It's no surprise to anyone who follows me on Twitter or, for that matter, to anyone who reads this blog that I'm less than excited by new card issues. The most excited I got recently was when my pal Ray Peters and my more recent acquaintance Fred Stanley both got cards in the Heritage autographs of the Seattle Pilots. Of course, the initial excitement over those autographs -- and their scarcity -- have made getting any of those from eBay a losing proposition. In any event, I have been focusing on getting cool 1982-related items. But, in an effort not to fall "behind" the current times, I've signed on with the official BrentandBecca® email list to get my Brewers team sets and an occasional short print. Let's start with some of the Heritage Brewers regularly printed set.
Yes, believe it or not, the Brewers had TWO members of the Topps 2017 All-Star Rookie team last year. In fairness, there were not too many rookie catchers of any value last year, but Manny Piña was the catcher on the ASR team. Also, what is going on with Domingo Santana's photo? That's some messed-up perspective with his hand looking like it's approximately three times the size of the rest of his body, and that bat looks like it's a kid's toy. In fact, it almost looks like his head has been photoshopped into that photo. It just looks weird.
From the short prints, Brent had two of the five Brewers short prints available. I'm wondering when the first set to show Lewis Brinson as a Marlin will be -- and, at the same time, when the first set to show Lorenzo Cain and Christian Yelich will be showing them as Brewers. We have to be getting close, right? I think that Topps's most recent releases are somewhere near early January with catching up with team changes. Perhaps by Allen & Ginter? Or will Yelich & Cain get left out of that set?
When I say, "Topps's most recent releases," I could be talking about the Opening Day set. Despite the fact that Jonathan Villar was absolutely shit last year, Topps is acting like 2017 never happened and are including him in practically every set they put out. It's either Villar or Eric Thames, who had a great April last year followed by a so-so rest of the year. The "so-so rest of the year" really came out of the fact that the Brewers had to figure out whether Thames had improved his ability to hit left-handed pitching. He had not, so that led to a platoon with Jesus Aguilar and it is why Thames may be on the bench more frequently this coming year when Ryan Braun gets to play first. That weird set up is why the two outfielders who played reasonably well last year -- Keon Broxton and Brett Phillips -- were sent down to Colorado Springs this week even though they really do not have anything more to prove in Triple-A. Simply, there just is not enough playing time for Braun, Santana, Yelich, Cain, Thames, and Aguilar if either Broxton or Phillips remained in the majors. Now, injuries and days off will allow those guys to all play enough -- Braun's injuries last year alone would have made that possible. But, when will this logjam of major-league-level outfielders be cleared up? Hopefully a starter will be heading to Milwaukee soon.
And finally, I picked up this 2018 Topps Ryan Braun short print from Brent. I still need a Braun from both the regular set and the Opening Day set for my team collection, and I probably need to pick up another one of those short prints from Heritage for Braun. All in all, buying current team sets in this way makes me much happier than trying to get the cards one by one in some fashion. It's easier, it's less expensive, and it limits the amount of time I have to deal with current Topps cards. Thanks for stopping by.
I've mentioned it before that I've purchased a fair amount this year from Brent Williams on eBay. Pretty much any set where I was not in a break, I was picking up team sets and sometimes parallels from Brent through eBay. As I have bought more frequently, Brent has seemed to pack the packages up to me more quickly. This time, I got some Stadium Club and some Allen & Ginter. You know me well, though, if you think I need music to go with it. I mean, I even snuck in a marching band video in the Ray Nitschke post to get music in there. And the fun thing? After that last post where I took Ray Peters's suggestions for music, he sent me a few more names of bands. The first one I listened to blew me away -- so I felt like I wanted to share a few songs from Sean Bonniwell and his band, The Music Machine. "Sufferin' Succotash"
This song is listed as being a previously unreleased demo by the person who posted it on YouTube. It was released as part of the 1999 compilation album called Turn On: The Best of the Music Machine, which included the original Turn On album and a bonus disc of unissued material, including two vintage TV performances.
I'll admit that I had never listed to The Music Machine before Ray mentioned them in his recent email. My first thought was, "Holy crap, this is where punk music came from." Then, I read the Wikipedia article on them, and they are referred to as being "proto-punk" and "one of the groundbreaking acts of the 1960s."
The group started off in the folk music scene in California, starting with Bonniwell's background as a folk singer. Then, Bonniwell, along with Keith Olsen and Ron Edgar, formed a folk trio called the Wayfarers. That sound petered out, so they became the Raggamuffins, playing with a more unorthodox style. Then, in early 1966, they decided to expand the group to a quintet and added Mark Landon and Doug Rhodes to become the Music Machine.
Sufferin' succotash -- it's Ryan Braun in Stadium Club! It's three variations of the card -- the base, the black foil, and the gold foil. Most everyone in the hobby knows that Susan Lulgjuraj a/k/a Sooz a/k/a Yanxchick is one of the minds and sets of eyes behind the Stadium Club set in terms of photo selection. I have to thank her for the fact that she chose a Ryan Braun card that doesn't have bulging eyes. That's two years in a row that Sooz picked a Braun photo that was actually fairly complimentary.
So, thanks, Sooz!
"No Girl Gonna Cry"
"No Girl Gonna Cry" is another of those B-sides that did not get released during The Music Machine's heyday but, instead, was simply a great song. There's a brief intro from Halliwell on this song that says he hopes the listener finds it "interesting." I definitely do. This song would fit in well on a Ramones album right after "I Wanna Be Sedated."
Interestingly, those who knew Bonniwell found him to be an extremely engaging person. As this blogpost from 2012 recounts, the writer first heard "No Girl Gonna Cry" when he let a German traveler crash on his living room floor. The German had found Bonniwell in California. Bonniwell gave the traveler a tape of unreleased songs, demos, and alternative versions of Music Machine songs, and it included this song.
The rest of my purchases from Brent are from Allen & Ginter. A&G was one in a long line of recent Topps releases which essentially told Brewers fans, "give us your money so you can get dozens of Yankees and screw you, you midwestern asses." Okay, perhaps the last part is a bit excessive.
When I got back into collecting in 2014, I really liked A&G and Archives. I liked the mix of people in A&G, along with a decent number of Brewers being included in the set. This year pretty much killed my appreciation of both of those sets. Oh well. I'll just pick up team sets of these uninspiring cards (and the bottom card, which is one of those foil background cards) and ignore the packs in the stores...despite really wanting to have a reason to buy the packs in the stores.
"Talk Talk"
"Talk Talk" was The Music Machine's big hit, charting as high as number 15 on the Billboard charts. Clocking in at just under 2 minutes (1:56), it is considered a garage rock classic.
Sean Bonniwell passed away in Visalia, California, on December 20, 2011 from lung cancer at the age of 71. He remained active musically his entire life despite being so displeased with how little his label supported his solo album in 1969 that he left the music industry completely. He went on a spiritual quest, travelling around the country in a VW bus in what he called his "transcendentalized western guru period."
It's funny -- all you have to do is listen to their music to hear how much influence their sound had on later bands. Yet, it's rare to hear them referred to these days.
But, at least Marky Ramone admits that "Talk Talk" is one of his 5 favorite punk songs (along with the Kinks, The Trashmen, Love, and Richard Hell and the Voidoids).
Yes, this is a complete Allen & Ginter X team set.
I'm hopeful that the Brewers might get a bit more respect from Topps next year. After all, no one thought they would stick close with the Cubs this year. Heck, the Brewers may yet make the playoffs. If that happened, would Milwaukee get more cards in next year's A&G set?
Probably. I'd bet they'd get at least 4 cards. At least.
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.
In January, the excellent baseball website Hardball Times had an article by Paul Moehringer called "The Pyramid Rating System's All-Time Milwaukee Brewers/Braves." The basic conceit behind the article is set forth in the article talking about the Baltimore Orioles all-time team: to build a modern team -- 12 pitchers with 5 starters, 6 relievers, and a spot starter and 13 position players, including 2 catchers -- based around the historical teams. The author focused on a city-centric approach rather than a franchise approach, which means, for example, that the Washington Senators' various iterations are made a part of the Washington Nationals' franchise history. This means, too, that former franchises including the Philadelphia Athletics, the Montreal Expos, the Brooklyn Dodgers, the Boston Braves, the New York Giants, and the St. Louis Browns are resurrected. From there, the author creates 6 divisions of 6 teams each named after the current divisions. The Milwaukee "franchise" is placed in the AL Central alongside the Chicago White Sox, Cleveland Indians, Detroit Tigers, St. Louis Browns, and Tampa Bay Rays. The thought behind putting the Milwaukee Braves with the Brewers is that if the Braves had never left, Atlanta would have gotten a team anyway but the Brewers would never have existed. The final rule is that players can only be placed on one team -- so Warren Spahn ends up on the Boston Braves, thereby depriving the Milwaukee team of its clear, by far best pitcher. The Milwaukee team is heavy on hitting. Very heavy. At the same time, the pitching is as thin as tissue paper. Milwaukee's best pitcher in its history is the one pitcher who "dominated over an extended period of time": Teddy Higuera. Seriously, that's it. In terms of the starting lineups, it's again a very interesting set up. I'm going to use it to introduce the cards I bought recently from Brent Williams off eBay to try and guess what chances the guys in this year's sets have of making it to the "all-time team." Let's start with the easy one:
That's a whole lot of Ryan Braun, and for good reason: Braun is the starting left-fielder on the Milwaukee team. The projected starting lineup puts him hitting third against righties and second against lefties. It's actually a pretty incredible lineup: against righties, the lineup is constructed with Eddie Mathews leading off. As the article notes, Mathews led the NL in walks four times, including three straight years from 1961 to 1963. He finished in the top-10 in OBP in the NL 10 times. Yeah, Eddie Mathews was really, really damn good. Braun was a shoo-in for a spot on the team, even if he is the only non-Hall of Fame starting outfielder alongside CF Robin Yount and RF Hank Aaron. He's backed up by Carlos Gomez and Gorman Thomas and, if necessary, Hank Aaron. Other than Braun, the other four outfielders on the team all played centerfield for significant portions of their career. Now, onto the totally speculative:
With Orlando Arcia, we have very little to go on currently. Hitting-wise, he is improving. He is getting used to being in the big league. He chalks up a recent 9-game hitting streak to better pitch recognition:
— FOX Sports Wisconsin (@fswisconsin) May 30, 2017
And props to Sophia Minnaert for being bilingual. As a quick aside, I'm a big fan of sideline reporters who are bilingual and can translate on the fly. Atlanta United has Brittany Arnold who can do the same thing, and I feel like it is important so that we get to hear from guys like Arcia (or Miguel Almiron with ATLUTD) directly just the same as the English speakers who get interviewed on ESPN.
Back to the Milwaukee team. The Brewers/Braves roster only includes Yount and Braves stalwart Johnny Logan at shortstop (though Bill Hall could play the spot in a pinch). Logan was one of the all-time best defensive shortstops ever, and he was not a complete zero with the bat (OPS+ career of 94). Because Yount can play short, though, the author felt justified in carrying Gorman Thomas to destroy lefties.
If Arcia can develop further -- continuing to improve his pitch recognition, continuing to keep his strikeouts down, learning how to read pitchers on the basepaths, and the like and, further, assuming that he spends a good amount of his career in Milwaukee -- then there is a very good chance that he could end up displacing Logan. He is still very young -- turning 23 in August -- so that development time will be interesting to watch.
Next up: Jonathan Villar. Based off last season, if Villar could have been projected out from there, he would have been difficult to leave off the roster. This year has seen him come back down some -- he is hitting terribly this year -- so it's an open question as to what he can be or is.
He would be hard-pressed to be a starter on the all-time Milwaukee team since the team lines up another Hall of Famer there: Paul Molitor. Molitor could have been put at a number of positions, but second base was the best fit. Behind Molitor, the team would have long-time underrated Brewer Don Money, who could fill in both at second and at third. Money was such a good fielder at third base that he set a major league record with 86 straight games without an error in 1974. Despite that, he ended up being the AL All-Star starter at second in 1978 -- playing there while Molitor played short and Yount played golf.
Long-time Brewer Jim Gantner made the 40-man roster as a 2B/3B fill-in as well, and Bill Hall could slot in here at second as well. So, odd as it may sound, Villar joins a long line of Brewers with positional flexibility in the infield. Molitor, Money, Gantner, and Hall all played all over the infield, with only Gantner not being at least a part-time starter at shortstop in that time (he started 5 games at short in his career).
All the caveats about time in Milwaukee apply to Villar, and if he can produce near what he did last year, he has a good shot to get onto the roster at a minimum. Don't underrate Don Money here, though: during his 11 years in Milwaukee, he hit .270/.338/.421 for an OPS+ of 114, including four all-star games. He platooned from 1979 through 1983, but he always had good power.
Welcome to the black hole that is pitching in Milwaukee. I supposed Davies and Nelson have as good a chance as anyone to make it into the mix for a slot pitching for the Milwaukee "Brewers" all-timers. To give you an idea of what I mean by black hole, here's the pitching staff:
SP: Higuera, Ben Sheets, Mike Caldwell, Chris Bosio, and Bill Wegman
Closer: Ken Sanders
8th inning: Dan Plesac
7th Inning: Tom Murphy
Setup: Chuck Crim and Dave Jolly
Mop-up: Braves P Don McMahon
Spot Starter: Lew Burdette
Others on the 40-man: Ricky Bones, Bob Buhl, Doug Davis, Cal Eldred, Mike Fetters, Ray Searage, and Bob Wickman
I'm a little surprised that Yovani Gallardo did not make the team over Doug Davis or Ricky Bones or even Chris Bosio. I have tweeted at him and left a comment to see his reasoning (or to see if Yovani just got missed in the shuffle).
So, either of these guys could get there, I suppose. But I kind of doubt it.
No chance. Not unless Scooter ends up back in Milwaukee, jacks up on steroids, and suddenly turns into a lefty-hitting Bret Boone or Jeff Kent.
Since these guys are no-hopers, let's look at the catching slot and at first base. I've mentioned in the past about how Del Crandall was really a star in his day. He ends up getting the nod as a part of a platoon with Jonathan Lucroy. Not bad. But, if we look at how the 40-man stacks up, we find Joe Torre listed as a C/1B. That's weird because I think of Torre as a Cardinal thanks to his MVP season there. As the article points out, though, Torre's career essentially gets split four ways thanks to the way that the pyramid system is structured -- his Braves time is half Milwaukee, half Atlanta -- and his best season was 1971 with St. Louis.
At first base, we plug in Cecil Cooper. Arguably, that's a difficult slot too. Prince Fielder becomes a platoon DH who will absolutely annihilate right-handed pitching as a 1-2 punch with Eddie Mathews (career for Fielder against RHP: .294/.403/.539: a .942 OPS...which is basically Willie Mays), though Fielder sits against lefties to allow Gorman Thomas to mash. On the 40-man, George Scott beats out Joe Adcock for the spot thanks to the fact that Scott won five Gold Gloves in Milwaukee while also crushing the ball (.283/.342/.456).
I highly recommend reading the articles on Hardball Times about your favorite team's all-time team. Sure, the clubs like the Red Sox and the Yankees -- with their long histories -- have a distinct advantage over newcomers like the Marlins or the Brewers or the Padres. But it sure is fun to revisit those old names.
And, while you're at it, look up Brent Williams on eBay and Twitter -- he's a collector who sells rather than being just a seller.
