into a few trade packages soon. I just know it.

I haven't the foggiest idea what the hell anyone is saying in this video other than "Oddball Song." But hey, I couldn't figure out what Barenaked Ladies said in "One Week" either.

More from Wisconsin: Trade Bait

Before the cardboard border war between Alabama and Georgia began, I had a couple of posts about some great items that my mom shipped to me from my youth.  To finish off those boxes will take a pretty long post for a good reason.  And, since I wrote this over the weekend, I don't feel bad about posting it mid-Monday morning either...

When I got back into collecting and decided to go after Robin Yount as a player collection, I started seeing his name popping up in the list of inserts from the old Krause Publications -- Baseball Cards Magazine and Sports Collectors Digest.  I remembered seeing a couple of those back in the day, but I really didn't think I had any of them.  I started scouring eBay auctions to try to find those cards and picked up one or two of them.

Last Thanksgiving, part of my day at my mom's house was working with my younger brother to go through the stacks and stacks of old magazines from the 1980s that I had kept from them.  I thought there were only a bunch of old Sports Illustrateds.  Instead, there was a foot-high stack of those old Krause magazines from between 1988 and 1991.  I know I didn't buy those -- my mom or brother must have.

Inside were all those cards.  Tons of them:

Krause reprinted reprinting a couple of 1965 Topps cards -- Pete Rose and Steve Carlton.  The card backs are emblazoned with REPRINT in about 72-point font that replaces Rose's name and the cartoon at the top of the card and replaced Fritz Ackley entirely on the Carlton.

Those were two of many random cards I found in those magazines.

I wish the Mantle insert were in better shape.  It's pretty wrinkled up.

So is this one:

This next one, though, it in pretty good shape:

Now, these were great.  I'm not sure why I kept these other than, "OMG, they have players on them!" But I did.

The 1989-1990 magazines, though...I tore those babies up.  Sorry if you wanted those.  But I have all the cards out of them, and I intend to cut most of them up and ship them out in trades to people.

Here's the one that is not getting cut up -- because it's going in my Yount collection:

It sort of reminds me of those Heritage box toppers that Topps puts in those hobby boxes.

By the way, who in the hell is Cameron Drew?

Anyway, the rest of these are getting carved up.  Nick has a few of these coming his way already, and Julie from A Cracked Bat has claimed an Alan Trammell and a Mark Grace, I think, but speak up if you see one or more that you want -- all of them other than Brewers are up for grabs.

For the Jose Canseco supercollectors...you MUST have an Ozzie...

That is an awfully nice Grissom/Walker card!

This was their "Catchers" edition.  

The Abbott is a bit scuffed up and came that way in the magazine I had.  Sorry to you Abbott collectors.

And there are a couple of loose cards too:

A note about my trimming: As you can see on the top of the Drabek card above, I am not always able to cut the cards 100% straight.  That's why I cut and leave a bunch of extra white around the black-line border.  That border is the standard card measurement of 2.5"x 3.5", so I leave it to you to trim the cards down to the standard size.

Plus, I also recall reading that when PSA grades the old Hostess cards, they look for perfect trimming that leaves the dotted line all the way around the card.  So, for everyone who is concerned with condition, that's why all these cards have the black borders around them.

So, if you want one or more of the cards above, please comment below and then E-MAIL ME YOUR ADDRESS.  Even if you are pretty sure I have your address, please e-mail it anyway.  It will make my life easier and get you your cards a little more quickly.  Also, when you e-mail your mailing address to me, you should let me know what team's 1989 Topps cards I should use as buffer for the mailing process.

One further comment -- you can tell this is the late 1980s here and that Krause Publications is Midwestern-based (Iola, Wisconsin).  Notice that the only Yankees are 3 Don Mattinglys and one Babe Ruth.  And sorry Dodger fans -- not a single Dodger in sight here.  Finally, my Lord these cards look so much better without every team name being followed by a prominent "TM".  It just looks right.

Thanks for reading, and let me know what you would like from here!