You Are Looking Live at Cards from Angus

Today, living sportsbook legend Brent Musburger decided to call it a career in broadcasting today. Musburger, 77, basically announced, "yes, next Tuesday, I'm done." His last game will be to call the Georgia Bulldogs basketball game at Kentucky. Musburger supposedly is going to help family members with their new venture in sports handicapping.

For me, it's not soon enough. Musburger's last season was spent paired with Jesse Palmer calling games on the SEC Network. Between Palmer's inability to stop talking whenever any possibility of dead air approached and with Musburger usually -- and tellingly, it seems -- more focused on whether the teams would cover the spread and whether the teams would get over the over/under number, it got to the point where I literally could not listen to them.

Still, Musburger had some memorable calls in his life, what with being around sports for as long as he has. And what better way to thank Angus from Dawg Day Cards for his Christmas card and the gifts that came with it than to start "looking live."

1. Brent Musburger Introduces America to Jenn Sterger

Without Brent Musburger, Jenn Sterger would have never become known to America. Without Brent Musburger, that means, perhaps Brett Favre's little Brett never gets to the Internet. Maybe, just maybe, without Brent Musburger, new Brewer minor leaguer Cody Decker would never have met Jennifer Sterger and gotten engaged to her.

It's always about Wisconsin sports, right?



Starting off the envelope from Angus, we have a Ryan Braun Chrome 1989 Topps refractor from the 2014 Chrome set and a 1997 Dave Nilsson card from the Donruss Limited set -- a "counterparts" card with Jim Thome on the back. I definitely needed the Nilsson, and the Braun scanned so beautifully that I had to share it even though it may be my second or third or fourth copy of that card.

2. Brent Musburger perving on an orange Iowa State fan

This apparently was a couple of years ago at the Big 12 basketball tournament. I guess it was because it was so par for the course for Brent Musburger to get all excited when women were on screen that no one mentioned anything. That, or no one cares enough about the Big 12 basketball tournament to notice...or maybe that's just me.

I'm much more likely to exclaim "Oh, Yeah" when I see 1973 O-Pee-Chee cards than I am about that Oompa-Loompa girl who looks like a bad cross between Donald Trump and Katy Perry, but only if Trump just put on extra spray tan in an effort to try to look orange. Okay, so maybe that's harsh on the girl, and the problem is the color on the video, but man, that is not attracive.

Not like these cards are. Well, except the electric blue Don Money hat in the pinstriped Phillies jersey (n.b. The Brewers did not wear pinstripes until they changed logos in 1978).

3.  Brent Musburger Gets Katherine Webb Airtime

Are you seeing a trend? Over at least the final 10 to 15 years of his career, Brent Musburger started paying less attention to the game and more attention to the girls in the crowd. To be fair, when you see someone as stunning as Katherine Webb, it might be difficult to look away if you are a heterosexual male.

As was the case for Sterger, Katherine Webb parlayed her 15 seconds of fame into about 15 minutes of fame by doing the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue in 2013 and then going on this weird show on ABC called "Splash", which featured D list celebrities jumping off diving boards. I mean, hell, Louie Anderson was on the show, I think.  

Hey, anything to get her on TV in a swimsuit, I suppose. Here's a link to a video from that show. In fairness to her, she already was Miss Alabama, and she had her man A.J. McCarron already (who is now her husband). But still -- no one would recall her today without Brent Musburger.

On the other hand, everyone would know who these two players are whether Brent Musburger called one of their games or not. As best I can tell, Brent did, indeed call baseball games on CBS radio. He was slated to call games in 1990 on TV, but CBS fired him effective the day after he called the NCAA Men's Basketball Final on April 2, 1990 and replaced him with Jack Buck. 

But I can't find any video of him doing it.

4.  Brent Musburger Loses It over "Busty Heart"

Watch the video to about the 1:20 mark to hear about Tree Rollins and Danny Ainge hating each other and about Rollins taking a bite out of Ainge's hand during a scuffle. Stay to see John Salley in the crown seated next to a blond woman who decides to shake her breasts for the camera. That was Susan Sykes a/k/a Busty Heart.

Sykes took her two seconds of infamy and Musburger's inability to stop laughing and has turned it into a life's work. At the age of 55, now, Busty Heart has her own website -- at, of course, www.bustyheart.com -- and you can see videos of her using her 44H breasts to smash bricks, crush cans, and bust watermelons. 

No kidding.

That's disturbing. Go to the website, though, to see video from Today where Kathie Lee Gifford can't stop laughing either.

Something less disturbing...please:

It's Scooter Gennett as a child, looking like someone you'd call Scooter. The Brewers almost certainly tried to find a trade partner willing to take Scooter on as a bench part this offseason since they have said already that Jonathan Villar will be their starting second baseman this year. 

Having found no takers as of this writing, Gennett is still on the Brewers. I'm not quite sure why the team did not decide simply to non-tender him, but I guess they have hope that he either will bring something in trade during the season or that he could develop further. My guess is that he will no longer be a Brewer in the very near future, one way or the other.

5. Brent Musburger Forlorn over UGA TD

So, I can't get a video of just this play to embed, so here's a 12-minute highlight package. You honestly had to hear more than just one play, though, to get the feel. Last fall, Georgia and South Carolina pushed their game in Columbia to Sunday from Saturday due to Hurricane Matthew. It was an entirely out of sync game. Watching college football on a Sunday afternoon felt weird.

Listening to Brent Musburger and Jesse Palmer making mistakes all day -- things like Musburger calling UGA quarterback Jacob Eason by the name "Jason", or pronouncing Quincy Mauger's name wrong after Mauger made a huge deal about it being Haitian and pronounced "Mo-zhay" even after Jesse Palmer corrected him.

More annoyingly, though, Musburger spent more of the game worried about the spread -- South Carolina was a 7-1/2 to 8-1/2 point underdog -- than anything else. This was especially shown to be true near the end of the game. Go to the 11-minute mark of the video. South Carolina scored a TD to pull within 7 with a minute-and-a-half to go -- and Brent was excited for that. He must have had money on Carolina to cover. At any rate, South Carolina kicked an onside kick, and Terry Godwin ran it back for a TD.

Brent sounded like someone had run over his puppy. I wasn't the only one to notice.

Something that is the opposite of dejected was me when I got this package and found an awesome poster book from 1985 looking up at me.

$3.75 was big money in 1985! I remember those "Scholastic Book Club" order forms from that time, and getting something that was $3.75 was a major investment. I'd usually bottom feed or try to find something for a dollar or less -- mainly because I couldn't afford such frivolities as books at that point. If I wanted to read, I needed to go to the library and find something to read. I did that often, to be fair.

Anyway, getting back to this poster book, inside was a great Cecil Cooper "poster"

Coooooooop!

Coop's swing was smooth and as silky as they came. He was not a patient hitter, to be fair, but damn he could hit.

Many thanks go to Angus for the great cards and, legitimately, to Brent Musburger for his lifetime of commentating. When he was on top of his game back in the 1980s and 1990s, he was one of the best.

Happy New Year with Shoebox Legends

Over the past year, I've started keeping a new binder. The label on the binder is called "Random Cards I Like," and I started it because I did not have a good place to put cards that weren't Brewers. So, stuff like the Malcolm Mitchell printing plate that Wes/JBF sent me went in there, as did the T206 and the John Norwood Bowman parallel that Kenny/Zippy Zappy sent. 

I was not expecting that I would add tons of cards to this binder, but a recent package that I received has led me to reevaluate that position. Shane from Shoebox Legends sent me a PWE that, at first, looked like any other PWE. It had some protective cards, and behind those were, of course, Brewers.

Let's see those first:



This is already an incredibly fantastic PWE. I have no grievances with a PWE that features a 1994 Pinnacle Museum Collection card -- especially of the late Darryl Hamilton. Being an optimist, I see any PWE with a 1995 Bazooka card of Dave Nilsson as half full. Then, including the 2007 Bowman Heritage Carlos Corporan in that PWE -- sometimes I wonder how much you guys read these wantlists/wishlists on my website, but this card showing up shows me Shane probably did.

But it seems very unlikely that a high-number short-print from Topps Heritage of anyone -- not just Ryan Braun -- would find its way to me. That just makes me smile.

If Shane had stopped to take a breath here, he would have been nearly marked for immortality. 

Can anyone other than Shane figure out where this is going?

You all know I love music. I've probably mentioned once or twice that I have a few real favorites. One of those real favorites is Pearl Jam, who have put out songs called "Grievance," "1/2 Full," "Wishlist," "Smile," "Breath," and "Immortality." Yes, it is a contrived way to write a post, but sometimes you have to go with it because it makes sense.

Eddie Vedder is a big baseball fan -- very much a Cubs fan, of course, with his Chicago upbringing. This past summer, they played two shows at Fenway Park and followed it up two weeks later with two shows at Wrigley Field. In conjunction with these two shows, Pearl Jam put out some baseball cards. Shane apparently got a pack or two and shared these with me:



Hawaiian Boom Gaspar joined Pearl Jam as an unofficial member in 2002. Even though he has played on tour with the band and recorded with the band continually since that time, he still is not listed as an official member for whatever legal reasons that may be involved. Of course, after 15 years, he's "basically" a member. I remember when he really was added -- on Riot Act -- and one of the songs that really features him is "Love Boat Captain," which dealt with the Roskilde tragedy:

This is a song that has really grown on me. When it was new, I wasn't really keen on it. But, the lyrics really make the song. Once I learned the lyrics and heard the message, it really grabbed me. Fifteen years later, it grabs me more.

Matt Cameron has been Pearl Jam's drummer since 1998 after Jack Irons (originally of the Red Hot Chili Peppers) left the band due to what Irons's Wikipedia biography called Irons's dissatisfaction with touring. Cameron had worked with Pearl Jam before in the band Temple of the Dog thanks to his work as Soundgarden's drummer. Every so often, Pearl Jam will play the song -- sometimes joined by Chris Cornell as happened in September of 2011 at Alpine Valley in East Troy, Wisconsin:

Damn Chris Cornell can still wail.

Vedder had to love the opportunity to hit the cages in both Chicago and Boston. If you know the history of Pearl Jam, you probably know that Vedder was living in San Diego working part-time at a gas station when he got a demo tape from his basketball buddy Jack Irons -- there's Jack again. Vedder laid down the vocal tracks to what has been called in the PJ lore as the Momma-Son trilogy: "Alive," "Once," and "Footsteps."

Both "Alive" and "Once" made PJ's debut album, Ten. "Footsteps," however, ended up as a B-side and eventually made its way onto the Lost Dogs album.

A far more detailed story on this whole backstory is available at Two Feet Thick, a Pearl Jam fansite. Pearl Jam has some of the most loyal fans around -- people who buy everything in site and go to all the shows. The band rewards its fan club members in the Ten Club with preferred seating in the front rows of each venue along with Christmas bonus vinyl and early availability of bootlegs from the soundboard recordings. That website is quite the deep dive, but it is not uncommon in the Pearl Jam world.

 

Mike McCready helped Pearl Jam to form thanks to his friendship with Stone Gossard. McCready was in a Seattle band called Shadow which broke up in 1988. He got disenchanted with being in a band and went to community college for a while before seeing a Stevie Ray Vaughan concert and getting back into playing guitar.

The story behind "Reach Down" is that it was written as part of the Temple of the Dog sessions that McCready, Gossard, and Ament (and later Vedder) took part in with Chris Cornell and Matt Cameron. McCready was playing a solo for this song in the studio -- and it was epic. Over four minutes long, and McCready lost his headphone monitor midway through the solo...so he had no idea what the backing track sounded like while playing. 



Without Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament, there would be no Pearl Jam, of course. And if Andrew Wood, the lead singer of Gossard's and Ament's previous band Mother Love Bone, had not overdosed on heroin, there would also be no Pearl Jam.

The song that Pearl Jam plays to serve tribute to Andrew Wood and Mother Love Bone is Chloe Dancers/Crown of Thorns. I got to see the band play this song with their regular producer, Brendan O'Brien, at a show here in Atlanta at Lakewood Amphitheater in 2003. O'Brien lives here in Atlanta, and as a result (and as Eddie Vedder noted in the 2001 show here at Philips Arena), the band is very familiar with my town. 

These cards are just awesome. The huge smile on my face as I opened this envelope was evident to my wife -- she actually asked what it was that I was looking at that put such a big smile on my face. After trying to convince her that it was because she was in my office -- it was a valiant effort -- I showed her these cards. She knows I'm a huge Pearl Jam fanboy, or at least used to be. 

I've thought about trying to collect the full sets of these cards. It looks like it may be a bit expensive, though doable. There are full sets available from one seller for both Chicago and Boston on eBay -- the cost to get both would be about $350 though. I think I'll stick with just the great cards that Shane sent.

Happy New Year to y'all, and here's to a better year than 2016 for everyone -- even if 2016 was your best year ever.

P-Town Tom's Music

P-Town Tom is a blog world legend when it comes to sending out cards. He's so prolific in sending out cards that I literally had to go back through the posts of cards I've received from him (Here's 1 2 3 4 and 5) to make sure I hadn't used Tom's own profile to mine music for the cards I've gotten from him.

Thankfully, I had not. Also thankfully, I pretty much like the bands Tom feels comfortable enough to share. Indeed, one of those bands is actually a local Atlanta band. So, with no further ado, let's get to the cards and the music!

O.A.R.

O.A.R. is probably my least favorite band on Tom's list. I haven't heard much by one of the other bands, but I've just never been much of an O.A.R. fan. It's a bit too overly emotional -- and not in that emo-style like Bloc Party either. I should like them more, though -- I mean, the band has a saxophonist, after all. 

That said, I did pick the one song by O.A.R. that I distinctly recall hearing on whatever alternative music source that I was listening to back in 2006 -- probably XM Radio's Ethel, if I had to guess. It's all very yearning. I want the overly attractive couple in the video to stop fighting. Maybe that would stop all the weird mold from growing everywhere. I could hope. It just hurts to watch that happen.



Yes, I was kidding about all that earnestness I was feeling. Fleer, though, was not kidding about its emotion-laden set called, appropriately enough, Emotion-XL in 1996. 

I have to argue with this premise, however, in that neither Attack nor Studying nor Towering is actually an emotion. Attack is an action or a noun, but I have never felt "Attack".  Under attack, maybe...but never just "Attack." 

I mean, when is the last time you asked someone, "How do you feel today?" and they responded, "Oh, I'm Attack." Or, even, "I'm Towering today. How about you?" Same goes for studying -- it's something you do, not feel.

Grammarman, to the rescue!

Night Terrors of 1927

Here's the other band I've really never listened to on Tom's list. Now, I've heard of the band's guitarist's previous band (Rilo Kiley), and I've heard of their collaborators Tegan and Sara, but not too much from this band. The collaboration with Tegan and Sara, called "When You Were Mine," is pretty good, though the lead singer sounds a bit like Brandon Flowers of the Killers to me.

I didn't expect to get certified autographs of a Texas Ranger from Tom. He sent these two cards to me in the wake of the Brewers claiming Ramirez off waivers from the Cubs on May 31, 2016. I got this package from Tom the next week. Then, the day after I scanned the cards in and got them into my scan folder, Ramirez was claimed off waivers from the Brewers by the Twins. 

I guess I should pass these along to a Twins collector.

In his Brewer career -- and unless he comes back at some point in the future -- Ramirez threw 1-2/3 innings, allowing 2 hits -- both home runs -- while striking out three. In other words, I have more Neil Ramirez certified autographs than he had innings with Milwaukee. Cool!

Manchester Orchestra

Here's that local Atlanta band that is in Tom's favorite band list. The once-powerful alternative radio station in Atlanta, 99X, played this band all the time back in 2008 and 2009. 99X broke Collective Soul and Butch Walker (and his band, Marvelous 3) back in the 1990s, but with alternative music and radio generally waning in the past decade, 99X fell on hard times.

Thankfully, Manchester Orchestra has found a fairly decent audience worldwide. But, they are about as Mancunian as I am -- both of us like a lot of Manchester's music (and I like Manchester United, though that fact could be a fight-starter amongst Mancunians split between the Red of United and the Blue of Citeh er, City).

Speaking of Red, here's current lefty setup pitcher Will Smith -- who is also, mind you, a Georgian (originally from Newnan). Will came over to the Brewers in exchange for Nori Aoki in the 2013 off-season. Considering the work that Smith has put in since (3.10 ERA in 139-1/3 innings with 58 walks and 184 strikeouts), just imagine how good the Royals bullpen would have been last year having added that arm to the mix. Yikes.

For what it's worth, Smith is in red here because he was drafted by the Angels in 2008 out of community college before being traded with Sean O'Sullivan for Alberto Callaspo.

Imagine Dragons

I might have mentioned before here, and maybe I haven't. But, Imagine Dragons consistently puts out very catchy, lyrically interesting songs. This one, "Radioactive", "Demons," "I Bet My Life" -- all of them get stuck in my head with frightening regularity. This particular video having been "inspired" but an artist is particularly intriguing as well. Clearly a surrealist painter.  

Clearly.

Strangely, the lead singer, Dan Reynolds, looks like Blake Shelton to me.

Nathan Kirby does not look like Blake Shelton, but I'd guess that the Midlothian, Virginia, native sounds a lot more like Blake Shelton than Nevada native Reynolds does. 

Of course, Reynolds didn't have to go through Tommy John Surgery to be able to sing for Imagine Dragons. Kirby, however, blew out his elbow after just five appearances with the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers. His rehab is going well. 

I have mixed feelings about him at this point, since he gave his ulnar collateral ligament to his college baseball team's cause.  That baseball team was the Virginia Cavaliers, and Kirby helped beat my Vanderbilt Commodores in the 2015 College World Series by throwing the final two innings of the third and final game of that World Series.

Still, I hope he ends up healthy and helping the Brewers soon. It's the least he could do in my selfish little world. 

Thankfully, Tom isn't nearly as selfish as I am and sent me this great package of cards. Rest assured, Tom, that I have many, many Conlon cards that will be coming your way.

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.