Binders for Brewers, Part II

Back in February, Dave the Card Junkie and I made a trade where I gave Dave binders and pages from the massive Christmas Horde in exchange for my getting cards. We did the same thing last weekend.

With Roger's one-man show in town on Dave's side of town, I convinced him to drive the twenty minutes to meet me at the hotel where Roger sets up and take more binders and pages off my hands. He then handed me a massive stack of Brewers in a paper bag. It wasn't exactly clandestine or furtive, but it was still exciting for me to get those cards!

So, to thank Dave, I scoured his Twitter feed for songs that he had posted there. After all, doesn't 44 minutes of prog rock featuring a flautist deserve as much publicity as possible?

Of course it does.

I can think of no player better suited with an introduction of a self-indulgently long prog rock song than Jeromy Burnitz. I'm not sure why that seems appropriate, but it does. Burnitz reminds me of an outfielder version of Dan Uggla -- very much a bro -- who would apparently empty out bottles of shampoo in the showers on road trips after the last game of the series and pee in them. 

Oh, you're such a funny guy, Jeromy!

Burnitz was still a very good homerun hitter in his travels around the major leagues playing with seven different teams (four in Flushing, bits of two seasons with Cleveland, a year each with Colorado, Pittsburgh, the Dodgers, and the Cubs, and six in Milwaukee). He was an All-Star once in Milwaukee and actually started the 1999 game in place of the injured Tony Gwynn. He even finished second in the Home Run Contest to Ken Griffey Jr.

A little morning Black Sabbath is a great way to wake up. Geezer Butler on bass really runs every Sabbath song. Yeah, Tony Iommi's lead guitar is really distinctive, but when you hear that underside of each song -- the thumping bass -- you know who is really in charge.

These three guys tended to be the understudies for the Brewers' stars of the time during which they played with the team. Of the three, the only one who ever led any Brewers team in WAR was, perhaps surprisingly, Corey Hart in 2007. Augustine really had only two decent seasons -- his first two in the major leagues -- while Nilsson was always behind Jeff Cirillo, or John Jaha, or Ricky Bones, or Greg Vaughn, or B.J. Surhoff, or all of the above in his years in Milwaukee.

Watching the MLB Draft's first couple of rounds on Thursday night was like watching NBA Draft coverage from about 15 years ago or so. I say that because the random assortment of "experts" that MLB Network compiled engaged in the most obvious of lazy comparisons when talking about players. The tall, African-American centerfielder from Atlanta had to be a Jason Heyward comparison. The good-hitting catcher with questions about his fielding was, of course, Kyle Schwarber's younger twin. If a player was white, he would only be compared to white players. If the player was black, then only black players would be comparable.

If MLB is going to be that way, then I will post Rickie Weeks cards with Robert Johnson's music. To be fair, posting old blues songs and then putting up cards of Ryan Braun just doesn't feel right.

Here's a new one on me. Well, okay, to be fair, I'd never listened to that Jethro Tull song before, but at least I'd heard of the band. I've never heard of the The Avalanches before. This video is just incredibly weird. Perhaps, to appreciate the song, it might be better to read something else and not pay attention to the video at all. 



Sort of like how I pay no attention any more to any of the Ryan Braun haters out there. I could get all worked up and point to the fact that Braun just took steroids rather than beating up his girlfriend or wife, or being a swimmer-rapist with a Stanford scholarship, or being a racist presidential candidate or a lying dissembling presidential candidate, or being any number of far scarier, more morally reprehensible people. 

I'm really excited for when Mets fans have to hold their nose and cheer for him when the Brewers trade Braun and Lucroy to New York for Zack Wheeler, Travis d'Arnaud, Dominic Smith, and a lottery ticket like Jhoan Urena or Andres Gimenez (who are both so far away from the majors at this point that they can be nothing more than a lottery ticket)...or, when the Yankees trade Aaron Judge, Luis Severino, Domingo Acevedo, and Gary Sanchez for the two and turn Lucroy into a first-baseman to replace Teixeira.

Hahahahahahahaha!

WARNING: 

If you have epilepsy, you shouldn't watch this next video. It consists of 3:39 of the photo above repeatedly illuminated by strobe lights.

Les Claypool is another notable bass player, having come to prominence in the 1990s with the band Primus. This song is not going to be everyone's cup of tea, as it features a lot of overdubbed vocals, a fair amount of repetition, lots of self-sampling, and it isn't exactly melodic.

Not exactly melodic describes Milwaukee Brewers baseball perfectly in the time that Ben Sheets was in his pomp. The team did well in 2008 with him -- and that was his last season of making a regular rotation turn. Indeed, that season almost certainly was the death knell of Sheets's career. He threw 198-1/3 innings and got the team to the playoffs, yet he did not get to enjoy pitching in the playoffs due to a torn elbow muscle. After that injury, he threw just 168-2/3 innings over the rest of his career in 29 starts -- 20 in Oakland in 2010 and 9 in Atlanta in 2011.

A little Radiohead to close things out here. This is from Radiohead's newest album, "A Moon Shaped Pool." In typical Radiohead-fashion, it's a bit abstract. The video looks like the old Rudolph shows with stop-motion animation going on, though this is probably done with computers, if I had to guess. 

When Dave handed me the bag of Brewers, he said, "I hope that you like Geoff Jenkins." Now having 170 Geoff Jenkins cards in my PC for him, that answer is "yes, I do indeed." I have to admit, though, that my favorite card amongst these Jenkins cards is that minor league card of Jenkins with the Tucson Toros. 

For whatever reason, I'm starting to get drawn more and more to the minor league cards. It's probably the rebuild that's ongoing in Milwaukee currently that has me scouring the minor leagues. But, even as a kid, I loved reading the old Baseball Digest prospect wrap-ups each year. I'm not a rookie-card chaser, to be fair, but I love reading about and finding out about prospects.

Thanks, Dave, for the great cards. I hope you enjoy those binders.

A One-Card Post Then Bye Till Saturday

Over the weekend on Netflix, I watched most of the CNN series called "The Seventies." I remember about one-third of the 1970s -- the last third, of course, being born in 1971. The first episode covered television. After that, it was the momentous events of the decade.

I finished the last show in the series tonight. They saved the best for last, of course -- covering the music of the 1970s in the final episode. Chris Connelly -- the ESPN guy who took over Grantland when Bill Simmons left the nest -- made a bold statement to the effect that every kind of rock music ever was done best in the 1970s.

I think that is hyperbole, to be fair. Rap was definitely not done best in the 1970s, even with "Rapper's Delight."

As the series points out, this very song gave "Hip-Hop" its name. That said, it's still pretty primordial and hasn't hit its stride quite yet.

Still, that statement bugged me because I tried to come up with better music from another time. Hard Rock? Nope -- 1980s hair metal in all its glory couldn't match up with Black Sabbath. 

Punk was in its full pomp in the 1970s too -- far better than the Green Day revival that took place in the 1980s. I mean, no other decade had The Clash at its very finest. After all, Rolling Stone had to go to the 1970s for its album of the decade, "London Calling."

How about country music? Arguably, the 1970s were not as good as, say, the 1960s or 1950s. Then, you see Loretta Lynn (Coal Miner's Daughter), Dolly Parton (I Will Always Love You), Kenny Rogers (The Gambler), and the perfect country and western song, written by Steve Goodman:

David Allan Coe is a notoriously temperamental performer who might show up and play for four hours or who might not like the looks of the front row of a crowd and just storm off the stage. He did this a couple of times in Athens at the Georgia Theater, I was told. I had heard the stories and just avoided the shows.

But still -- the more I think about it, the more Chris Connelly has a point. Sometimes, the Good Old Days actually WERE that good.

In some respects, I sometimes feel like baseball cards in the 1960s and 1970s were better than what we have today. What do we have that is good today? 

Well, we get autographs in packs. We get pieces of cloth embedded in cards. We get 20 different versions of the same card, with some even serial numbered. We even have the Topps Now cards, so Topps can issue cards immediately (your shipping time may vary).

What did the 1960s and 1970s have?

Those decades had cards issued in series for well over half the time in question. Then, there might be coins inserted in cards. Sometimes, there would be oddballs issued by Topps. There would be oddballs issued by cereal companies, confectioneries, bakeries, insurance companies, fast-food joints, convenience stories, hot dog makers, and with potato chips. 

Speaking of which, here's an oddball Topps card that I got for a $5 bill (including shipping) on eBay recently:

By that alone, the good old days win in a landslide.

Thanks for stopping by tonight. I'll be in Nashville all week after this for an American Bar Association meeting, so I'll see y'all on Saturday!

Cards from Commenter GCA

I've been very busy with work this week, and I'm (so far successfully) fighting off a cold. To fight said cold, though, I've been pumping myself full of Nyquil and Dayquil -- or at least their Kroger-brand equivalents. By the time I can sit down to blog, I'm nearly out of whatever inspiration I might have. 

Bloggers know that inspiration is a funny thing. Some days, we are brimming with great ideas -- posts filled with musical interludes, witty comments, caustic digressions, and insightful observations about life, liberty, and the pursuit of 1954 Bowman. Other days, the best we can do is either put up a card or ten and say, "These were great. Thanks!"

Recently, here, a commenter called GCA made promises of great wealth from afar, such as providing many, many cards from the mid-1990s from Pacific. Usually with such promises comes a little less than is expected, but this was 100% on the mark:

Whoa! He wasn't kidding! This is no fairy tale. This is real! GCA -- better known as Greg -- isn't a blogger per se. He does have his want lists online, but otherwise, he's stayed away from the rat race of blogging. Let me highlight a few things he's looking for here too...

He has a few "Heavy Metal Autos" from 2013 Topps Archives that he wants. One of those is from Dee Snider:

Man, I loved that song when I was 12 years old. It was only later in life that I understood that the dad was Niedermeyer from Animal House, which made the video even cooler.

So, Greg also didn't just send Pacifics. He also sent some great cards from 1998 too:

So, Topps Chrome turns 20 years old this year. Unless I missed it as part of the 2015 set, I feel assured that Topps will do something to commemorate that anniversary. Maybe they will do buybacks and put cool little foil markings with "20" on them.

Or has that been done already?

Snarkiness aside...

Greg also needs another Heavy Metal Auto from 2013 Topps Archives: the immortal Scott Ian of one of the best heavy metal bands of all time, Anthrax.





I used to study to that. Seriously. And I may have even learned some things while studying to that. I like to think that my single-mindedness when working today comes from those days when I tried everything to draw my entire attention away from what I was doing....

Greg also sent some great cards from the early 2000s too -- a lot of Ben Sheets, for instance:



Another card that Greg is looking for is from the 2009 Upper Deck Heroes set -- the Guitar Heroes subset. Greg needs cards 382 and 384 of former Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello:




One of the best guitar lines of the 1990s leads off that song. I get the heavy political basis for RATM's songs, but just on its own, the chorus of that song just sounds a bit ridiculous. "They rally round tha family! Wit a pocket full of shells!" I know it's about bullets, but my brain immediately goes to the beach...oops.

Let's call on Rickie Weeks to get me out of this one.



One more card from that same 2009 Upper Deck Heroes set that Greg needs is #379 of Tommy Iommi. 




Talk about an evil sounding guitar lick. Every time I hear that song, I turn back into a 12-year-old and think of the Road Warriors...now, of course, Road Warrior Animal is just former Rams linebacker James Laurinaitis's dad.

Finally, as a weak transition and to reuse an old saw, how about a guy who looks like an NFL Hall of Famer?



One more card from Greg's want list: Upper Deck Spectrum, in 2008, included a "Spectrum of Stars Signatures" insert set. One of the cards from that set that Greg needs is actually a guy who was in a band that was my first ever real concert: Mike Tramp from White Lion:




That song makes me sing along almost every time. Not sure why...other than it's a great song!

Greg sent me a ton of other cards too -- so numerous that I still have probably another 25 scans I could show. But, let me stop there and thank Greg for the great cards -- and the heavy metal inspiration.