Nothing Can Replace #SuperTrader Brad's Blog

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!

Brewers From Brad's Blog

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!