Typophiles And Wall Shots

I have never met anyone who calls themselves a typophile.

Okay, that took forever to type. You ever try typing something while changing fonts every single letter?

Shane from Off The Wall Cards -- another Red Sox guy in the blogosphere -- calls himself a typophile on his Twitter biography. I suppose that it makes sense that a graphic designer like Shane would pay special attention to fonts. Here at Off Hiatus, I tend to swap fonts from post to post amongst the few choices we get -- using Arial, Georgia, Helvetica, and Times more often than not with Trebuchet and Verdana sometimes appearing and Courier showing up only if I've totally screwed up.  

I've never liked Courier.

Perhaps it is telling about me, though, that I have watched a movie about a font in the past. Have any of you seen Helvetica? No, seriously, it really is a movie about the font.

Okay, enough about fonts for now. Shane is a great guy to follow on Twitter, and that is where he and I first interacted. I still owe him a follow-up package -- blame it on malaise and work -- but I've got one cooking right now. It just needs to marinate.

Being a graphic designer, Shane dabbles in making custom cards. He sent me one, in fact, that surprised me at how authentic it looks:

Making custom cards is a time when being a typophile must be helpful. Topps and Panini seem to miss that fact from time to time -- going for "good enough" over "authentic" at times such as the redone 1983 Donruss that Panini did this year (their font for player names is too condensed). We collectors see that stuff and cringe.

Of course, this is a card that never existed, and it could only have existed if Topps had done a Traded/Update set in 1977. Wynn started 1977 as a member of the New York Yankees. He was released by the Yankees in July, and the Brewers picked him up two weeks later. In his day, the "Toy Cannon" did a lot of little things well without being a standout at any one thing. He never had a batting average over .282, yet he had two seasons where his OBP was over .400, including his 1969 season when he slashed at .269/.436/.507 while stealing 23 bases (and walking 148 times, 14 intentional).

Now, that was the only custom in the package, but the mailer was packed with great cards that need just a little bit of Boston music to go with it...some mighty music, in fact.

When you mention the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, the first song most people think of is this one -- "The Impression That I Get." It's a fun, upbeat ska song that brought the Bosstones national prominence in the alternative rock scene around the time that swing music got popular too. The Bosstones have such a great horn section that it's tough not to like them for a band geek like me.

Shane started out strong by sending some vintage Braves cards my way. I can't say that I had ever heard of or even contemplated the existence of Humberto Robinson before getting this card. Robinson was a Panamanian pitcher whom the Boston Braves signed. In 1954, he put up silly numbers in the Sally League: 23-8, 2.41 ERA in 276 innings. Right around the 1959 season's start, though, the Braves shipped him to Cleveland for the 41-year-old Mickey Vernon. Robinson passed away in 2009 at the age of 79.

Haas missed all of the 1959 season with an injury. He had come up in the Cubs system but then was traded before the 1958 season to the Braves. He only appeared in 55 total major league games over three seasons as a player, and then managed the Atlanta Braves for 121 games in 1985.

Chuck Dressen is part of one of my favorite jokes from the New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract. The joke came in his discussion about rating all-time third basemen. Boston Braves coach Tom Daly made a joke about the fact that the 1931 Cincinnati Reds would have to build a screen around third base. When asked why be a reporter, Daly dead-panned, "Well, I don't think the fans want to see Joe Stripp or Charlie Dressen . . ."

While "The Impression That I Get" got much more airplay, I preferred "The Rascal King." It was catchy and upbeat, and the video for this song is just cool. The video nails the old-movie feel that this music calls up from inside. It should have an old-time police detective in a trench coat and fedora.

Thankfully, I can say honestly that I never went for this look in the 1990s. To be fair, I kind of like the dressier look -- the zoot suits and the fedoras sure beat the flannel of the early 1990s. I never went for this look because, well, I was in law school and no one in Athens was dressing like this. Too hot.

Scan dump alert!

The reprints from the late 1990s/early 2000s dominate here. I needed nearly all of these cards in some form or fashion. I do wish, though, that Topps would use more players than just Hall of Famers in their insert sets. I know it all comes down to contracts and rights fees, but I wonder what it is that Topps is spending its money on. No, actually, I know they are focused on getting contracts for signatures as opposed to contracts for a wider breadth of players to appear on cards.

It's too bad. We could use more cards of guys like Del Crandall, Lew Burdette, and Gus Bell as opposed to seeing that same Eddie Mathews pose (from that "Cooperstown Collection") again and again.

Bosstones lead singer Dicky Barrett notoriously had some serious drug issues before joining the band. This is a song about heroin addiction, and is apparently a reminder never to do drugs ever again. Barrett has gone on to be the announcer for "Jimmy Kimmel Live!", so I guess he's got that going for him.

Shane's apparently done a bit of TTM/IP autograph hunting, since he shared the Ron Belliard and Geoff Jenkins autographs with me. It's good to see the consistency between the Fleer Ultra TTM/IP version and the Topps certified version. Finally, I'm a little surprised by the fact that Fernando Viña didn't put a more prominent tilde over the "n" in his last name.

As the 1990s wound down, the Bosstones did as well in many respects. Ska got co-opted by that atrocious 311 sound, and pretty soon American music tastes went away from the big horn sounds and dancehall/ska type music and devolved more toward a garage sound championed by bands like The White Stripes and The Strokes. 

As this post winds down -- I could post another 50 cards, mind you, but I need to end it somewhere -- I thought I'd go all horizontal. Everything from one of those insert coins from Topps to mid-1980s stickers to some early 2000s Chrome to a Heritage insert that had eluded me. 

Shane is a great dude, and I need to get my butt moving to finish off the return package. My thanks go out to Shane for all the great cards and for his patience.

A Gift from my Wife

I read with bemusement the trials and tribulations that the blog world's favorite feathered friend, Night Owl, endured with his wife making an effort and buying him baseball cards for Christmas. Sure, they turned out to be all autographs from his absolute least favorite team -- the Giants -- and included three autographs of his least favorite player ever, Will Clark. 

On the other hand, I have been pretty lucky. I mean, who has in-laws who would drive 2 hours with a pickup truck bed full of binders as a Christmas gift? Even if the binders contained a lot of cards from that late 1980s/early 1990s time period that all of us have every card from in bushel baskets, it still had some pretty damn nice autographs, oddballs, and even some pretty rare Derek Jeter cards of him in high school (note: I still have those cards too).

This year, I did not get any cards. Well, not directly -- I got cash that I took to my local card show and blew on a bunch of stuff I haven't shown off yet. I did get one baseball item, though, from my wife. 

She did better than Night Owl's wife did:

It's one damn sturdy bottle opener, and it's made from what purports to be a "Game Used Bat from the Milwaukee Brewers."

My first thought was, of course, to be completely dubious of that claim. I almost did not want to be responsible for a bat having been carved up. Then, I was wondering where the pine tar is. 

In my looking at the bottle opener, though, I saw something on the end with the hanging rope:

It's an MLB authentication hologram. I looked it up, and the print out informed me:

Major League Baseball Bat Bottle Opener made with the handle section. A piece of Game Used broken bat from Cardinals @ Brewers on 9-20-2006/Damian Miller Cracked bat, 7th Inning

I looked it up. In the bottom of the 7th inning of a scoreless game, LaCrosse County native Damian Miller stepped up to the plate. Miller was actually a Minnesota Twins draft pick in 1990 -- in the 20th round. That was the year that the Brewers were supposed to take me in the 48th round, but I guess that one game that I played in front of a Brewers scout that summer (and hit a homerun) did not impress them enough to get me on their radar. Miller had come to Milwaukee for the 2005 season as a free agent after bouncing from Minnesota to Arizona in the expansion draft and, from there, to the Cubs and Oakland. 

Miller was the second hitter in the inning, having followed third baseman David Bell. Bell flew out to deep right field for the first out. I must admit to not recalling the David Bell era in Milwaukee. It lasted all of 53 games and it was the end of his career, so I guess I should be forgiven for that.

On the mound for the Cardinals was Jeff Suppan. Suppan was in the final year of his three-year contract with the Cardinals, and he positively owned Milwaukee. Over his career, he sported a 13-2 record over 23 appearances (21 starts) with a 3.20 ERA -- his best as against any major league team -- in 135 innings. Maybe that is why, in the offseason that followed, the Brewers gave him a stupid 4-year contract for $42 million. It was such a stupid contract that the Brewers decided in June of that fourth year (2010) just to cut him.

Miller took the first pitch from Suppan for a ball. The next pitch, he broke his bat and hit a weak ground ball to shortstop. Miller lost a bat, and, just ten years later, I gained a bottle opener.

Thankfully, the Brewers ended up winning that game thanks to a Geoff Jenkins walk-off home run off a guy named Tyler Johnson -- one of those interchangeable left-handed reliever parts that Tony LaRussa and Mike Matheny love in St. Louis. Of course, the Cardinals went on to win the World Series that year, so I guess they'd probably take that.

In the end, I'd say I did a lot better than Night Owl did. My wife put a lot of thought into this gift and did very, very well indeed.

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.