Too Many Verlanders Had Too Many Cards

I'm still trying to get caught up on cards I got before Christmas. Heck, I got in a HUGE order from COMC that I picked up on Black Friday -- I didn't even scan most of it because I got sick of scanning -- and I haven't even touched that one. Maybe I'll get to it sometime in February or something.

Just before Christmas, Dennis from Too Many Verlanders offered up a variety of cards and, well, stuff that he had accumulated and wanted to clear out. Dennis has sent me cards on a number of occasions (though I'm quite sure I owe him cards) so I was a bit hesitant to put in a claim. But then, I saw this:

And that was the end of my shyness. I quickly snapped it up. As you can see on the box, it is a bobble head that commemorates the 1913 Milwaukee Brewers. The reason for celebration and commemoration was the fact that the Brewers won their first ever title: Champions of the American Association with a 100-67 record. 

It was a pretty good team -- 15 of the 19 players who played for that Milwaukee team saw time in the major leagues either before or after their stint in Milwaukee. The two names that jump out at me? 

First there is Cy Slapnicka, who spent over 50 years in baseball as a player, a GM, and a scout and is known for signing some pretty notable players to contracts -- guys like a 16-year-old Bob Feller, Tommy Henrich (whose contract was voided for some shenanigans the Indians engaged in), Lou Boudreau, Herb Score, Bobby Avila, and Hal Trosky...though he whiffed on signing Hal Newhouser by showing up too late.

Second, there is noted World Series fixer and Milwaukee native Oscar Emil "Happy" Felsch. The Brewers sold Felsch to the White Sox in 1914 for $12,000 plus an infielder and an outfielder. Felsch moved south to Chicago and left his Milwaukee-based family behind on Teutonia Avenue. After being banned from organized baseball, Felsch played on into his early 40s in "outlaw" leagues in Canada and the Mountain West. He returned to Milwaukee and first owned a tavern before becoming a crane operator, and the interviews with Felsch helped Eliot Asimov write his chronicle, Eight Men Out.

But I digress. Greatly. Because here's Corey Hart in his 1913 uniform!

Dennis also -- unnecessarily, I'll add -- threw in some great baseball cards too. For example, I got this pack in the box:

No good pack goes unopened in my house. I ripped it open immediately, and found that the contents were as advertised:

It is, indeed, a 9-card set sponsored by General Motors based on Ken Burns's film Baseball. I have to admit that I do have a favorite card in this group of 9: I love that Satchel Paige card. It's probably because of the relative paucity of cards for Negro League stars, I suppose -- or, at least, the relative paucity of those cards in my collection. Ol' Satch went right into my "Random Cards I Like" binder right next to Hines Ward from the JBF package.

But wait: there's more.

2010 Elite Extra Edition! I'm starting to be more and more drawn to all the minor league cards -- probably due to my frustration generally with major league cards, I'd suppose. 

Our first guy up is Austin Ross, an 8th round selection in 2010 out of LSU. He's slowly, slowly worked his way up the ladder in the Brewers organization. He's hit literally every stop -- from the Pioneer League, to the Arizona Rookie League, to the Midwest League to the Florida State League to the Southern League and Double-A in 2014 and 2015 to Triple-A Colorado Springs the past two years. He actually pitched pretty well out of the bullpen there last year to the point where he might actually crack the big-league roster this year at the age of 28.

Brian Garman, on the other hand, is no longer in the minors. He was a 17th round pick from the University of Cincinnati. He made it to Huntsville in 2013, but that was the end for him. He's still in baseball as the pitching coach for the University of Northwestern Ohio in Lima, according to his Twitter bio.

What? More? Yes. More:

These Sweet Spot Signatures are notoriously finicky. Upper Deck put a lot of them on really cheap, crappy plastic imitation balls, and those have faded into the ether like chemtrails from airplanes that some conspiracy theorists believe are used to control weather (spoiler alert: they are not). 

Of course, this Chris Demaria looks like it was made from the finest cowhide and will survive a nuclear explosion, global warming (probably caused by chemtrails), and a Trump presidency. Too bad the Robin Yount one I have isn't doing as well.

Speaking of Robin Yount:

How sweet is this Ultimate Star Materials of Yount? A big pinstripe down the middle of the fabric is a nice touch too. Yount is still recovering a year later from an injury he suffered at home in Phoenix last year when a compressor fell on his hand and crushed it. For some months, he had to wear what was described to me recently as being like those halos that people who have broken necks have to wear except that Robin's was on his arm from his elbow down. Apparently it was pretty bad.

And finally:

Is it weird that I kind of like these manu-relics a bit better than getting a swatch of fabric in a card? I have to tell you that I have strong doubts that Braun will get to the 500-HR club. He's 33 years old now, and he currently has 283 career home runs. Plugging that into the "Bill James Favorite Toy" equation:

Braun needs 217 homers to get to 500. The number of seasons he has remaining (estimated) are 4.2. His established level of productivity (this is a weighted equation) is 26 homers a year. By this estimate, Braun is likely to hit about 110 homers. Thus, his chance to get to 500 is about 1% -- rounding up from the 0.69% that the equation gives us, which is nice.

Nice, however, does not begin to describe how great this package was from Dennis. These were just the highest of the highlights.

Many thanks go out to Too Many Verlanders!

Twitch Sends Me Cards

Interacting with collectors by way of anything other than face-to-face interaction can have its awkward moments. For instance, when you're way behind on sending out response packages to people, you feel a little awkward interacting with them because you feel like you want to say, "sorry, man, I know, I'm way behind." 

Other times, there is some awkwardness when you can't remember who sent you cards. I have solved that problem for myself by scanning the cards as soon as I get them in and then saving them in a scan folder named for the person who sent them to me.

Then, there is the awkwardness I felt recently. I know Twitch of Twitch Collects Cards. By that, I mean, I interact regularly with him on Twitter, watch his creative process in drawing all kinds of awesome sketch cards, and read his insomnia-filled tweets that make me feel awful inside for him. 

The fact is, though, that I never really knew Twitch's name or address before getting cards in the mail. Well, I probably did know CC is really Twitch (I mean, I did read Gavin's trade post), but still -- I didn't want to give credit for a package based on a hunch.  

To make up for my gaffe, I will first show you some of the fantastic art that Twitch is working on. 

I colored 7 #SketchCards today! Haku, Kitty, Karai, Jason/Lono, Gizmo, Rocketeer, BB-8. #collect #art #commissionme pic.twitter.com/vzacHZs5sl

— #RecallRauner (@TwitchWasHere) June 16, 2016

As the hashtag says, you can commission some of these great sketch cards or other items by contacting Twitch via Twitter. This is just the tip of the iceberg on the great art that Twitch is creating. I wish I had even one-tenth of this artistic ability. As best I can tell, my creativity is limited to words.

And, as you probably know if you've read this blog, that is a pretty limited creative streak for me. 

Twitch was kind enough to send me a ton of Brewers. I admit that I am now at a loss as to what to send back, but I'll figure that out soon.

Here's the highlights:

Liquor-fractors and pizza. Yummy. I Googled "Liquor and Pizza" and it turns out that El Cajon, California must be the best place to live in America. I found that Shinar Pizza there allows you to order a fresh pizza, liquor, beer, or wine, smokes (if you're so inclined), or even groceries all at once and they will deliver.

Sticking with shiny and 2011, how about a few of those diamond anniversary parallels?

Two player collections for me in Jonathan Lucroy (now at 147 Lucroy Cards/items) and Corey Hart (lagging behind at 103).

As best I can tell, Hart is done as a player. He tried to play last year with Pittsburgh, and he just could not get through all of the injuries. 

An interesting sidelight is that there is another baseball playing Corey Hart who is a coach in the Blue Jays organization. He stands 6-feet tall and has a shaved head (as opposed to the 6'7", shaggy haired outfielder).  

That Corey Hart and this Corey Hart both played in the Brewers organization together at Nashville in 2005. Now-Coach Corey Hart's first at-bat in the Brewers organization was to pinch-hit for the tall Corey Hart. Coach Corey Hart also told the story that he was asked to sign a baseball card of the other Corey Hart in 2008 or 2009. The card had the facsimile signature on it, and the card company had screwed up -- they put Coach Corey's signature on OF Corey's card.

Perhaps appropriately for Twitch's art is this story in which Craig Calcaterra talked to OF Corey about his extensive superhero action figure collection!

Next up: A&G Minis!

Another J. Corey Hart card -- a 2009 "Old Planter" back -- and a 2011 Mark Rogers Bazooka parallel hand-serial-numbered 2 out of just 25.

Rogers is the rare Mainer major leaguer. I don't know if he is still pitching now (he tried and failed to catch on with Texas in 2015), but he pitched last year in the Independent Atlantic League for Long Island and Bridgeport with not a whole lot of success (39 innings, 6.23 ERA, 25 walks, 9 HR allowed). At one time very early in his career -- based entirely on being the 5th pick overall in the 2004 draft, almost certainly -- Rogers was the 55th and then the 44th best prospect in baseball according to Baseball America in 2005 and 2006 respectively.

Then injuries caught him. Remember everyone and repeat after Baseball Prospectus: There Is No Such Thing As A Pitching Prospect. 

Rogers was smart and invested his bonus money wisely, according to this Portland Press Herald article. So, he's financially okay. But, Rogers really was a guy who never lived up to his high draft pick status.

On the left is Chris Dennis. Dennis was born in Windsor, Ontario, and was drafted by the Brewers in the 13th round of the 2007 MLB Draft from St. Thomas of Villanova High School in LaSalle, Ontario. He got as high as High-A Brevard County in 2011 before he couldn't keep up enough with his bat (in 96 plate appearances, he slashed .169/.274/.253). I don't know where he went from there -- perhaps he decided to go to college or try something different since, after all, he was 23 at the end of 2011.

On the right is a 1984 Topps Sticker of Larry Bowa. But ignore that. The important guy is the one in the middle -- Birmingham, Alabama, native Charlie Moore. While Moore was pretty much done as a player in 1987, it would have been nice for him to get to stay in Milwaukee for his final season in the majors rather than ending up on Chris Dennis's eventual stomping grounds in Ontario. Moore made it to the majors in 1973 at the age of 20, but he played over 120 games in a season just three times -- 1977, 1982, and 1983.

It's Yovani Gallardo times four -- three shiny cards (two chrome and one "Prizm") and one Turkey Red. Gallardo signed in the offseason with Baltimore to a two-year, $20 million contract with a $13 million team option for 2018 or a $2 million option buy out. Gallardo hasn't pitched much this year for Baltimore thanks to injuries. He'll get every opportunity to claim a rotation spot there, though. 

These cards helped push my Gallardo collection up to 153 cards.

For me, it's always good to add to my ever-burgeoning Ryan Braun collection. The first one is the base "O-Pee-Chee" (put in quotes in deference to the fact that, well, these cards are just Upper Deck in O-Pee-Chee name with a wannabe 1976 Topps look) from 2009. The next actually goes in my 2010 Upper Deck team collection. The "20th Anniversary" card is one I needed too -- even though I have one that looks almost exactly like it already, I still needed it. Finally, that fancy Topps High Tek thing from 2014 is actually a "Spiral Bricks Gold Diffractor" and it is serial numbered as number 22 of 99.

Thanks to this infusion of Brauns, my Ryan collection has now reached 564 different Ryan Braun cards/items.  

Twitch, many thanks for the great package of cards -- to be fair, there were at least 10 more cards I could have included here.

Okay, one more:

Thanks for the cards and thanks for the great art you post, CC!

Binders for Brewers, Part II

Back in February, Dave the Card Junkie and I made a trade where I gave Dave binders and pages from the massive Christmas Horde in exchange for my getting cards. We did the same thing last weekend.

With Roger's one-man show in town on Dave's side of town, I convinced him to drive the twenty minutes to meet me at the hotel where Roger sets up and take more binders and pages off my hands. He then handed me a massive stack of Brewers in a paper bag. It wasn't exactly clandestine or furtive, but it was still exciting for me to get those cards!

So, to thank Dave, I scoured his Twitter feed for songs that he had posted there. After all, doesn't 44 minutes of prog rock featuring a flautist deserve as much publicity as possible?

Of course it does.

I can think of no player better suited with an introduction of a self-indulgently long prog rock song than Jeromy Burnitz. I'm not sure why that seems appropriate, but it does. Burnitz reminds me of an outfielder version of Dan Uggla -- very much a bro -- who would apparently empty out bottles of shampoo in the showers on road trips after the last game of the series and pee in them. 

Oh, you're such a funny guy, Jeromy!

Burnitz was still a very good homerun hitter in his travels around the major leagues playing with seven different teams (four in Flushing, bits of two seasons with Cleveland, a year each with Colorado, Pittsburgh, the Dodgers, and the Cubs, and six in Milwaukee). He was an All-Star once in Milwaukee and actually started the 1999 game in place of the injured Tony Gwynn. He even finished second in the Home Run Contest to Ken Griffey Jr.

A little morning Black Sabbath is a great way to wake up. Geezer Butler on bass really runs every Sabbath song. Yeah, Tony Iommi's lead guitar is really distinctive, but when you hear that underside of each song -- the thumping bass -- you know who is really in charge.

These three guys tended to be the understudies for the Brewers' stars of the time during which they played with the team. Of the three, the only one who ever led any Brewers team in WAR was, perhaps surprisingly, Corey Hart in 2007. Augustine really had only two decent seasons -- his first two in the major leagues -- while Nilsson was always behind Jeff Cirillo, or John Jaha, or Ricky Bones, or Greg Vaughn, or B.J. Surhoff, or all of the above in his years in Milwaukee.

Watching the MLB Draft's first couple of rounds on Thursday night was like watching NBA Draft coverage from about 15 years ago or so. I say that because the random assortment of "experts" that MLB Network compiled engaged in the most obvious of lazy comparisons when talking about players. The tall, African-American centerfielder from Atlanta had to be a Jason Heyward comparison. The good-hitting catcher with questions about his fielding was, of course, Kyle Schwarber's younger twin. If a player was white, he would only be compared to white players. If the player was black, then only black players would be comparable.

If MLB is going to be that way, then I will post Rickie Weeks cards with Robert Johnson's music. To be fair, posting old blues songs and then putting up cards of Ryan Braun just doesn't feel right.

Here's a new one on me. Well, okay, to be fair, I'd never listened to that Jethro Tull song before, but at least I'd heard of the band. I've never heard of the The Avalanches before. This video is just incredibly weird. Perhaps, to appreciate the song, it might be better to read something else and not pay attention to the video at all. 



Sort of like how I pay no attention any more to any of the Ryan Braun haters out there. I could get all worked up and point to the fact that Braun just took steroids rather than beating up his girlfriend or wife, or being a swimmer-rapist with a Stanford scholarship, or being a racist presidential candidate or a lying dissembling presidential candidate, or being any number of far scarier, more morally reprehensible people. 

I'm really excited for when Mets fans have to hold their nose and cheer for him when the Brewers trade Braun and Lucroy to New York for Zack Wheeler, Travis d'Arnaud, Dominic Smith, and a lottery ticket like Jhoan Urena or Andres Gimenez (who are both so far away from the majors at this point that they can be nothing more than a lottery ticket)...or, when the Yankees trade Aaron Judge, Luis Severino, Domingo Acevedo, and Gary Sanchez for the two and turn Lucroy into a first-baseman to replace Teixeira.

Hahahahahahahaha!

WARNING: 

If you have epilepsy, you shouldn't watch this next video. It consists of 3:39 of the photo above repeatedly illuminated by strobe lights.

Les Claypool is another notable bass player, having come to prominence in the 1990s with the band Primus. This song is not going to be everyone's cup of tea, as it features a lot of overdubbed vocals, a fair amount of repetition, lots of self-sampling, and it isn't exactly melodic.

Not exactly melodic describes Milwaukee Brewers baseball perfectly in the time that Ben Sheets was in his pomp. The team did well in 2008 with him -- and that was his last season of making a regular rotation turn. Indeed, that season almost certainly was the death knell of Sheets's career. He threw 198-1/3 innings and got the team to the playoffs, yet he did not get to enjoy pitching in the playoffs due to a torn elbow muscle. After that injury, he threw just 168-2/3 innings over the rest of his career in 29 starts -- 20 in Oakland in 2010 and 9 in Atlanta in 2011.

A little Radiohead to close things out here. This is from Radiohead's newest album, "A Moon Shaped Pool." In typical Radiohead-fashion, it's a bit abstract. The video looks like the old Rudolph shows with stop-motion animation going on, though this is probably done with computers, if I had to guess. 

When Dave handed me the bag of Brewers, he said, "I hope that you like Geoff Jenkins." Now having 170 Geoff Jenkins cards in my PC for him, that answer is "yes, I do indeed." I have to admit, though, that my favorite card amongst these Jenkins cards is that minor league card of Jenkins with the Tucson Toros. 

For whatever reason, I'm starting to get drawn more and more to the minor league cards. It's probably the rebuild that's ongoing in Milwaukee currently that has me scouring the minor leagues. But, even as a kid, I loved reading the old Baseball Digest prospect wrap-ups each year. I'm not a rookie-card chaser, to be fair, but I love reading about and finding out about prospects.

Thanks, Dave, for the great cards. I hope you enjoy those binders.