Chasing Kids

My wife and I do not have children, and we probably never will for a number of reasons. Not the least of those reasons relate to the fact that we rather like peace and quiet around our house. I'll admit, as well, that I'd rather not be 63 years old and sending a kid off to college -- which would be the case if we had a newborn show up in our lives in the next 12 months (I turn 45 in a couple of weeks).

There are times I would like to have a child, though. I enjoy working with kids. I've tutored one of the boys from across the street in, of all things, math. I coached high school debate one year, and even helped coach a little league baseball team. I like doing those things.

I feel like I'd probably enjoy going to minor league baseball games more with a kid as well. Here in the Atlanta area, we have the Atlanta Braves, of course, but also the Class A Rome Braves are just an hour and a half away and the Triple-A Gwinnett Braves are 35 minutes away -- or about 7 minutes further than the Atlanta Braves new stadium (for reference, getting to Turner Field would take about 45 minutes...).

With both the local Atlanta Braves and my Milwaukee Brewers both in mid-rebuild, my attention turns more regularly to minor league action. I have started getting more interested in Bowman lately -- even buying in for Crackin' Wax's Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects case break. I also decided to buy a hobby box of 2016 Topps Heritage Minors from Blowout Cards to feed this new interest.

This box seemed fated to come my way. This was the first card out of the first pack I opened:

Vanderbilt's own Dansby Swanson in his Mississippi Braves outfit looks suspiciously like he plays for the Milwaukee Braves. You know, except for that whole Atlanta stealing the Braves after the 1965 season and all. 

All in all, it wasn't a bad box. It could have been better, of course -- they always could be better and, say, have a hot pack of all the printing plates for all the Brewers farmhands in the set. But let's take a look at the highlights of the box that were not Brewers.

First, each box contains one autograph. Here's the one I got:

Braves hot box! Braves Hot Box! Allard made it to Rome last season at the tender age of 18 -- he was born August 13, 1997. I think most of us card collectors probably have t-shirts older than Kolby. Allard was the Braves 1st round pick out of San Clemente High School in 2015. I've never been to San Clemente, but I have been to Dana Point, which is only a few miles away north on the Coast Highway.

I also got one relic:

A freaking Cardinal? That's not cool.

But wait -- this one made it to the majors last season and, in 12 games (5 starts) put up a 1.57 ERA in 46 innings while striking out 52 (though walking 23). Not bad for a 21-year-old kid who turned 22 on August 29. And, not bad to get the #7 prospect (Baseball America) or #10 (Baseball Prospectus) or #7 post-season (MLB Pipeline) as a relic. Though I have to admit that this Topps photo makes Reyes look much more Caucasian that every other photo around:

Yeah, are we sure that's Reyes?

Okay, moving on to the short-prints and serial numbered cards:

The Innings Pitched Leaders card -- also known as, "guys who their team thinks very little of" -- is serial numbered to 25, or 3 less than the number of years that Pat Dean will have been on this earth on his next birthday in May. Both Dean and Rogers pitched for the Twins last year, with Rogers proving to be a decent bullpen arm and Dean looking like he was throwing batting practice (13 HRs allowed in 67-1/3 innings...not good). Bleier pitched reasonably well in limited work out of the Yankee pen last year as well -- though, of course, he turns thirty this coming year.

Jacob Faria's card is serial numbered out of 99. He's a Tampa Bay Rays pitcher who made it to Durham for half the year last year at the tender age of 22. He could probably use a bit more seasoning in Durham this year, which the Rays may give him through June to keep him from arbitration for an extra year.

The other three, including new White Sox star-in-waiting Yoan Moncada, are short prints.

So, what Brewers did I get?

Yes, I'm cheating a bit to have Mauricio Dubon in this group since he just joined the organization from Boston in the Tyler Thornburg trade. Dubon is likely to start the year in Biloxi with the Shuckers, though his advanced hitting ability he displayed last year could push him to Colorado. With Dubon being just a month older than Arcia, it is possible that the Brewers could push Dubon a bit to get him to start playing some second base rather than shortstop so as to get Dubon ready to play next to Arcia for the next 18 years. 

That's being very hopeful, of course. That also would mean that Jonathan Villar would move positions -- probably to third or centerfield from second base, where the team is saying currently that Villar will be the starter. 

The guy here I am really, really rooting for -- okay, I'm really rooting for all of these guys...they are Brewers, but this guy is really a favorite -- is Oluwademilade Oluwadamilola "Demi" Orimoloye. Demi was born on January 6, 1997, in Nigeria. His dad is an architect, so he could afford to move his family out of Nigeria if he chose. They did so when Demi was just eighteen months old and moved to Orléans, Ontario -- just outside Ottawa and just across the Ottawa river from Québec. 

If he makes it to the majors, he'll be the first Nigerian-born -- and perhaps the first African-born -- major leaguer. He's got a long way to go -- he struggled last year in Rookie ball in Helena, slashing just .205/.293/.324 in 247 plate appearances. Of course, he is only 19 years old.

Finally, there's David Denson. For what it's worth, he started out like a house of fire in 2016. In his first 38 games, he had 3 HRs and was slashing .306/.388/.455. That was built, though, on an unsustainable BABIP of .409. In his next 55 games at Wisconsin, he hit .178/.285/.325 on a BABIP of .225. He's 21 years old and, in his four minor league seasons -- only one of which has been spent above rookie ball -- Denson has hit .229/.338/.368. He's a good story, and the team's treatment of him as just another player rather than being "the guy who came out" is commendable. Still, at this point, Denson probably is nothing more than organizational filler -- even at the relatively barren position in the organization of first base.

In the end, I find myself liking the Heritage Minors product. That's probably because of the eternal optimism and the analytical attempts in my head at projecting who will be good and who will not that springs with the youth of the minor leaguers. I'm not a big prospect hound by any stretch of the imagination -- and, by that, I mean I'm not looking to turn a profit on these cards by hoarding some player's cards -- but I really enjoyed opening these.

I guess the minor leagues is probably the counter to the cynicism I feel for Topps and its efforts in producing cards of major leaguers. I mean, I don't love the set enough to collect it as a set, but it whets my appetite for more minor league sets.

Trade Bait from the Card Show

As I mentioned Wednesday, I went to a card show a couple of weeks ago two days after Christmas. I hit the jackpot as far as Paul Molitor cards were concerned.  With the smaller show, though, I had a bit more money that I'd budgeted available for me to spend. 

So, before I left the vendor who had those Molitor and Yount binders, I checked out what else he had. In the middle of his table, he had a bunch of random small sets for the low price of just $2 each. There were a ton of minor league team sets -- none of which really caught my eye. The seller and I had a good laugh about how even minor league sets were overproduced in the late 1980s and early 1990s while I flipped through those.

I stopped, though, when I started finding some cards that interested me.  For instance, I knew for a fact that I needed both of the cards below for my player collections:



While the Cooper might show up somewhere in a dime or quarter box -- and maybe I could have waited out life for that to happen fortuitously with the Carter -- I very well might have agreed to pay $2 for these two cards together.  Instead, I got the complete 33 card set for $2. So, if you're looking for that elusive Bill Buckner card, or the George Foster, or the Tony Armas...or, more likely, George Brett, Rod Carew, Johnny Bench, Steve Garvey, Carlton Fisk, Pete Rose, or Mike Schmidt -- well, let me know you want it.  The link above is to the Trading Card Database set listing, so take a look.

Another of the $2 sets was a set that really had nothing for me. It is a ten-card set from Corn Flakes/Kellogg's and Sportflics in 1992. Of course, I am drawn to food issues and oddballs like a moth is drawn to a bright light, so I picked it up.



Bill Madlock is listed on the Dodgers, even though he spent only parts of 3 seasons with them (the end of 1985, all of 1986, and the beginning of 1987) and was never an all-star with the team (he was an all-star once with the Cubs in 1974 and twice with the Pirates in 1981 and 1983). Once again, if you're looking for any of the cards in that set, let me know.

The next bunch of cards up for grabs is hardly a rare set, but it's one I've never had in my hands. 

Here's the checklist for that set from the back of the King's card:

Disappointingly, I received two Bucky Dents and zero Jim Spencers. But the rest were there, including the great photo variation of Hall of Famer Rich Gossage:

Goose looks far less intimidating there -- without the massive fu-manchu mustache and with a smile instead of a snarl on his face. 

Still, if you're interested in some or all of that set, let me know.

The last two $2 sets were insert sets from the late 1990s.

The first one is the "Sandlot Heroes" insert set from the 1999 Pacific Invincible set. The set I got includes both variations for each player, so I have both of the Chippers, the Madduxes, the Ripkens, the Big Hurts, the Jeters, and the Piazzas, to name a few. If you need something from this insert set, let me know.

The second one is visually far more jarring than the first...

At first, I thought this might be Derek Jeter's first appearance here on Off Hiatus, but then I realized that I've posted his cards a few times before through repacks, other trade bait posts and in the 2014 Gint-A-Cuffs.  Still, I have never laid my paws on any of the 1999 Pacific Invincible Seismic Force insert set before this show, and now I have the entire set available for trade -- even if it does look like the same players are in each of these two insert sets.

And Finally

A video highlighting the 15 stupidest lottery winners (by one person's account) is probably appropriate for me as well. 

You see, during most of 2015, I didn't buy any unopened packs. This was a conscious decision for me. I'm not much of a set collector right now -- maybe I will be in the future, but I am not currently as chasing all the Milwaukee Brewers cards and oddballs I don't have is more than enough for me to chase. So, I find my money can be better spent loading up on COMC and Just Commons orders (I made my first order just before Christmas...spent $80 and got over 400 cards in the package...) rather than buying and ripping packs.

But, I wanted a special birthday gift -- something a bit out of my ordinary card sorting.  

So, I bought a hobby box of....

Bowman Draft. I mean, after all, the Brewers are rebuilding, so Bowman sets will be providing me with my hope for the future. The one guy I'm really rooting for is Demi Orimoloye, as I have mentioned before, in that I'd love for the Brewers to have the first African-born major leaguer in the Nigerian-born Orimoloye. I'm not going for an official PC for him until he gets to the majors, but I'm going to try to set myself up to make the PC in the meantime -- trying to get two cards for him from each set and the like.

Now, since it was a hobby box, I've got a ton of those cards available for trade as well. I didn't make much effort to differentiate between refractors and normal chrome cards unless they were colored differently.  Here are the inserts and my one autograph:

For inserts and that "Bowman Initiation" card -- which I think is a case hit -- it felt like every other card was an Andrew Benintendi card. I'd have happily traded the Benintendi Initiation for a Trent Clark Initiation card, but I am guessing that one of the Red Sox fans out there would love a little Woo Pig Sooey in their lives.

Of course, I see Walker Buehler's "Fantasy Impact" card, and think -- man, I wish that the Brewers had picked just ONE of the Vandy Boys so I could have had an excuse to have a minor leaguer PC. Oddly, one of my college roommates has the last name of Buehler and is a Vanderbilt grad as well. He even has his own Wikipedia page for his renown as an "all-time great" in Magic: The Gathering.  So, there's that.

Anyway, let me know if you have interest in any of the cards I've shown or mentioned here that aren't Brewers or Gary Carter. If we've traded before, well, then the cards are yours. If we have not traded before, that's cool too -- the cards are yours and I look forward to trading with you.

Be sure to e-mail me after staking a claim here as well to let me know your e-mail address and your mailing address.  Thanks for reading, and enjoy your weekend.