New Stickers and Cards from Mark Hoyle

I've been the recipient of multiple envelopes of fantastic cards from Mark Hoyle over the two-plus years I've been blogging. So, for post 499 for Off Hiatus Baseball, it is appropriate that this post features...new cards and stickers?

Yeah, it isn't appropriate at all considered Mark's reputation around the blogworld for sending vintage cards. 

Still, the set this year features the 1967 Topps design. If you know anything about Mark and his collection, you'll know that one of his main collecting interests is the 1967 Boston Red Sox "Impossible Dream" team. 

It sounds crazy to modern ears, but the Red Sox of 1967 provided the team's first winning record since 1958 -- a nine-year drought -- and featured a three-team race in the unified ten-team American League involving the Detroit Tigers and Minnesota Twins that finished with with the Red Sox winning the league by just one game over those two teams. After 1967, the Red Sox would not have a losing season until 1983.

Even crazier sounding to modern ears is the idea that, in 1966, the Red Sox drew just 811,172 fans -- a number that more than doubled in 1967 to 1,727,832. That attendance -- again, crazy to modern ears with everyone drawing 2 millions fans, basically -- set a record for Fenway.

Let's learn a little more about that 1967 team through strange parallels drawn with the 2016 Milwaukee Brewers -- who will almost certainly not spring out of nowhere and win the National League this year but, then again, you just never know. Just look at 1967.

The Superstars: Carl Yastrzemski and Ryan Braun

Whether you like him, hate him, or are agnostic toward him, there is no denying the fact that Ryan Braun is the best player on the Brewers currently. Similarly, there is no denying the fact that Carl Yastrzemski was the Red Sox best player in 1967 -- and it was not even close. Granted, Yaz was in his age 27 year and was simply transcendent in 1967 --more like Braun in 2011. It's not that much coincidence that Braun and Yaz each won MVPs in those seasons.

But Yaz in 1967 was much better than Braun in 2011.  Indeed, if we look only to post-World War II seasons, Yaz's 1967 season by WAR was the second best. Yaz racked up an incredible 12.4 WAR in 1967 -- literally equal to Babe Ruth in 1927 -- and just 0.1 of a win behind the best season after World War II, which belongs to Steve Carlton's ridiculous 1972 season.  For comparison, Barry Bonds's best two years came at ages 36 and 37 -- post steroids -- in which he had 11.8 WAR.

Braun has never been anywhere near that good, in many respects because Braun's WAR gets very little help from his defense.

The Managers: Dick Williams and Craig Counsell

Counsell is in his first full season as a manager in Milwaukee, though he managed for much of last year after the horrendous start to the Brewers' season caused the Brewers to fire Ron Roenicke. 

Dick Williams had managed only in the minor leagues prior to 1967 and, when appointed, the job was his first major league opportunity. Williams took the opportunity by the reins and ran with it. He instilled discipline on his team -- drilling the team in fundamentals for hours and requiring players to play for the team and not for themselves. It clearly worked.

Traded Away: Don McMahon and Jean Segura

Segura's trade to Arizona for what seem to be parts and further trade bait. There really is no good analogy in 1967 Red Sox story, mainly because teams didn't really rebuild in the way that teams try to rebuild these days. By the time that Don McMahon was traded, it was June 2 and the Red Sox could tell that they might have a winning team. 

McMahon was traded for Jerry Adair -- a thirty-year-old utility infielder who did well for Boston in his 89 games.

The Closers (?): John Wyatt and Jeremy Jeffress

Word out of Arizona is that Jeremy Jeffress and Will Smith will split the closer duties in Milwaukee this year, and that the decision on who will close from night to night will depend on matchups. I'm not so sure -- I think Smith will probably end up as the closer so long as his left-handedness doesn't preclude that from happening. It is nice, though that Jeremy Jeffress is straight Suttoning.

Wyatt saved 20 games for the 1967 Red Sox. While it wasn't his final season, it was certainly his last hurrah as a closer. He appeared in 60 games, closing 43, and finished with a 10-7 record and a 2.60 ERA (3.24 FIP) in 93-1/3 innings.

The Starting Pitchers: Jim Lonborg and Matt Garza

Garza needs to have a major bounceback season this year if the Brewers are going to surprise anyone. Okay, let's be clear: if Garza is doing reasonably well by time July rolls around, I'm quite certain that the Brewers would trade him for a bag of balls and some Gatorade mix. 

The same cannot be said for Lonborg. The 1967 Red Sox were not known for the strength of their starting pitching. Only one pitcher -- the 25-year-old Lonborg -- started more than 25 games. Lonborg was a workhorse. He started 39 games, completing 15, and pitching 273-1/3 innings. No one else had more than 181-2/3 (Lee Stange did that). 

Lonborg led the American League in starts with that 39, in Strikeouts with 246, in hit batsman with 19, and in wins with 22. His FIP was 2.95 -- right on par with his 3.16 ERA. For his efforts and based in part on his team's success, he was named the Cy Young Award winner with 18 of 20 voters selecting him. Joe Horlen of the White Sox was better, though, and probably should have won the Cy Young based on the advanced statistics.

Of course, Lonborg never was the same pitcher after that. The closest he came to being that good came in 1974 with Philadelphia -- two years after being traded there by the Milwaukee Brewers with Ken Brett, Ken Sanders, and Earl Stephenson in exchange for John Vukovich, Bill Champion, and Off Hiatus PC Don Money. 

Completing the comparison, the pitcher most like Lonborg at the ages of 27 and 28 was none other than....Matt Garza.

And the circle is unbroken.

Thank you, Mark, for the great cards!

Next time out: Post #500 on Off Hiatus!

Pack Rats are Collectors Too

My mom is a hoarder. She got it from her mother and father, who got married and had their first children during the depression. And it's not like they got rich after the war either -- they lived a hard-scrabble life. That led them to keep stuff because either (a) they might need it some day and they would not want to have gotten rid of something that they might need, or (b) it might be worth money some day.

There is one good side to that for me. It meant that all my cards, magazines, and other tchotchkes that I had as a kid and teen were still in her house. Add in the fact that my younger brother has similar hoarding tendencies and, for a while, collected cards and baseball items because I had done it, and my trip back to the cold, white north allowed me to sort through some things that I had no idea were right there for the taking or that I had thought were long gone.

Now, I only brought back a few random items with me on the plane. I should be getting two or three smaller FedEx boxes shipped to me in a week or so with a bunch of 1980s Brewers items and magazines. I can't wait.

But, for now, here's what I brought back with me.

First, here's a small little pin that I know nothing about other than that it must be from 1954 or before.

This guy on eBay doesn't know much more than I do about it, but he wants $50 for it. His might be in better condition, though. All that said, it was a fun find.

Two more fun finds came in the form of two 1964 Topps Coins. 

The first one is Vic Davalillo. I remember him for his second career for the Los Angeles Dodgers in the late 1970s because he showed up on a 1978 Topps card. Here he is in his second full season (first as a starter) in the major leagues at the age of 27 with Cleveland.

The second coin is Elston Howard. In 1964, he was coming off an MVP season at the age of 34. It's like he got better with age, as in 1964 at 35, he his 15 HR, 94 RMI, and slashed .313/.371/.455.  

Now, all of those items are pretty cool items. But, as much as these are practically family heirlooms, I have no real love for these items. So, I'd love for them to go to a happy home that wants them. So let me know if that is you.

Here's another random item I found in these boxes. This one's personalized:

True gentleman Dick Williams sent me this postcard with a group of cards that I sent him to have autographed. I didn't ask for a postcard, nor did I ask for a personalization, but Mr. Williams was kind enough to give me both.

The rest of the items are absolutely things that I know I did not have as a kid, so these must be items that my younger brother and/or my mother picked up many years ago and kept hoping that they would be worth something someday.

The Brewers give these out for free (I think) like a theater does. As the cover in the lower right-hand corner says, this was from the second homestand of the 2009 season against Arizona and Pittsburgh.

A fun reminder of what these two teams looked like 5 years ago in the form of their rosters:

Wow. Look at the black hole behind the plate in Milwaukee.  Wow.  For the Pirates, I love the fact that the LaRoche boys were on the club at the same time, along with future Brewer Tony Plush a/k/a Nyjer Morgan. 

And those are just a couple of the items I brought back. More tomorrow.