Cardboard Jones Sends Out Dairy Cards and Autographs

One of the first guys I ever interacted with and traded with is Steve a/k/a Cardboard Jones f/k/a The Chop Keeper. I especially appreciate his interaction on Twitter, where he frequently feels like a voice of reason amidst a sea of greedy giveaway hawks, overzealous sales pitches, and strange bracket competitions.

It's been a couple of months since he sent me the four cards I'm going to blog about today. So in penance for that failure to post these cards with any kind of haste at all, I'm posting music of Steve's liking to go with the cards. Hopefully Steve still likes Taylor Swift.

via GIPHY

That's a joke, y'all. A joke.

At least I think so.

Anyway, here come the cards and the music courtesy of my pal from Idaho.

The first three cards are all from the 1960 Lake to Lake Milwaukee Braves set. I will note first that I do not believe that that is Johnny Logan's autograph on this card, as I have an exemplar that it does not match at all.

That out of the way, let's talk first about Lake to Lake Dairy. According to this article from a few days ago in the Wisconsin State Farmer newspaper, Lake to Lake was a dairy cooperative formed in 1946. The cooperative was formed because the dairy farmers wanted to be able to negotiate dairy prices more collectively and get better returns for their milk products. The cooperative formed in the  Manitowoc County area and included the surrounding counties such as Kewaunee and Calumet -- the same area that produced the "Making a Murder" series on Netflix. Lake to Lake Dairy was bought out by Land O'Lakes, Inc. in 1981.

The first band that I'll highlight is Black Country Communion. Members of this supergroup include Glenn Hughes, Joe Bonamassa, Jason Bonham, and Derek Sherinian. Hughes was the vocalist for a few iterations of Deep Purple and, for a short time in the mid-1980s, for Black Sabbath. Bonamassa, of course, is a legend in blues rock and was a child prodigy who opened about 20 shows for B.B. King at the age of 22. Bonham may be the best known of the group thanks to his famous father John Bonham being Led Zeppelin's drummer and thanks to Jason playing the drums for Zeppelin fairly regularly. Finally, Sherinian is a keyboardist who played in Dream Theater and has toured and recorded with Alice Cooper, Billy Idol, and Yngwie Malmsteen, among many many others. 

For whatever reason, this is the first time I've heard this band and this song, "Collide." It reminded me a little of Soundgarden/Chris Cornell. That's what came to mind without watching the video. Call me crazy.

You may have noticed that these cards are in pretty rough shape -- missing big parts and all. That should come as no surprise, as these Lake to Lake cards were originally stapled to milk cartons distributed by the dairy around Wisconsin. As the Standard Catalog notes, these cards were also redeemable for prizes ranging from pen and pencil sets to Braves tickets. When redeemed, the cards were punched with hole punches.

It is an understatement to say, as the Standard Catalog does, that these cards "offer a special challenge for the condition-conscious collector." Also, as a further aside, the Ray Boone and Bill Bruton cards are very difficult to find -- Boone's because he was traded and the card was withdrawn, and Bruton's for no discernible reason (other than, perhaps, his card was a grand-prize type giveaway).

Steve is a pretty big fan of the Tedeschi Trucks Band. I have no idea if this song was in the "Tiny Desk Concert" that I posted in February last year (as recommended by Mark Hoyle, who also recommended Joe Bonamassa). Susan Tedeschi is a Bostonian by birth who attended Berklee College of Music in Boston. Her husband Derek Trucks is 9 years younger than her and is a Jacksonville, Florida, native who got his start at the age of about 9 playing with the Gregg Allman Band. Good stuff here.

The last of the three Lake to Lake Dairy cards was Del Crandall. If you can find any of these in Near Mint condition, you'll pay a pretty penny. Even in 2011, the price for a NM Red Schoendienst was estimated at $75 and a Hank Aaron NM was estimated to cost $500. 

If you're interested in getting me an early Christmas gift, a complete set of the 28 cards is available on eBay for $1,499.99, plus $2.99 shipping. You know, that kind of pisses me off that someone would charge $3 shipping for a $1500 set. You mean you can't spring for it? You mean you're just going to toss them into a bubble mailer and ship them that way? Come on.

This next song is actually one I remember well from the 1980s, though I could have never told you that the band that sang the song was called Saga. I also could have never told you that Saga was from Oakville, Ontario, Canada (though I'm quite positive that Canadians would probably hang me, draw me, and quarter me for that admission). 

For what it's worth, you will never be able to see Saga live again, if they are to be believed. They performed a farewell tour in 2017 and 2018 and held their last show in Toronto at the Phoenix Concert Theatre on February 24. It was a good run, I suppose.

Finally, the last card was not a 1960 Lake to Lake but, instead, a 1989 Swell Baseball Greats Del Crandall card autographed by the man himself. Do these "Swell Baseball Greats" cards qualify as being 1980s oddballs? I think they probably do, so I will have to add this set to the queue to be written up. As I've mentioned on Twitter, I take requests, after all.

So, I cheated a bit here. Steve was singing the praises of a Michael Schenker Group album awhile back, but I was sort of jonesing for this old McAuley Schenker Group song from 1987 called "Gimme Your Love." It's great to see how often rock bands in the 1980s tried to help down-and-out club dancers by giving them roles in rock videos.

This song and band were much better than many of their contemporaries who got more famous, such as Slaughter, Winger, and Poison. Those guys couldn't sing or play in the same state at MSG, to be fair. This song still rocks.

As does Steve -- he's one of the best guys out there to trade with or just talk with on Twitter.  Thanks, Steve.

Recharging and Collating

The last two months have been brutal for me with work. Being gone thanks to being crazy busy last month led directly into being out this month with busyness and ABA meetings. The next thing on my agenda is coming up in a couple of weeks, so I figured I'd better write something now before I let another week go by.

I wish I could say I was recharging. I feel like Steve a/k/a Cardboard Jones f/k/a The Chop Keeper has reinvigorated and reinvented his collecting: he moved on from being the Chop Keeper as the Atlanta Braves morphed into a team he did not recognize and became Cardboard Jones at Collating Cards -- the set builder. I could see doing that at some point in my life, but my chase for Brewers keeps me moving forward. I don't have it in me at this point to be anything more than a one-note collector of Brewers in many respects.

That is, until such time as I decide that I'll become an oddball type collector and try to get at least one card from every oddball and minor league set in what I consider the modern era of post-World War II.

See, I don't like easily attainable goals. It's too Easy.

Steve's change of collecting has aided me a bit. Steve used to collect the Braves, as I mentioned above. His decision to go to set building of sets led him to send some Braves stuff my way. To be fair, he never disappoints.

Let's start with the cards:

Starting with the three earliest cards, we have 3 from the very green (for the Braves) year of 1958. Casey Wise is an interesting story, even if he would be completely persona non grata in my house based on his choices of colleges and universities. While he started his collegiate career on scholarship at the University of Texas (not bad), Wise eventually received his degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Florida (very bad). He then played baseball (and was terrible...more on that in a minute) before going to dental school at the University of Tennessee (flat out ugly) -- becoming the first orthodontist in Naples, Florida.

As to being terrible, Wikipedia quotes The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book as saying, "His may not be the worst Major League hitting record of all time, but it's definitely in contention." How bad was it? Well, over four seasons with the Cubs in 1957 -- which explains the weird blue brimmed hat and the M appearing over what appears to be a scribble, the Braves in 1958-1959, and Detroit in 1960, he came to bat 352 times. He "hit" .174/.243/.240 -- a career OPS of .483 and a career OPS+ (average is 100) of 32.

Wow. Hope he was better at orthodontics.

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago/a couple of posts ago that I got two Red Schoendienst 1959 Topps in the space of about 3 days -- one from Commishbob. This one is the second one.

Harry Hanebrink caught my eye in this group for being someone I did not know. Hanebrink was a native St. Louisan who somehow ended up being signed by the Braves in the late 1940s after a tour in the Navy. He had a weird batting stance and hitting approach. As it was described by Hanebrink in his SABR Biography, "Feet very wide. I don't even take a step, but I come forward with the bat three times then take one fast cut when the pitcher starts to throw. All the fans used to count cadence on every pitch at Hartford, clapping and shouting: 'One, two, three, dip.' I guess it looks funny, but I can hit better that way."

Whereas Casey Wise was godawful terrible, Hanebrink was just bad to mediocre -- an OPS+ of 60, slash line over 345 plate appearances of .224/.279/.315; at least he hit for a little bit of power. Hanebrink returned to St. Louis after his career and become a real-estate broker for twenty years before deciding to drive a park-and-ride shuttle at the St. Louis airport. He passed away from a brain aneurysm in 1996 at the age of 69.

Finally, there is the one 1960 Topps card before we get to the oddballs. Pizarro had a long career that started with Milwaukee in 1957 and continued all the way until 1974 with the Pittsburgh Pirates. His SABR Biography notes that between the minors, the majors, Mexico, and winter ball in his native Puerto Rico, his career win total in the regular season was 392 and his overall total was over 400. 

He was the son of a construction worker/cockfighting trainer and gambler whose personal love for the nightlife was well known; in one book Where Have You Gone, Vince Dimaggio? he was quoted as saying, "I love to celebrate. I only remember the parties, the women, the hot times." He learned he could throw hard by being a bit of a delinquent -- throwing rocks to hit bottles in a game called piedritas. He is quite the character and is still with us at the age of 80.

Now, for the oddballs:

This postcard sized card is of Vermont's own Ernie Johnson Sr. The elder Johnson led his son Ernie Jr. into the broadcasting profession, in that Ernie spent years and years as the color commentator for the Milwaukee and Atlanta Braves -- starting in 1962 and ending in 1999.  Ernie Jr. even worked games with his dad in the mid-1990s (1993 to 1996). 

The reason I mentioned that Ernie is Vermont's own is that this card was issued by the Vermont Historical Society in 2000. Others in the set include Jean Dubuc, Pat Putnam, Birdie Tebbetts, and, of course, Carlton Fisk.

Thanks to Steve, I now have three of these photos of former Braves -- he also sent me a Frank Torre in the past. Apparently, I am still missing at least the Andy Pafko card, as an eBay auction lists a lot of 4 including the three I have and Pafko.

These are pretty cool, and it makes me wish that I had made the effort to go back to Wisconsin to see a game at County Stadium one last time before they tore it down after the 2000 season. It was a dump, but it had character. You were close to the field in nearly every seat and the place had history. Yes, it was falling apart and the team needed the ability to close a roof to keep folks from freezing, but dammit that place had character.

And finally:

This is my first Jay Publishing Milwaukee Braves card/photo. This one is from 1961, and it is the same size as the Ohio Casualty Group photos from above. 

These last cards show clearly why oddballs rule. It's easy to get the Topps runs -- relatively easy, at least. But it's a lot more fun to go oddball.

Many thanks go out to Steve for the great cards and the oddballs.