I Need Therapy

Just before the end of the year, a package from Adam at Addiction As Therapy showed up in my mailbox. It contained a plethora of great cards. I'm going to showcase a few of them and use this time writing simply as "therapy" for my collecting. I have no idea where it's going, but y'all are coming along.

There are things about collecting cards these days versus my original days back in the 1970s and 1980s that I like a lot. Back in those days, you had one shot at what the big companies released as card sets. Sure, there would be random other stuff -- 5x7 photos from Topps, card-sized stickers from Fleer, Donruss's Action All-Stars -- but those were really oddballs. 

The real action was each company's flagship, eponymous set.  

These days, it seems like it is a rare week when a new set doesn't come out from Topps or Panini that is available in stores, and it is indeed a rare week that Topps doesn't issue something new. Sure, unless you have unlimited funds, you will have to pick and choose what you collect. But the options these days are many. It's hell for a completist, but it's fun to chase. 



Of course you can't chase everything. The feature of collecting today is also its defect in many respects. Trying to catalog what a "complete" team set each year would look like is tough. All the parallels and inserts get mind-numbing. In that regard, it's almost worse than the "overproduction" era of the late 1980s/early 1990s. 

I worry about the hobby with things like this. It makes me wonder whether cards will still exist in, say, 2035. With how focused on the high-end sets Topps has become, and with how much of a cash cow Topps Now had to have been, it begs the question of how long Topps will continue to issue a Flagship. I could see them continuing Heritage and Archives for the nostalgic among us, but will they continue putting out a new eponymous set? 

And, how much longer will we go with only one card issuer? How long will it take MLB to bring card printing in-house when it sees the kind of cash that Topps generates or, conversely, when Topps fails financially and ends up leaving MLB without a card company? Could that happen?

Maybe the question is, "why wouldn't it?"

After all, Donruss looked like a pretty solid company. Now, its rotting corpse is being used to put out chrome cards without logos and with discolored jerseys. 

Going stream of consciousness on you and speaking of the future....

Here's Future. Perhaps the best comment about this video is, "This dude be speaking cursive."

Anyway, just remember, the future isn't always bright. At least not in a dystopic world. That's probably why I could use some therapy. It's tough to stay positive sometimes, especially when it seems that the world has turned against people who value intelligence, or expertise, or thoughtfulness. 

Is our world's anti-intellectual bent (I say world because, well, look at Brexit and Europe generally) just a phase? Or is it a dumbing down of the world that will be tough to reverse?

Who knows.




On happier thoughts about the future, perhaps in 2035 we will be celebrating the use of the 1994 set on Heritage and Topps will have dragged out the 1979 design for still more cards for Archives on multiple occasions. While the 1994 design is nothing special, I'm in favor of having the 2035 Archives set feature 100 more cards with the 1979 design.

Of course, will I still be collecting in 2035? 

If so, will I still be looking for another Corey Hart Topps Heritage card that I don't have, or some Jonathan Lucroy Archives short print from 2015 -- to complete a team set or a player collection? 

Probably. 

Well, I say probably. I assume a lot there. I assume I'll still be alive at the age of 63. 

I assume I'll still be collecting.

I assume I'll still be collecting in the same way that I'm collecting now. 

I'm hopeful that there will be better technological advances available then such that we will be able to automate some of the processes that we do manually now -- like, say, a set release that comes with an automatic filter to sort the cards however you want and then with photo recognition to check them off the checklist when you have them.

That is, if there are still physical cards being issued.



Just wait, though, till the 2015 and 2016 card designs end up on Archives. Is there any rule that Topps has about how old a design has to be to appear on Archives? If not, why haven't we seen some cards echoing the 2007 design? Or the 2000 design? I mean, the year 2000 is now 17 years ago. Those cards will be seniors in high school this fall. 

On a similar note, I have baseball hats older than that. In fact, I have a Brewers trucker-style hat with the mesh back from 1987 that my grandad used to wear. I still wear it from time to time. It's in good shape, so why not? 

Is there any point to these thoughts? Not particularly. Sometimes, it's better just to let the words flow and see what happens. These cards, this blog, these relationships we all have with others online -- all of it is what makes things fun. Just like any gathering of people, sometimes things will get one or more of us really upset. No one will like everything. 

It's tough to be zen. It's tough to be quiet. It's tough to be contemplative. It's easier to go through mood swings, to be upset and share that upset with everyone, to pop off when something seems off. I know -- I do all of those things, and being loud, upset, and popping off is far closer to my default position.

Part of me thinks that my job as a lawyer has done this to me. I'm always coming up with counterpoints to the points made by others. I'm perpetually trying to convince others that, sure, maybe J.J. Hardy did use that piece of wood in his card as part of a bat and it's not from a random 2x4 from Home Depot. 

Another part of my job is to remain calm, though -- to appear unflappable, unemotional, poker-faced. When something bad happens, the response isn't to go nuts, or to cry -- it's to think. It's to try to make things right. 

All that together makes it tough for me not to engage Topps from time to time -- to call them out when they ignore teams. I want Topps to be around in 2035 (I want me to be around then too), and I see too many occasions where there does not appear to be a plan with them. It seems short-sighted to give short shrift to the Brewers or the Twins or the Astros earlier in the decade or the Rays simply because there might seem to be fewer fans of those teams that buy cards. Maybe it's that those folks don't buy cards from Topps because, well, Topps does very little to cater to them. 

Again, that's all a discussion I've engaged in before. 

Maybe just a little typing therapy helps sometimes. Just like collecting can be an addiction, it can be therapy too.

Adam, many thanks for the fantastic cards. I hope you didn't mind tracking through all this randomness.

Trade with Alex of Chavez Ravining

Because I am so far behind on trade posts, Memorabilia Monday will return next week.

Earlier today, Alex from the excellent blog Chavez Ravining posted about the 2014 Turkey Reds that I sent to him late last month.  His post was highly apologetic about his not having sent out cards to me yet.  I am glad to report to him that he was incorrect -- at least I certainly believe he was (and please, if I am wrong, do not take it personally if you were the person who sent these cards and not Alex!).

Then again, I fell so far behind on trade posts that I had to start making folders on my computer to store the scans of the cards I've gotten from people.  There are so many incredible, sharing people in the online baseball card collecting community, and this blog has introduced me to a few of them.  I just hope that I am, in fact, noting correctly who sent me what.

At any rate, now that Alex isn't sure whether he sent me these cards or not, I'm starting to doubt whether my sorting system on my computer is correct.  I sure hope that it is, because otherwise Alex is getting credit for one excellent group of cards:

 

 

Let's start with the Gypsy Queen.  I didn't have any of these cards -- especially the excellent Paul Molitor, with the big dirt streak down the front of his jersey -- so I was excited to get these.  I'm on the fence about these cards at this point.  On the one hand, they are a nice change from the Allen & Ginter, but, at the same time, how many different throwback cigarette-card designs do we really need?  I will still collect the Brewers and my player collections from these sets, but probably not much more than that.

Next, let's go for the no-logos-allowed cards:

Alex was kind enough to send two Seguras -- either by luck or by the recognition that a person who collects both the team and the player needs two of a card to call the job done on a set.  These are the only Donruss I own.  I'm okay with the blank hats when the card is coming with a loaf of bread.  To buy a pack of these in a store is a bridge too far for me.

Now, it's time to prospect:

The obvious eye-catcher here is the Prince Fielder Bowman Chrome Rookie Card.  Shiny, fat vegan chrome.  Yummy.  

Otherwise, from the bottom:  Sollmann was a 10th round pick in 2004 out of Notre Dame after his senior year.  He made it to AAA in 2008 at the age of 26.  He's now back at Notre Dame (du Lac) as of 2013 as an academic counselor for student athletes. 

Ramirez was a 4th round pick in 2011 out of Cal State-Fullerton.  He's at AA Huntsville this year at the age of 24.  He really needs to come up King-Kong large to have a career in baseball at this point.

Rodriguez was a 32nd round pick in 2011 for Milwaukee and a 17th round pick in 2012 for Milwaukee from the University of Maryland.  I said Ramirez needs to be huge this year to have a career?  Rodriguez is 24 and in high A ball.  He has to go miles to be in line to make AAA.

Tucker Neuhaus was a 2013 2nd round draft pick out of high school in Tampa whose injuries cost him being selected in the first round.  He spent last year in the Arizona Rookie league, and it seems pretty likely that he'll be in a short-season situation again this year after struggling a bit with the bat and the glove last year at both SS and 3B.

Taylor Jungmann was Milwaukee's 1st round pick in 2011 out of the University of Texas.  He's currently at Huntsville in AA repeating the level from last year -- he needs to work on control, certainly, but he does strike some guys out.  Another guy who needs a step forward this year.

Finally, Nelson was a 2nd round pick in 2010 out of the University of Alabama.  He made a brief 10 inning cameo last season in Milwaukee, and is pitching currently at AAA Nashville.  He's a big strikeout pitcher whose control can desert him at times, so the hope is that he will prove that he deserves the call up to Milwaukee through his results in Nashville.  Lord knows that the Milwaukee bullpen is pretty thin.

And wow, I just geeked out and went down the prospect primrose path.

There were a number of other great cards in the packet as well -- a bunch of the red Target cards and some Topps base set that I needed.  Let me close with the cool inserts and liquor-foils:

Gary Sheffield is not my favorite player.  Anyone who admits to throwing balls away to try to get traded qualifies as a$$hole material in my book -- and I don't care that he was just a little baby 21-year-old or something at the time.

Thanks Alex -- I do hope that I have it correct and you sent these.  They are very much appreciated!

Rollie Fingers: Contemplating

I'm a sucker for an oddball card.  I love the scratch-offs, the inserts, the food issues -- I've been looking and hoping that I would find some company -- whether at gas stations, on cereal boxes, or with pizzas -- doing a baseball card giveaway somehow.  

I guess it's the difficulty in finding packs of cards any place but the Targets and Wal-Marts of the world.

The reason these cards appeal to me is the reality of providing something different from the base set.  All of that is a long way to getting to this gem of a card from Donruss in 1983.

The look on Rollie's face is priceless.  The photographer either caught him checking out some young hottie in the stands during one of Rollie's last seasons in the bigs -- and Rollie realizing that the young hottie was probably young enough to be his daughter -- or Rollie is about to belt out an aria from La Boheme. 

Brewer fans were lucky to see Rollie during his MVP/Cy Young year in the strike-shortened 1981. Fingers also figures prominently in Daniel Okrent's excellent book 9 Innings, pitching three innings to close out a vital game in June for Milwaukee in 1982.  Rollie wasn't able to pitch in the World Series that year, and I am convinced that he would have made a difference.

But the questioning look on his face, the contemplation evident here -- it's appearing all very philosophical and deep -- but Rollie eventually and rightfully made it to the Hall of Fame.