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!

Cards from All Cardinals All the Time

Recently, an unexpected package arrived here in the north Atlanta suburbs from Ray at All Cardinals All the Time.  He is a Ray Lankford supercollector, and with those two Rays in my head, I immediately thought of this:

Huh?  Yeah.  When I was in college, I was a member of the Vanderbilt Marching Band.  One of our more notorious band members was a guy named Ray.  Everyone has a friend -- or knows someone like -- Ray.  Ray is that guy with the really loud voice who can be heard over everyone heckling the referees but who doesn't necessarily have the best grasp of the rules of the game.  So rather than yelling about something like whether a lineman is getting held on a pass rush, Ray would just yell one of two things: "Hey Ref, you need Gatorade because your calls are as weak as water" or "Hey Ref, You Suck!"

He was a real wordsmith.

Within the band, there was a group of guys who attended Belmont University (side note: yep, Vandy's Marching Band really was the marching band of Vandy, Belmont, David Lipscomb University and Trevecca Nazarene College...we wouldn't have had enough people otherwise, I think) who were a little bit older than most folks in the band. By that, I mean they were 23 or 24 and not 18 or 19.  They liked Ray a lot but enjoyed making fun of him as well. So, they appropriated MC Hammer's song "Pray" and turned it into "Ray!"  We need a Ray, just to make it today...

Anyway, long intro just to give you a frightening look into how my brain plays word association and turns it into the first chapter of "The Sound and the Fury" -- you know, the part of the book that was the tale told by an "idiot"?

So, getting back to why I have a blog, here are the highlights from the cards that Ray sent to me...highlighted by music, of course.

Jeromy Burnitz

According to this website, Jeromy Burnitz used the song "Blurry" by Puddle of Mudd as a walk-up song at least one time during the 2002 season.  Ray was kind enough to send me six Burnitz cards that I needed either for my player collection or my team collection:

Jeff Cirillo

"Got a Machine head, it's better than the rest, green to red, machine head."  Cirillo used this song, according to this list, during the 2008 season while employed by the Minnesota Twins. Maybe he used its first few lyrics to remind himself to "breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in...."

To be fair, I really liked this song when it first came out in 1995.  By 2008, though, I was a little bit tired of it.

I'm not tired of getting Cirillo's cards for my collection though, and Ray sent me this one that goes into my team collection:

Geoff Jenkins

Using that same list as the one from Cirillo, it appears that Geoff Jenkins really liked Jay-Z in 2008.  He used two songs as his walk-up music: "Dig A Hole" and "30 Something."  Can't really fault him for using either song, to be fair.  Jay-Z had his fastball then. He's good now, but he's more of a junkballer now, if you know what I mean.  

Before 2008 and according to a now-available-in-archives only page that used to be on ESPN's Page 3, Jenkins used Usher's "Yeah!"  So, Jay-Z was an upgrade.

Ray sent me two Jenkins cards from Jenkins's prime.

Dave Nilsson

I couldn't find anything talking about his walk-up music or any other music he likes.  So, here's what we get instead:

Because I like Cypress Hill and liked listening to them back in college too.  

Here's the Dave Nilsson card that Ray sent to me for my player collection:

Ben Sheets

According to this forum posting, Manny Parra and Ben Sheets both used "Welcome Home" by Coheed + Cambria as their intro music at various points in their respective careers. Personally, I never liked Coheed + Cambria. They sounds to me like a Rush tribute band using guitars instead of keyboards.  And, while I like Rush and all, I am hardly what you'd call a superfan of their music.

I am a superfan of getting cards like these, though:

Lots of great early 2000s Donruss there!

Jose Valentin

Finally, there's Jose Valentin.  These two songs came once again from the same list as the Geoff Jenkins music.  During his final seasons in the majors, Valentin played with the New York Mets.  During at least one of those years, he used either of these two songs by Don Omar -- "Salio El Sol" (the top video) and "Reggaeton Latino".  I'd not heard these songs before, but they are decent, I think.  

Just like Circa Thunder from 1998 is pretty decent. 

Actually, no, Circa Thunder is not decent. These colors on a card with that "Valentin" down the side is godawful terrible.  I really don't like the color orange -- every college team that wears orange (Auburn, Florida, Tennessee, Oklahoma State, Syracuse, Virginia) are all evil in varying shades of evilness.  This card reminds me of why I don't like orange.

But, it shows a Brewers player so I have to have it.  And since it shows a guy in a player collection, I had to have two -- and now, thanks to Ray, I do.

Thanks a lot for the great cards!