Musical Dodgers, Accompanied by Brewers

Everyone knows Jim as the creative force behind Garvey Cey Russell Lopes, Timeless Teams, Oh My O-Pee-Chee, and, now Frankendodger. Jim's understated style and writing is a true credit to his favorite team, the Dodgers. 

On the other hand, it seems that the Dodgers have spawned some truly, well, interesting  songs as tributes to the Dodgers. I did a little poking around on YouTube and found a few fan songs. I don't know how to describe them adequately -- words are entirely insufficient. You have to listen to these to truly appreciate them. Thankfully, there are enough songs for me to use to show off the cards that Jim sent to me.

1.  Danny Kaye -- "D-O-D-G-E-R-S Song"

Danny Kaye's old song about the Dodgers came out of his love for the team -- having been born and raised in Brooklyn and later moving to Los Angeles to become a star. You have to be at least in your late thirties to have any recollection of Danny Kaye as an entertainer, since he passed away in 1987. 

Kaye, though, was a lifelong baseball fan who was a part-owner of the Seattle Mariners for its first five years of existence and who would, from time to time, travel with the Dodgers and his old pal Leo Durocher.

Let's start appropriately old school to accompany that song. I know that I should have saved that fantastic Lou [sic] Burdette and Bobby Shantz card for last. I love how Shantz looks like he is about 12 years old next to 1957 World Series hero Burdette. Considering that Shantz stood just 5'6" tall and, according to Baseball Reference, weighed just 139 pounds while Burdette was a strapping 6'2" tall, that size difference is just about right. Incidentally, Shantz is still with us and will turn 91 years old in September.

The two Spahns are from 1994 Upper Deck All-Time Heroes set. I needed both and actually still need both again for my Milwaukee Braves collection. That team collection is where the Mathews card will go.

2. DJ Felli Fel f/Ice Cube, Tyga, & Ty Dolla $ign -- "Dodgers"

DJ Felli Fel name checks about the entire 2013 team, front office, announcers, and most of the first three rows of Dodger stadium in this hip hop tribute. Did you hear, by the way, that the 2013 Dodgers started from the bottom?

Listen to the song and you might hear that.



Apropos of starting from the bottom, it's your 2016 Milwaukee Brewers stickers! I am as much of a proponent of having a simple set as anyone. But, somehow, I never see any of the "modern" stickers -- say, the last 3-5 years -- really show up on blogs. I guess either people are not proud that they have these Topps stickers in their collection, or literally no one actually collects these stickers.

Thoughts?

3. Becky G -- "Dodger Blue"




Becky G is an attractive woman -- almost a girl, really, in that she is barely 19 years old. In the past, she has collaborated with Pitbull and she has even gotten a CoverGirl contract beginning in July 2014. 

None of that happened thanks to this song. Lyrically, it's horrendous. Musically, it sounds like what it is -- a teenager trying to sound cool or tough. God this is terrible. 



The only thing that Jim sent my way that really deserves to be paired with that execrable song is Gary Sheffield. His time in Milwaukee was a trainwreck that ended with a 50-game 1991 season in which he slashed .194/.277/.320. He was traded to San Diego and promptly led the National League in batting average in 1992. He later played a little over 3-1/2 seasons for the Dodgers after coming to LA as part of the trade that sent Mike Piazza to the Marlins. 

4. "Dodgers Fight Song"

Holy crap -- is that Mr. T as Max Headroom? Bloody hell, as the Brits would say -- that is absolutely awful too.  Let's try something else....

Ozomatli -- "Can't Stop the Blue"

At least that video by Ozomatli doesn't cause epileptic seizures. This song is actually much more of a funk song than it is anything else. That makes it eminently more acceptable to my ears than that previous ... "song".

Dodgers fans, did either of these songs ever get any airtime in the stadium?

Let's get things back on track with an oddball, a parallel, and the logoless. That Ryan Braun is from 2016 Donruss, while the Lucroy is my first Diamond King card from this year. I do like the canvas feel that the Diamond King cards have, and the artwork on the cards is top notch. Diamond Kings hide the licensing issues much better than Donruss does.

The Yount is the 1992 Cracker Jack Donruss card. Importantly, it is a different photo from the one used on his regular Donruss card. If Topps did these today, you know damn well that they would recycle the same photo from the flagship set -- those photos are expensive after all, and collectors don't deserve anything "new"!

5. "Los Angeles Dodgers 2013 - We Own the West"

This is just a fan video of photos/clips set to a Dropkick Murphys song. Why the Dropkick Murphys, though? I don't get it. The Murphys are as Boston as Boston can be. I understand it's the theme, but couldn't they find a song by someone not so clearly associated with another city?

Of course, it's still a great song, and this person put a ton of work into this video. If you're a Dodger fan wanting to get fired up about some recent nostalgia, this is the video to watch.

Recent nostalgia for Brewers fans has been hard to come by in many respects. Trading Khris Davis away was a good move for the team, since in return the Brewers got a real live catching prospect in Jacob Nottingham. 

Trent Clark was the fifteenth pick overall in 2015. He's struggling a little bit this year as he is a 19-year-old playing in the Midwest League, but his batting eye and approach is top notch. Through 113 plate appearances so far this year, he's slashing .217/.357/.380 (yes, that .217 is correct -- 20 hits in 92 at bats, but 20 walks, 8 doubles, 2 triples, and a home run are in there too). It's very early in his development, but I wouldn't be surprised to see him making his Milwaukee debut at the age of 22 in 2019. 

6. "Dodgers Fan Song"

This song isn't bad. It's not great, either. There is something very generic about it...it really seems like the intent of this song was not to get fired up so much as it was not to offend anyone. No smack talk. No name checks. It's really cliche-filled nothingness to me.

It's like it's meant to appeal to a 55-year-old woman living in Simi Valley. And, judging solely by the look of the posting account, that might be exactly who wrote the song.

Not that there is anything wrong with being a suburban housewife.



These early 2000s Topps cards have much the same feel to me. Generic. Well, they are less generic looking than the cards from 2010-2014 that Topps put out -- what with that ubiquitous white border every year and all -- but these cards do not appear to be anything about which someone will wax nostalgic. 

At least I won't.

Jim -- thank you very much for the great cards you sent my way. I hope my critique of Dodgers fan songs from YouTube led to some laughs for you.

He's Alive! He's Alive! a/k/a GCRL Sends Me Cards

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I had a lot to be thankful for. My family made a safe drive to my house from Wisconsin and back. My wife let me work in my card room/office for much of the time I was away from work. We even had a fun excursion to the local international market that was featured a couple of years ago in an Anthony Bourdain trip to Atlanta.

Even better, I had a couple of packed envelopes show up in my mailbox. One of them was from now-retired(?) blogger Jim from Garvey Cey Russell Lopes.  Jim's blog used to be one of the blogs I read regularly in the morning each day. I hardly ever commented -- not sure why, to be fair...I could have just said, "Interesting post" or "I didn't know that" about literally every post. 

At any rate, Jim e-mailed me about two weeks ago and told me he had some cards for me. I have put together a return envelope already, though it hasn't made its way to the post office quite yet.  

What did Jim send me?

Lots and lots of Jeromy. 

That's a ton of Burnitz right there.  This big batch of Burnitz brings my burgeoning bundle of Burnitz baseball billets to 131. 

I do enjoy alliteration.

Anyway, being at 131 cards for Burnitz is especially excellent considering that, when I started two years ago back in collecting, I think I had 1. Or 2. But I think it was 1.  And it definitely was not more than two.

Jim also sent some other cards for a few other collections:

I haven't the foggiest idea who those guys are. In fact, I haven't even listened to The Ryan Song.

Maybe I should to honor my first Ryan Braun update card. I've made a lot of additions to the Braun collection this year and not just from 2015 cards.  Yes, there are 55 cards from 2015 that I have of Braun, but total I am now at 517 -- second only to Yount in terms of number of cards/items.

Jim also sent me a lot of cards I needed for my team collection.  

Hey! Wait 'til you're announced! (song reference...)

Man, there is a ton of good stuff in there -- especially the JJ Hardy Relic, the Brad Nelson 2009 Finest Blue Refractor, and the two Leaf Authentic Signature cards. I never realized Mike Fetters had such good penmanship.

Okay, a couple more cards for the player collections:

Jeff Cirillo

This embossed thing on the SPx card was wholly unnecessary, but it is still kinda cool. I will note one thing -- it appears like the late 1990s (when everyone was going out of business) was the end of the time where the card companies sent photographers to get photos individual to the card companies. We start seeing the stock "in action" photos for everyone. If the photo isn't an action shot, it's a posed photo taken one day during spring training. 

Call me old school, but I kind of miss the batting cage shots that predominated in the 1970s and 1980s.

Geoff Jenkins

This card is a platinum parallel serial numbered to just 201!

And finally...the highlight of the package for the oddball Brewer collector that I am...

If you have a box full of letters, you'll probably have some stamps in there too. I doubt you'll have this one though:

That may be the sweetest 30c stamp in my collection. Also the only one, but it's pretty damn cool!

Jim, thank you very much for the great cards. Hopefully you'll need some of the cards I'm sending your way soon.

Cards from a 23-time All-Star Blogger?

No one has ever appeared or been on the roster for 23 different All-Star games. One man -- Hank Aaron -- appeared in 25 different All-Star games in 21 seasons on All-Star rosters and two men -- Willie Mays and Stan Musial -- appeared in 24.  But no one hit 23.

No one, that is, except for the four players for whom Jim at GCRL has named his blog. Steve Garvey was named to 10 All-Star games, Ron Cey went to 6, Bill Russell made it to 3, and Davey Lopes went to 4.  Total that up and you have 23 All-Star appearances. Oddly, no more than three of the quartet ever made it to a single All-Star game at the same time -- 1979 saw Garvey, Cey, and Lopes named to the NL squad, and in 1980 it was Garvey, Russell, and Lopes, but three was the high water mark.

The package of cards that Jim sent to me had far more "high water marks" than that, certainly.  With cards spanning from 1981 through 2015, it contained a diverse array of cards that I needed for my player collections in particular and for my team collections as well.

Let's just go in chronological order:

1981

It's a 1981 Topps Sticker that I don't think I had even for my sticker album.  Some guy in auto-tint glasses alongside Ben Oglivie!

1984

Three excellent Donruss 1984 cards to get closer to finishing off that team set. I'd guess that Slaton and Moore had their photos taken in spring training in Arizona while Cooper looks to me to be hitting in Fenway Park. I always loved as a kid when the Brewers went to Fenway. The team hit very well there, and the games were exciting with Rice, Yaz, and Evans on the other side.  I never hated the Red Sox like I hated the Yankees, though.

1994

The lone Brewers card in the 1994 Upper Deck All-Time Heroes set -- almost certainly because Robin Yount didn't announce his retirement until early February in 1994 -- belonged to Cecil Cooper. That set was one of the first major company releases featuring retired players in a new design.  

Here's a question to those collecting for the duration: what changed in around 1999 such that card companies decided to start issuing tons of retired-player sets and, then, sets of active and retired players together? Was it just a sudden surge in interest in the older players? 

I mean, I'd have collected the "old-timers" myself if there were readily available mainstream sets in the candy store in the 1980s, but it just seems curious that there was a sudden explosion in the late 1990s/early 2000s.

1999

I did a double take when I saw these two cards. I totally thought I had gotten two of the same card. Then I realized that it was just Upper Deck being lazy and getting photos from the same angle of Geoff Jenkins and Dave Nilsson and saying, "yup, that'll do. Hell, no one cares about them anyway."

The Jeromy Burnitz Collection

Jim helped cross off a ton of the cards I needed for my Jeromy Burnitz player collection. Seeing all of these Burnitz cards from the early 2000s, you can see that the Brewers really haven't changed their look all that much in the past 15 years.  

I think it's time for an update on the jerseys again.  Let's go back to those great 1970 uniforms -- you know, the ones that had "brewers" sewn in over "pilots" in the all-lowercase look that Jim favors with his blogging.


2001

I am totally in favor of going back to team cards that look like this. Even better, going back to the mid-1970s Chicago Cubs team-card look.  

Topps apparently had to do this perhaps because the Cubs couldn't agree on a date to take the team photo.  That, or maybe no one wanted to be in the same photo with a guy like Dave Kingman or Jose Cardenal's afro blocked too many faces... 

Anyway, bring those back. That way we don't get the weird artificial wall to block the clubhouse manager and the batboys out of the photo.

2011

Topps Attax may have been one of the more ill-conceived attempts at breaking into the "collect-a-game" card sets. I'm guessing that the "games" would be pretty dry affairs.  Did anyone actually play this game?

The Gallardo from the 2011 Lineage set -- a set name which makes no sense -- is oddly the first regular Gallardo I have from that set. I have two or three of the chrome version, but this is the first "base" version.  What I don't get is what "Lineage" means here. I mean, it's not like Gallardo's family tree is on the back, and the card looks like nothing that Topps ever put out before that or since.  So, what's the story, morning glory?

2015

In a strange twist, Jim gave me my first opportunity to look at and hold in my hands cards from the 2015 Archives set. I have to admit -- I am REALLY sick of that inset photo of Gomez.  This is now the SIXTH time that Topps has used this photo. I brought this up when I got the Topps 1952 oversized cards that Topps had used the same photo there, on the 2014 Fan Fest All-Star game cards, on his 2014 Archives card, and on his 2014 Allen & Ginter card.  But, I missed one then -- because this same photo is also on the back of his 2014 Stadium Club card too:

There is no good explanation for this. None whatsoever. I defy anyone from Topps to try to give me a justification for this blatantly lazy, cheap, and frankly disrespectful-to-collectors use of this same photo over and over again. 



That said, the package of cards from Jim was altogether excellent! While I get annoyed with Topps for its laziness, I am eternally grateful to everyone who sends me cards.  Thank you very much, Jim!