Snake Jazz and Snakeskin Refractors

A PWE arrived at my house a little over a week ago, and I just didn't feel like writing last week. Tonight, though, I'm in the mood for a post. So, it's time to celebrate the great cards that Brian from Highly Subjective and Completely Arbitrary packaged up and sent my way. In the spirit of Snake Jazz, this post is going to be heavy on jazz and perhaps a bit light on writing.

Let's start with Mr. Snake Jazz himself, Dave Baldwin. This card is one that Baldwin gives out to those who write to him, I believe, and it's my first autograph from him. Baldwin says that the term "snake jazz" refers to offspeed pitches generally -- that it means "curvy pitches." Obviously that line never made Ball Four, but I'll take Baldwin's word for it since he played the game in the majors and I never played beyond high school.

The song "Take the A Train" was in the news recently thanks to Jeopardy! phenom James Holzhauer. It was the Final Jeopardy question with the following "Jazz Classics" clue: "In one account, this song began as directions written out for composer Billy Strayhorn to Duke Ellington's home in Harlem."

It's a jazz standard -- one nearly every student jazz musician should play before they leave high school. I played it in high school too (I was a sax player until I graduated college).

Next up are yellow parallels from this year's flagship effort from Topps. I don't understand why "Milwaukee" gets the big letter effect on the team card whereas "Anderson" and "Hader" do on the individual player cards. Shouldn't "Brewers" be the big name? 

I think I'd like the cards better if Topps did, in fact, swap the last name for the first name. The way it is written now is just silly and looks wrong.

I never understood "Green Onions" as a young saxophone player. That may be because it really didn't have much for me to do unless I was the one soloing. At its core, this song is just a great excuse for a jazz combo to jam and trade solos with one another. You have the walking bass line setting the chords and the rhythm, the drummer keeping time on the snare and bass drum with some flourishes on the toms and cymbals, and otherwise it's just the guitarist and organ trading solos back and forth. That's it.

Don't get me wrong -- with great soloists, it's worth every second -- but it's not groundbreaking or anything. 

Next up are two guys that the Brewers traded away. Gomez helped rebuild the farm system with Domingo Santana, Josh Hader, Brett Phillips, and Adrian Houser while Villar was flipped for Jonathan Schoop last year. 

Gomez has bounced around since that time, hitting Houston, Texas, Tampa Bay, and now back to the Mets where he started his career. The way he is playing this year, there may not be a next year for the almost 34-year-old. 

Villar is doing fine in Baltimore -- 7 HR, 9 SB -- and is about a league average hitter with a .736 OPS. He still goes up there hacking, though, walking just 16 times in 238 plate appearances.

According to Wikipedia, scrapple is a "Pennsylvania Dutch" (er, that's German, folks) dish of pork scraps and trimmings combined with cornmeal and wheat flour (often buckwheat) and other spices. Perhaps a song about "Scrapple from the Apple" is an appropriate accompaniment for the pork scraps and cornmeal that are Gomez and Villar.

You can identify whichever of them you want as the cornmeal and which one is the pork scraps. 

The next two cards are variations (I think) from Panini's attempts at continuing to issue baseball cards. If you're Panini and in light of MLB extending Topps's exclusive license, how long do you keep trying? I suppose they must be making money or they'd stop issuing cards, right? 

Brewers fans are asking similar questions of Jesus Aguilar right now. His hitting has been so bad that his bWAR is -0.7 and his OPS+ is just 60 -- way below average for the league, not just first basemen. Frankly, his struggles are not new. After the All-Star game last year, he slashed at just .245/.324/.436 -- an OPS of .760. But, his .604 OPS so far this year has continued the decline. His lack of offense has led the team to go back to Eric Thames for a jump start. 

On the other hand, there's Christian Yelich. Yelich has sort of struggled in May himself -- at least in comparison to his ridiculous March/April. In March/April, he hit 13 HR and slashed .353/.460/.804 (1.264 OPS). In May, he's only hit 7 HR and slashed .275/.393/.623 (a 1.016 OPS). Perhaps the real problem here is only that Yelich simply has not had as many guys on base in front of him in May -- only 10 RBI as compared to 34 at the start of the month (that's comparing 29 games in March/April to 19 in May).

"Stardust" is a jazz standard. It's one I have never played. It's sort of a mid-tempo song that is fine but it doesn't stand out to modern ears. At least mine, that is.

Purple Ryan Braun refractor, anyone? Damn the colored refractors in 2017 appeared to be some sort of futuristic nightmare. 

After "Stardust," I felt like a great Louis Armstrong version of "Sweet Georgia Brown" should help redeem things. 

Does everyone still associate this song with the Harlem Globetrotters? I remember as a kid that it was always a special day on "Wide World of Sports" when the Globetrotters were on. They made the kind of jokes that a kid could appreciate. My older self would probably be bored seeing the same jokes get rolled out but man, when I was 8, they were awesome.

To close out the blog post today, I have the bookend to Snake Jazz -- a Snake Skin refractor! Sort of.

Brandon Woodruff has been excellent this year for the Brewers. I was hoping he would be, and he has not disappointed -- unlike his fellow youngsters Corbin Burnes and Freddy Peralta, both of whom combined to destroy my fantasy baseball team's ERA and WHIP in April to the point where I had to cut them so I could stop slotting them in hoping for a rebound. Just terrible. 

Pitching in April was the Brewers big concern, but the offense outside of Yelich, Mike Moustakas, and Yasmani Grandal has really been limping along in May. That's why Keston Hiura got the call from the minors -- to try to kick start something. 

To close out on a high note, I have to go to saxophone maestro John Coltrane. Coltrane and Charlie Parker were the guys I wished I could sound like when I was a high schooler. 

Of course, that was akin to me saying that I totally wished I could pitch like Bret Saberhagen or Dwight Gooden in 1987. While it was a nice daydream, there's no way in hell it was really going to happen.

So, I watched those two pitch and listened to Coltrane and Bird. After all, if you can't be the best, you should watch/listen to the best to appreciate them while you can.

Brian, thanks for being one of the best -- and for the cards. 

Vintage Show, Part II: Jazzy Cards

I have no idea why, but for some reason I'm feeling like hearing some jazz music. I used to listen to and play jazz a lot when I was in high school -- I started as a freshman on baritone saxophone, then went back to my alto sax and even picked up a soprano saxophone for jazz as a senior. 

Every so often, I go back and listen to some of that music. For the rest of the vintage cards I picked up over the weekend, jazz seems to be an appropriate accompaniment. Going by the year of the card, I'll pick out something released that same year.

1953

The Modern Jazz Quartet, "Autumn in New York"




To start off is this chart by Modern Jazz Quartet comprised of John Lewis (piano), Percy Heath (Double Bass), Connie Kay (Drums), and Milt Jackson (vibraphone). This song is very much in the genre of cool jazz or even smooth jazz -- very laid back, very melodic, and just chill. That song will take an edge off the day and make you feel like you should be meditating, or reading a book with a glass of bourbon or wine, or just paging through old baseball cards.

And, if you're going to page through old baseball cards, why not go through the real 1953 Topps set rather than the Archives redo that we have this year? Having found this beautiful painting of the Jack Dittmer, I now only need card 215, Gene Conley, to finish my Milwaukee Braves 1953 Topps set. Of course, half the team set was released as Boston Braves, so that's skewed results favorably in my direction.

1954

Chet Baker with Gerry Mulligan, "Line for Lyons"

Gerry Mulligan is without question one of the greatest -- if not the greatest -- baritone saxophonists in jazz history. We're still in the cool jazz genre here, but Mulligan and Baker together as heard here are renown as one of the most important groups in that genre. I have to admit that this one is good, but it doesn't draw me in. Mulligan is great, but it feels a little academic in many ways. 

It's too bad that cool jazz -- while decent -- really comes across a bit light because these cards deserve more. The Bickford is a bit beat up, but to get two Bill Brutons -- including that Bowman, which is the last card in the set -- and the Ernie Johnson rookie card were just great finds for not more than $4 for any one of these (Bickford was $1, I'm pretty sure).

By the way, doesn't Jack Dittmer look a lot better here in this photo rather than in the 1953 Topps painting? That painting makes him look super ugly.

1955

Charlie Parker, "Yardbird Suite"

The jazz world lost a legend in 1955, as Charlie "Bird" Parker suffered a heart seizure thanks to years of ignoring his health and shooting up heroin. He was only 34 years old, but his impact on jazz through his hard playing bebop style is undeniable. This song is one of the more approachable, easier to play songs for an alto sax player. Many of the others are damn near impossible for mere mortals like myself to play.

The beauty of 1955 Topps cards comes through here. Topps started bringing its "A" game in the mid-1950s and, more to the point, started crowding out Bowman through exclusive contracts. Bowman lost money and got bought out to start the first Topps monopoly era. 

I feel bad for Charlie White, though. One would have thought that the Braves would have allowed him to use equipment to catch like Jack Parks has. Damn that racism.

1956

Sonny Rollins, "St. Thomas"

Sonny Rollins is a badass. He's still with us -- aged 85 -- and he still plays out at times.

In later years, this song got rearranged with the lead sax part played on a soprano saxophone rather than a tenor. It's a totally different feel -- in fact, it's the song that I played soprano on. Soprano sax is tough to play in tune. 

Then again, pretty much all saxophones are tough to play in tune.

Danny O'Connell appears to be gritting his teeth and listening to a bad sax player here.

Okay, I'm going to ditch the songs year by year because otherwise I'll never get through the rest of the cards. But I'm going to pick some favorite songs my high school jazz band played or simply jazz songs I like to accompany the cards.

Count Basie -- "Wind Machine"

Damn this song was hard to play. After the long walking bass part at the beginning, the entire saxophone sections comes in and is supposed to sound essentially like one saxophone playing all those notes all together. And that solo -- not easy.

Line 'em up -- 1958, 1959, 1960, and 1961 all in a nice row there. The 1961 team card actually was a duplicate (oops) so it now becomes a part of the Mathews collection.

Brecker Brothers, "East River"

Yeah, pretty clearly not in the 1960s any more, but this Brecker Brothers chart just rocks. Funk to the extreme, dirty, nasty, in your face -- kind of like what I'm sure the East River was like in the 1970s before people paid more attention to our environment and cleaned it up some.

I feel like 1962 Topps goes with funk really well. You get Topps basically saying, "aw, to hell with it" and not airbrushing Bob Buhl's Braves hat off while, at the same time, Birdie Tebbetts looks like an extra from a live version of Clement Moore's "A Visit from St. Nicholas." All he needs is mama in her kerchief next to him.

Dave Brubeck Quartet, "Blue Rondo á la Turk"

Paul Desmond nailing the alto saxophone part there looking about as uncool as a saxophonist can (until I came along, probably). Brubeck is pure genius. The song has a very unique 9/8 time signature but it feels like a straight 4/4 time regularly -- where it feels like that extra beat in the measure is just stolen from somewhere.

I loved listening to this music as I learned how to find my own voice in jazz improvisation. I could never been any of these guys, but I loved picking what I could from each.

Thanks to Bob Shaw, I had to buy a card featuring Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale and Bob Gibson. Thankfully it was not too expensive. 

Also, for you Canadians, say hello to St. Jean, Quebec's own Claude Raymond from 1963 as well. Unsurprisingly in that politically incorrect age, Raymond's nickname was Frenchy. He was inducted into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame on July 26, 1984.

So, that's what I was able to pick up over the weekend. I probably could have gotten more there if I had more money I was willing to spend. 

Okay, one last song from another virtuoso. This time, it's a real soprano saxophone player. 

John Coltrane makes a song from the Sound of Music sound subversive. Now that is talent.