I'm Thankful for a Package from The Home Run Apple

It has been an up-and-down time -- particularly in sports for me -- since I last wrote a blog post here. I watched on Friday as the Arkansas Razorbacks chose a poor time to revert to being Bert [sic] Bielema's little babies in not being able to run the ball and relying on a quarterback who was less mobile than a lamp post trying to scramble around for a comeback against Missouri. Bert's Backs' loss caused Georgia to be shut out of the SEC Championship game.

Then, there was Saturday's debacle against Tech. Despite a first half in which Georgia's two freshman running backs -- the incredible Nick Chubb and the speedy Sony Michel -- both fumbled inside the 5-yard line, Georgia had come back to go ahead of rival Georgia Tech with just 18 seconds to go. It's easy to second guess coaches, even if we all do it, but Mark Richt's decision to squib kick rather than kick it long on the kickoff goes down as one of his dumbest decisions as Georgia coach. It's right up there with his decision in his first year as head coach of running the ball into the middle of the line with no timeouts on the clock against Auburn...no touchdown meant no time left to try another play.  But that was, as I said, in his first year as head coach.

Gack.

From all that ridiculousness came the Packers incredibly impressive victory over the Patriots on Sunday. Aaron Rodgers is playing as well as any quarterback in the game, and it is a joy to watch him run the offense.

Into this roller coaster ride stepped a couple of packages that I got at Thanksgiving time. The first one came from Keith at The Home Run Apple. Keith's blogging has been interfered with by real life imposing itself on him. But, he found the time to send me some cards and a Topps Chip!

Let's start with the Chip -- which looks to be what Keith thought it was...a gold version of a Ryan Braun 2013 Chipzzzzzzzzz.

I have not sought out the Chipz or Ponch and Jon from Chips or any other chips actively at this point, but it is getting to the point that I need to figure out what I have and what I don't. Of course, I've also been lazy lately so I haven't updated my player collection lists for these cards yet, so that's not going to dig me out here.

As Keith said in his note, he also sent me some shiny Chrome surprises. Three of those surprises were Brauns.

You get the X-Fractor on the top right, the die-cut on the bottom, and the pretty black one serial numbered to 100 on the top left. That black-bordered one in particular is just awesome. As much as I get on Topps's case for all the parallels, many of them are very attractive cards. I just don't want (and tend not) to chase 30 or 40 parallels from one set for one player.

I'm a very bad supercollector, I guess.

Wrapping up the Bruans was this Triple Threads Purple Drank parallel serial numbered to 650 and inspired by JaMarcus Russell.

On the whole, I'm not 100% opposed to parallels. The parallels from the 1990s were not all that bad. I mean, two or three parallels are kind of fun. It's when we get to things like the prospects in Bowman, where we get 8 or 10 parallels of the paper card, 8 or 10 parallels of the chrome parallel, 4 or 5 parallels of the mini parallel, 4 or 5 parallels of the autographed parallel, and then some die-cut parallels of the insert parallels of the chrome parallel -- that's where things go off the race track.

Which is a segue, of course:

When I saw this Jaime Navarro card pop out of the team bag, I was starting to wonder if Keith was just reading my mind when I saw this motorcycle card on Dimebox Nick's blog. It's a good thing that is not the case -- no one deserves the misery of reading my mind! -- because Keith simply sent me a number of the 1995 Stadium Club Brewers.

In the past, I have said that Jose Valentin often got the best card photos by virtue of his being a middle infielder. Now I understand that those other cards were making up for what may be one of the least attractive cards I've seen in recent memory.

In keeping with the team-set theme, Keith also sent me a few of the 2009 Topps Allen & Ginter Brewers.

JJ Hardy's card here is apparently an homage to the Jeff Cirillo 1995 Stadium Club from above.

Finally, Keith cleaned out some of his 2009 Topps 206 cards, including a couple of rookies who (in true 1990s Brewers fashion) turned out to be nothing but hype:

Sometimes the throwback cards work, and sometimes they don't.  These don't. But, they are from a major release set from Topps, and, as a result, they are needed for my collection.

After all, I could collect only the sets I really like a lot, but where's the fun in that? Without Topps's decision making process to second guess, the hobby would be a much more boring place!

Keith, thank you very much for this package. It was a surprise and it was and is greatly appreciated.

I'm All-In

About a decade ago, Texas Hold 'Em Poker was about the hottest thing going in the "sports" world. With the advent of the "cigarette" cameras that allowed viewers at home and TV production crews access to the pocket cards of each player, the game became much more watchable for the average person at home.  Add in the fact that, at the time, people could play for real money online in what was a legal gray area, and suddenly everyone was playing poker.

I did it too. I had a regular weekly game that would see players win or lose a few hundred at a time...though I was always that "tight" player who really never won or lost that much. I played online and did pretty well also, playing mostly on low stakes (50-cent/$1 no-limit games) tables racking up against bad players who all thought they could run a bluff on any two cards against anyone. Note to those who play: it makes sense to pay attention closely to see if the player you're trying to bluff plays solidly or if they are in nearly every hand.

Frankly, I made most of my money in poker simply because I was watching for those types of things and picking off the wild men when I had a hand. They couldn't curb their wildness, and I almost always could show them a better hand.

Why am I talking about this?

Because I'm still trying to figure out why Topps issued Topps Chipz a good 6 to 8 years after the Poker craze peaked. 

Madding over at Cards on Cards bought some of those Topps Chipz. Unfortunately for the Cardinal fan, he was not successful in pulling any Cardinals from his packs. Fortunately for me, he pulled a couple of Brewers:

That's a Jean Segura base and a Carlos Gomez Glow in the Dark Chipz (?). I'm not sure that I'd want to try to play poker while differentiating between the two kinds here. Perhaps these "Chipz" could be useful for other poker variants in which being in the dark might not be bad?

This would be the first time I use cards as an excuse to post a picture of a pretty girl. I think.

Madding took this opportunity to send me a ton of other Brewers cards.  Here are a few of them.

First off, he added a card to my B.J. Surhoff collection.

I remember well when the Brewers selected Surhoff with the first overall pick in the 1985 draft out of the University of North Carolina.  On Opening Day just two years later, Surhoff was in the major leagues as the Brewers starting catcher. 

Not bad. 

Of course, the 1985 Draft was stacked. In that first round alone, you had Will Clark at No. 2, Bobby Witt No. 3, Barry Larkin No. 4, Barry Bonds No. 6, Pete Incaviglia at No. 8, Walt Weiss at No. 11, Brian McRae at No. 17, Gregg Jefferies at No. 20, and Rafael Palmeiro No. 22. Throw in Randy Johnson from the second round with the 36th pick overall, Tino Martinez in the third round (though he didn't sign), David Justice in the 4th round, and even Kevin Tapani in the 9th round, Brady Anderson in the 10th round, and even John Smoltz at the end of the 22nd round.

That might be the best draft class ever to date.

Madding also hit a few oddball and 2000s-era holes in my Robin Yount collection, which now stands at 619 different items.

But, there is a card about which I have a question:

I have a well-centered version of this card in my collection already. But, do I count this extremely miscut and off-center card as a separate entry in my Robin Yount collection? I am counting it separately for right now, but I would be interested to hear what everyone else thinks.

Madding threw in a Score card of Jose Valentin to top off that player collections.

The package also provided many random Brewers from years past that do not fall into my player collection. With so many PCs, it seems to be a rare card that does not hit one, but the Brewers have had random players play for them in the past.

For example, Madding sent me NLCS walk-off hero Travis Ishikawa from 2012. I'm guessing that this card would have been folded, spindled, and mutilated after that walk-off homer on October 16.

My scanner did not want to separate out all the guys on this scan into separate JPEGs, so I didn't either. I might go back and do that eventually when I organize my scan files, but I've got plenty of organization to work on with organizing cards -- not computer files!

And that is a whole lot of random Brewers right there. Everyone from award winners (Cy Young Zach Greinke; AL ROY Pat Listach), former closers (John Axford, Dan Kolb) to all-stars (Carlos Lee, Richie Sexson, and Scott Podsednik), and "prospects" who weren't (Chris George, Hernan Iribarren, Drew Anderson, maybe Caleb Gindl). Jake Odorizzi was part of the Greinke deal with the Royals and, along with Wil Myers and a couple of minor leaguers, netted the Royals Wade Davis, James Shields, and a trip to the World Series.

But then, underneath all that, were still more PC additions. Like all of these Ben Sheets, which helped push my total Sheets collection up to 58 cards:

Madding even added to my Gary Carter collection. I was surprised that I needed this Topps Gypsy Queen card before I realized that I was thrown off by the photo being used on about 8 other Topps cards.

Paul Molitor showed up in both his Blue Jays blues and those classic 1980s Brewers uniforms.

Rickie Weeks made the trip as well.

MLB TV Analyst Dan Plesac's Hottest Stars card from 1990 also arrived. I'm not a huge fan of the thick red border on this card, which makes it look like Plesac is floating. But, at least Score didn't use the same photo in all of its products.

Then, out of nowhere, my two favorite Mexican pitchers hit the mound of Brewer cards. First, three Teddy Higuera cards.

And two Yovani Gallardo cards. I wonder if, these days, we would call Higuera "Teodoro Higuera" (his given name) rather than "Ted". I think Ted came from anglicizing and shortening his name, but he always signed cards as "Teo Higuera".

The always underrated Cecil Cooper got a little love from Topps back in the early 2000s in the Archives set.

I'm always pleased when someone in the blogosphere gets tired of waiting for Prince Fielder to be a good player again and sends their Brewers Fielder cards to me. Here's four new additions to my Princely collection.

I only got one of my favorite steroid abuser's cards, but it was a doozy -- the "Propaganda" insert from the 2009 Topps Updates & Highlights set.

Greg Vaughn just struck out.

While Jeromy Burnitz is hoping to make contact in this "Topps Stars" card from 2000.

Jeff Cirillo played in two different stints in Milwaukee. The Upper Deck 2007 card below is the only one I have from his final days as a Brewer.

And, the less that is said about the terribly boring uniforms from the 1990s, the better.

Some players are defined by their prowess as fielders. That pretty much does not apply to nearly anyone who ever wore a Brewers uniform for any length of time (George Scott's five Gold Gloves in the 1970s notwithstanding). Sixto Lezcano back in the late 1970s was known as an excellent fielder and won a Gold Glove, Cecil Cooper won two, and Robin Yount won a wind-aided Gold Glove on the back of his outstanding year at the plate in 1982.  It took until Carlos Gomez last year for another Gold Glove to come to Milwaukee.

Geoff Jenkins was never accused of being like any of those guys in the field, however.  That's why all of his cards are of him batting.

In fact, these first three cards show three phases of his swing.

See, Corey Hart wore sunglasses during the day as well.

This package was huge and jammed full of cards that I needed. Madding really crushed it here. When I finally got done sorting through this package, I was happier than a mascot who slides into a beer mug for half the season.

Thanks again, Madding -- and everyone check out the Cards on Cards blog!