An Eventful 14 Days

It's been an eventful couple of weeks since I last had the time and opportunity to write about cards I've received. Since I last posted, we've had the long Labor Day weekend, two weeks of college football, a hurricane making landfall, I've been in three different states, I bought a blaster of Topps Heritage High Numbers, and my house lost power for nearly four full days.

Like I said, it's been eventful.

Let's take a look at the 2 weeks that were.

I didn't take any pictures over Labor Day, but it was a relaxing time. I posted here and on the 1980s blog, and then I got ready for my trip to Chicago and South Bend, Indiana -- with good reason.

The University of Georgia's fans invaded Chicago. Seriously, everywhere you went inside the Loop or just north of the Loop, you saw fans clad in red and black with their Georgia Gs on their hats, t-shirts, and sweatshirts. The flights between Atlanta and Chicago and Atlanta and South Bend were crazy. Everyone was wearing their Georgia gear.



That's just the gate area in Atlanta to get on the Boeing 717 at 8:50 in the morning. The flight was so full of Georgia fans that one of the flight attendants commented that it looked like a charter:

As always, the flights were overbooked. This is common because there are always a few stragglers who miss the flight or take an earlier flight. Normally, all that works itself out. In some situations, though, Delta ends up offering Delta voucher money good for use on another flight to volunteers to be confirmed on a later flight. Usually, it only takes a few hundred dollars in vouchers to get people to say, "okay, I'll take that later flight and I'll have a little money to take a vacation flight later in the year." This is, of course, as opposed to what United does -- dragging people forcibly off flights to make room for whomever they want to get on a plane.

Anyway, Delta had tons of trouble getting volunteers to get off flights to Atlanta and South Bend on this weekend. No one wanted to miss a thing, it seems, and the amounts for the vouchers to get volunteers proves this. For my flight to Chicago Midway, the gate agents got all the way up to offering $2,000 in Delta vouchers to volunteers who were willing to take a flight a few hours later with a guaranteed seat. They got their 5 volunteers for our flight at that price. That amount was eclipsed on another flight a couple of terminals away when a woman received $4,000 in vouchers just to give up her seat on a flight between Atlanta and South Bend.

My wife and I were traveling on award miles at an exorbitant cost -- 80,000 miles a piece, which usually will get you to Europe for a coach seat or, for some airports, in first class. If we had not had a scheduled tour in Chicago for early afternoon, we almost certainly would have doubled down at $2,000 and taken that money for a later arrival.

We arrived in Chicago and got to my wife's uncle's condo. He and his wife recently moved there for a job change for him, and he's doing quite well. Here's the view from his condo.



Too bad it wasn't sunny when I took this. That's Lake Shore Drive along Lake Michigan that you see. It was on that walkway right next to the lake that I saw Bastian Schweinsteiger and Ana Ivanovic walking arm in arm on Sunday morning after we had an early lunch.

So, back to Friday. We went and had lunch and then went to our tour -- one of those "architectural boat tours" along the Chicago River. I had taken one of those tours in 2008, but it was pouring rain half the time and sucked as a result. This one was much better -- no rain, and the clouds even lifted midway through the tour so we got some great views of landmark buildings like the Willis Corroon Tower f/k/a the Sears Tower:

We had a great dinner that night at Gibsons Steakhouse (thanks to my wife's uncle pulling a few strings to get a reservation).

The next day, we got up early and made our way to South Bend. It's about two hours from Chicago along Interstate 94, and we were surprised at the fact that traffic wasn't terrible for the ride out.



We got parked, and immediately we were greeted by Notre Dame fans parked on either side of us. Notre Dame has a national following, of course, being the most successful Catholic university in sports during much of a 20th Century when being Catholic would be brought up openly as a possible way to disqualify a person from serving as president. We met Notre Dame fans from Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Georgia, South Carolina, and California in just a few minutes. It was really cool.



Even so, UGA took over Notre Dame and its campus. Everywhere I went, we were greeted by Georgia fans. The Notre Dame folks wore expressions somewhere between bemusement and annoyance -- bemused at the fact that Georgia fans were treating the trip like a tourist event, annoyed at the fact that there were so many Georgia fans as to nearly outnumber the Notre Dame fans. To give you a sense of what it was like on campus, this is the reflecting pool in front of the library mural of Touchdown Jesus:



Of course, my wife and I had to get our obligatory tourist shot of us in front of Touchdown Jesus. The photo was taken by a very friendly Notre Dame fan from California, who joked with us -- rightly so -- that the reception in Georgia may not be as friendly for the Domers as it was for UGA in Indiana:

Then, there was the game. Georgia really could have and should have won the game by two touchdowns had they simply (a) had a wide receiver catch one ball that hit him in the hands on a long pass play, and (b) caught an interception inside ND's 20-yardline that the defensive back had hit him in the hands twice before it hit the ground harmlessly. That said, UGA still won and, in the process, really took over Notre Dame Stadium.



Lots of red everywhere. Some Notre Dame folks were a bit salty about the whole thing in the week after, but really -- if someone is offering you a $500+ profit on a ticket for a game, wouldn't you be tempted to sell out?

The whole time we were in Chicago, though, we also had Georgia on our mind (and I'm not talking about the song). We were watching Hurricane Irma's track to see what it was going to do. Was it going to hit Atlanta? If so, how strong would it be? As the weekend developed, we knew we would get back to Atlanta without a problem -- even if it was a bit windy when we landed on Sunday night. It was a matter of how long, though, we would have without problems.

As it turned out, my office closed on Monday per the request of the local and state governments asking businesses to close. It was nice that I got a day off that I sorely needed after the weekend's festivities. The power flickered a couple of times during the day, but I was hopeful that we would get through things without much problem.

My hopes were dashed, however, when the power went off at about 4:30 PM on Monday. At first, it was kind of fun. I got out my headlamp that I use for fire site investigations to be able to find my way around the house more easily. I ended up using it to cook dinner on our gas stove:

We did not get power back Monday night, and Georgia Power did not even have an estimate for us to get power back at that point. I learned through Twitter and using my phone for news that my part of town was probably the hardest hit thanks to the combination of strong winds and having a lot of tall trees.

I did not know why we lost power, though, until Tuesday. I took a walk to the grocery store on Tuesday morning to get some coffee and some cold cuts to eat and saw our problem.

I'm told that a transformer snapping off the top of a power pole is a bad thing. You can see that transformer on the opposite side of the road from the actual pole here. It took until Thursday afternoon -- fully 3 days after we lost power -- for our power to be restored.

Thankfully it was and no one around here got hurt by the storm. But, my Friday afternoon and Saturday mornings the last two days were spent taking care of our cleanup. We had a bunch of limbs and one small tree that we had to cut up and put into yard waste bags to dispose of in the trash. We still have some more to do, but the bulk of the work is done.

Still, it's been an eventful two weeks. Of course, this coming weekend is a big football game in Athens too -- one I'm going to with a couple of friends -- so radio silence over next weekend might result too. So, I'm pushing myself to write more during this week to catch up more on things I should have thanked people for weeks ago.

So, how's your September been?

Thanks for stopping by and, to those of you who have sent me things, thanks for your patience.

The JBF Big Fun Game

Back at the end of April and into early May, Jaybarkerfan a/k/a Wes a/k/a Willinghammer Rising (yes, he wants ALL your Josh Willinghams) resurrected a game that started before I started blogging called The Big Fun Game. I never got to know Napkin Doon, but everyone who knows him really likes him, but he was the originator (as best I can tell) of the game. It's Big Fun!

Did any band have more fun in the late 1970s and early 1980s than Kool & The Gang?

And it was really fun. Definitely. I was near the bottom of the list, so by the time the choices got to me I didn't have many options. Other than the mystery box -- which got stolen three times by pick #7 -- and the Mookie Wilson jersey that was shut down shortly after, I was good with taking my chances on just a roll of the dice. I chose Lot #11, and what do you know -- it was a real winner!

A second year card from the 1953 Topps set of a Hall of Famer whose major league career didn't start until he was nearly thirty years old and, then, lasted until 15 days shy of his 50th birthday is a win in my book for sure! Now, to be clear, I am not going to keep this card. As much as I do love Hoyt Wilhelm for those reasons I just shared and the fact that he was the first pitcher ever to appear in over 1000 games (15 others have done it since, including former Brewers Jesse Orosco (1st all time, 1252 games), Dan Plesac (7th), LaTroy Hawkins (10th), and Trevor Hoffman (11th)), this card will be heading off in a trade to a Hoyt collector.

As is always the case with Wes, though, he did not stop with Hoyt. He was kind enough to slip some Brewers into that envelope:

J.J. Hardy will be thought of in later years rightfully as an Oriole. The Brewers traded him to the Twins to get Carlos Gomez. The Twins then decided that they did not like having a competent shortstop and sent him to the Orioles for someone called Jim Hoey and minor leaguer (and Vandy guy) Brett Jacobson. Hoey made 26 appearances for the 2011 Twins and was last seen in baseball in the Atlantic League in 2013; he's now a tech consultant in San Francisco with OSI Consulting. Jacobson also called it a career in 2013 and has since moved back to Nashville and become a Sales Manager for a realtor.

A couple of Topps Total cards helped cushion the package as well. We have P/OF/PH Brooks Kieschnick (now a medical distributor for spinal implants) and Gary Bennett (now in sales with Smith & Nephew Orthopaedics in Chicago).

LinkedIn is totally a fun way to catch up with baseball players, by the way. For example, Jeffrey Hammonds recommended Bennett for "Sports," as did Dave LaPoint, Choo Freeman, Cliff Politte, and Wes Chamberlain.  Kieschnick was recommended for "Medical devices" by Glendon Rusch, Kelly Gruber, Joe Slusarski, and Scipio Spinks. Fun times!

It wouldn't be a great JBF package without some love for my Brewers Hall of Famers. The piece de resistance is clearly the SP Legendary Cuts Molitor card, what with the blue pinstripe of those wonderful 1980s uniforms showing through.

The game was Big Fun. This song is godawful. It's what I imagine a musical written by millennials attempting to copy the 1980s sound would sound like. It's terrible.

So I can't end there, and thankfully neither did Wes. After all, we're only 6 weeks away from SEC Media Days, which means we are 80 days from the first NCAA College Football game!

Ramik Wilson was a stalwart for Georgia's linebacking corps in 2013 and 2014. He was a three-star recruit (according to Scout.com; Rivals and ESPN put him at 4 stars) out of Tampa, Florida. The Kansas City Chiefs -- who seem to love UGA players -- selected him in the fourth round of the 2015 draft. Then, in 2016, they cut him (signed him to their practice squad) and signed Sam Barrington, whom the Packers had cut. The Chiefs quickly saw the error of their way and resigned Ramik. By the end of the year, he was starting and made 13 tackles -- including 11 solo tackles -- against the Chargers.

Gotta love Wes -- he comes through with great ideas, great cards, and great Fun every time!

Thanks, my friend. I appreciate it.

It's Been a Long Week

Hi kids! Welcome back to the Off Hiatus Baseball Card Blog! If you've been wondering where I have been the past week -- and, judging by the emails and the tweets, you almost certainly haven't! -- well, I will fill you in!

Last week Saturday, I spent my weekend at picturesque Sanford Stadium in Athens, Georgia. There, I watched as my Georgia Bulldogs came back and, with just 10 seconds left in the game, scored to go ahead of the Tennessee Volunteers. Of course, it being Georgia Football, that meant that we were being set up for one of the rarest of losses -- a "That Game" loss, as Bill Simmons put it in 2007...you know, around the time that Simmons's ego and paycheck started matching one another for which was bigger. 

A "That Game" loss combined two levels of losing -- a "Guillotine" loss mixed with a "Stomach Punch." A Guillotine loss is one where your team is in it or winning, but you can feel the inevitable breakdown coming. As Simmons said, you're angry at yourself for contributing to the bad karma and you are angry it happened at all.  A "Stomach Punch" game is a roller-coaster game that ends with an opponent making a pivotal, sometimes improbable play and ends with fans filing out after the game in stunned disbelief, if they can move at all.  

Simmons said only one game to him had made it to that level -- the 6th game of the 1986 World Series. This Georgia game made it there, though. UGA scored with 10 seconds left, and, sadly, my wife's uncle and I turned to one another and said, "that may be too much time left." It was, especially after the stupidity of a second-string defensive back running onto the field to celebrate the Ridley TD without his helmet on. Throw in a poor, short, kickoff and a complete Hail Mary, and you have a "That Game" -- one where ESPN's stats guys said UGA had a 99.9% chance of winning after Ridley's TD.

As if that weren't bad enough, we got an email during the game from my father-in-law saying that he wasn't feeling well at all. He ended up going to the hospital that night with kidney failure. He's been in dialysis all week, and only after the doctors started filling him with cortisone has he started feeling any better. The man is only 60 years old -- we're not going to let him go that easily.

Add in that my wife's older uncle is suffering from a disease very similar to dementia that comes on quickly due usually to a trauma of some sort, and last weekend was very, very long.

So, Monday came and my wife went home to help there. They needed her help with her uncle to get him to his various appointments as they try to get him into better shape, and my mother-in-law needed my wife's help because my mother-in-law was staying at the hospital with her husband -- as you would expect.

Of course, that wasn't enough drama. I had a conference for work that I had to attend in Chicago. It was something of a welcome respite from the disastrous weekend, but I really could have used being at home instead.  At least I had views like this from the hotel:

My hotel was on Upper Wacker Drive, so we had great views of Lake Michigan, the Chicago River Turning Basin, and the Navy Pier. Not that I got to go to any of those places due to all my responsibilities with our seminar, but at least I was around a lot of my friends whom I've known anywhere from a few years to over 20 years.

I got back in town late Friday night, and, yesterday, got up to run errands (like pick up dry cleaning and clean up the cats' litter boxes), and then I drove for two hours to my wife's hometown. I went to see her uncle and her dad -- who is now feeling a million times better thanks to the steroids -- and to take some things to my wife for when she has to go back there this coming week to help out again.

There are a few envelopes that were waiting for me here, so to get back into the mundanity of regular baseball card life, here's one of the envelopes. After my caterwauling to Topps about their ignoring the Brewers, of course the Brewers got two Topps Now cards in the final two weeks of the season. One of them was for turning their second triple play of the season, and that is the card that arrived:

The Brewers ended up totalling six Topps Now cards over the season, assuming that you count the Jonathan Lucroy "Traded" card and the Prince Fielder Retirement card with the Brewers. Of the other four, Chris Carter appeared on three of them -- the card for the team scoring in every inning in mid-August, this card for the triple play, and then his own solo card for reaching the 40-home run mark.

Carter was a heck of a pickup off the scrap heap for the team, as he ended the season tied for the National League home run title with 41. For what it is worth, he and Nolan Arenado tied both for the Homer lead and for the NL Games Played lead. No one in the NL played every game, but Arenado and Carter both sat out only two games each.  Carter also set a Brewers team record by striking out an incredible 206 times in 2016 -- but he finished 13 strikeouts behind MLB leader Chris Davis of Baltimore.

NL and Major League stolen base champion Jonathan Villar did not appear on a Topps Now card, however. Villar probably would have gotten one had he hit one more home run in the final days of the season. Villar finished the year with 19 homers, though, so he did not join Joe Morgan (twice), Rickey Henderson (three times), and Eric Davis in the "20/60" club. Of course, it is worth noting that those players plus Villar are still the only ones to be members of the 19/60 club. But we like round numbers.

In the next few weeks, I'll get caught up here on the packages I've received. I'll also write a few of the "Meet the Brewers." But, one more thing I am going to do is recap the Brewers season and the players the team used this year. My love for baseball comes out through words and photos/cards. Since I am not making any cards or taking any photos, I have to write.

Thanks for reading, and here's to a happier, healthier rest of 2016!

My Favorite Time of Year

Many baseball fans will say that spring is the best time of year. It is a great time too -- the earth emerges from the winter slumber, the birds are out (or back, in the North), and the baseball season is starting with spring training and Opening Day when everyone is even. 

It's a good argument, but it does not convince me for two reasons. First, it's the worst time in Atlanta for pollen and allergies. Atlanta regularly puts up pollen counts in the several thousands -- where anything over 90 is considered high and hitting 1500 is "extremely high," it's not uncommon for us to have weeks at a time into that extremely high category.

The other reason for me is that I love college football -- especially Georgia football. I've been a season ticket holder at UGA since 2007, which was about the time I started having enough expendable income to donate sufficiently enough to get tickets. 

The way UGA does its tickets is this: you have to donate money to the athletic fund specifically for the football program. Each dollar given is a "point." Those points accumulate over your life and give you priority for season tickets and to get away-game tickets. Usually, to get season tickets, you'll have to give about $500 to $1000 previously. When I was single and not collecting cards, I gave a pretty sizeable amount of money each year to push my points up quickly so I could start getting tickets for away games. Now, I give enough each year to keep my tickets where they are. 

Georgia football this year is an interesting story. For those of you who don't know or don't pay attention in the way that the obsessives here in Georgia and the South generally do, UGA changed coaches last December despite a 9-win regular season and Mark Richt's 15-year-long tenure at UGA being incredibly successful. Richt was replaced by long-time Alabama defensive coordinator -- and UGA graduate -- Kirby Smart. 

The move was extremely divisive for many months within the fan base, and a number of people are still complaining about it. To those people, they believed either (a) you shouldn't fire a highly successful coach because you don't know if you'll do better; or, (b) you shouldn't fire a successful coach who was a strong Christian. I personally thought both of these reasons were lacking, as even successful coaches can get complacent and get to a point where they think about how to do "enough" rather than doing what was needed to win them all.

That's a long way to saying that I was excited for Kirby's appointment as coach. I remember him as the sort-of skinny safety and special teams player who wore number 16 and came to UGA from Bainbridge, Georgia. I was hopeful that he would bring more discipline to how the players played on the field and that he would be able to continue being a force in recruiting.

The Kirby Smart era opened yesterday at the Georgia Dome here in Atlanta. 

This was during the pregame festivities. The Georgia Redcoat Marching band was running through an abbreviated version of its pregame show. My wife's uncle invited me to go along with him since his older brother is not feeling well enough now to go to the games.

You can see a fair number of empty seats in this photo, but keep in mind that this was over 20 minutes before kickoff.

Georgia played pretty well yesterday against the ACC's runner-up in 2015 to Clemson, the North Carolina Tar Heels. The defense was solid though unspectacular -- it did not force any turnovers and had a couple of crucial breakdowns that allowed UNC to score points. On the other hand, UNC averaged 486.9 yards per game on offense last year but only could total 315 yards yesterday.

On offense, the game was entirely the Nick Chubb show. Last year, Chubb suffered a gruesome knee injury against the University of Tennessee on Tennessee's field made of gum wrappers, baling wire, and stickum. 

Seriously, Tennessee's field has claimed so many knees over the years and, making matters worse, it is poorly maintained. It became such an issue last year that the athletic department actually had to issue a statement about understanding that it is an issue.

There are four knee ligaments -- the ACL (anterior cruciate), the PCL (posterior cruciate), the MCL (medial collateral), and the LCL (lateral collateral). The ACL controls rotation and forward movement of the tibia. The PCL controls backward movement of the tibia. The MCL gives stability to the inner knee, and the LCL gives stability to the outer knee. As most sports fans know, tearing the ACL is the bad one and has the longest rehabilitation period. 

Despite how horrible Chubb's injury looked, he was incredibly lucky as well. While he missed the rest of the season last year due to the injury, he did not tear his ACL. He tore up the rest of his ligaments, though, so he did miss about 8 months of training. But, the guy is such a beast that even in the spring he was running through non-contact drills with the rest of his teammates. By the time the first scrimmage came about in early August, he was ready to take contact.

Also despite the injury, it is pretty clear that Chubb had no limitations against UNC. He had the third-most carries in a game of his career -- 32 -- and he rushed for the second most yards in a game of his career -- 222 yards. That total was punctuated by his final carry of the game (dial it up to the 16:55 mark) -- a 55-yard TD run.




In all, it was a great way to start Kirby Smart's coaching career at Georgia. A win over a ranked opponent with Nick Chubb looking healthy and Jacob Eason looking like the real deal -- yes, please. 

Just give me the Victory Formation!

The next game I'm likely to attend is the game between Georgia and Tennessee in Athens on October 1. After that, I'll go to the Georgia/Florida game in Jacksonville followed by Georgia and Auburn in Athens. I hope I'll close the season out with an SEC Championship game, but that's a long ways away.

I'm just glad that the taste in my mouth today is not bitter.

Saturday! Saturday!

Welcome to a pre-packaged post here on "Off Hiatus". It's Saturday. It's Gameday in Athens. This video from YouTube gives a pretty decent look at a lot of the sights and sounds around town and around campus in Athens on a normal football Saturday.

Unfortunately, if the weather holds up as predicted (as I write this, the prediction is that the temperature will be about 32 degrees when we start tailgating...), tailgating will be more about freezing my ass off rather than watching pretty girls in sundresses. 

Add in the fact that this is the game of marital disharmony: my Georgia Bulldogs take on my wife's Auburn Tigers. Then throw in my wife's two uncles (both Georgia grads) trolling my wife all weekend.

I'm sure it will be a pleasant experience.

In case you're interested, my prediction for the game is that it will be a high-scoring game. If Auburn starts off its game the way it has this year -- which has tended to be slowly and with several turnovers -- and if Georgia capitalizes on both those turnovers and on the emotion that will be running through the stadium with the return of the best player in college football, Todd Gurley, then Georgia wins running away with the game.  If turnovers don't happen, I will be in for a long night because I don't know that Georgia can keep up with Auburn in a shoot-out.

As a second aside, being a Georgia football fan is frustrating. We always seem to have one or two games like the Florida game this year -- where the team doesn't show up, the coaches call plays as if they are scared, the team feels the coaches' fear and plays tight, and suddenly the team is on the wrong side of a blowout. With that said, it would also be the absolutely most "Georgia" thing to do at this point to win out, get to the SEC Championship, win that, but not go to the playoff in favor of random team from the SEC West. 

The only way a 2-loss SEC Champion ends up in the playoffs is if we have similar insanity to what happened in the 2007 season. In that season, Georgia looked like the best team in the country at the end of the year, but a close loss to a decent South Carolina team (better than this year's version) and a horribly embarrassing loss to Tennessee at Tennessee (pretty much the same game as Georgia played against Florida this year) kept Georgia out of the SEC Championship and out of the National Championship game.

UGA would have crushed LSU in the SEC Championship with a loaded roster: Matt Stafford, Knowshon Moreno, Dannell Ellerbe, Geno Adkins, and Mohamed Massaquoi, among others. And UGA would have beaten up Ohio State in the same fashion that LSU did. 

Then again, if ifs and buts were candy and nuts, we'd all have a Merry Christmas.

But enough ranting; let's get back to baseball.  To keep things moving forward here on the Off Hiatus Blog, here are some cards that I picked up last weekend at my local card show. Yes, again.  These cards all fill in little gaps in my player collections. 

First, it's a die-cut Yovani Gallardo followed by a floating head Gallardo!

Then, we have two New York Met versions of Carlos Gomez's Bowman Rookie Card (one base, one gold) followed by the super purple cosmic swirl insert from Topps Updates of "Carlos Gomez: Power Ranger"...or Power Player.

Surprisingly, a couple of random Greg Vaughn cards appeared in my card searches. I was talking to these two guys who are buddies who buy in bulk and sell cheap on cards and autographs, and in their boxes I found these two cards. The Diamond King card is 1994, I think, and the green monster is a 1990 Donruss The Rookies card.

I'm not pleased with this B.J. Surhoff card from the 1988 Leaf set. Its back is pretty scuffed up, though the front looks fine. So, I'm still in the market for a clean version of this one, but I'm okay paying a few cents for a crappy one that is a placeholder. 

Finally, the first vendor I stopped at had a binder of 25 cent Hostess cards from the 1970s. I picked up two of these Cecil Cooper cards from 1978 and a few others that will be in my next post -- the team set holes being plugged.

Thanks for taking time out of your Saturday to stop in here. I hope that I will be happy when the Georgia game ends some time around 11:00 PM on Saturday.

Mailday Post: Too Many Verlanders Giveaway

A couple of weeks ago over at Too Many Verlanders, Dennis ran a contest which was based around him giving away a bunch of cards.  In other words, he gave away cards and those giveaways led to entries in a contest to get more cards.  

Never one to miss an opportunity to fill a gap or two in my collection, I claimed two different items -- the Prince Fielder collection, in the hopes of getting a couple of cards of him on the Brewers that I didn't have, and the 1999 Topps Series Two set.  Since 1999 was right in the middle of my non-collecting years, those cards had escaped me entirely.

Those items got me a total of five entries into Dennis's contest.  I was lucky enough to top off claiming those previous items with finished third in the contest giveaway.  My selection: I took a blaster of 2008 Upper Deck Series 1 and 2 off Dennis's hands as well.  

Last week, the box with all those cards showed up -- it must have had a total of 500 or 600 cards in it.  Here are the highlights.  

As I mentioned, I knew I was getting Prince Fielders -- most of which now are listed up in my team trade bait section under "Tigers."  Three of those cards, however, were Brewers:

I really like this MLB Artifacts card (pardon the screwy scanning I did there).  Yeah, we've gotten tons of nostalgia-type cards in the past 15 years, but that one is a classy looking card.  

The 1999 Topps Series 2 had several Brewers, of course, and all of these were needed either for my player collections or the team set:

I don't know why I'm surprised when I get a Marquis Grissom card with Milwaukee, but I always seem to forget that he played with the Brewers.

After going through those items I claimed, I then cracked open the blaster box of Upper Deck.  I've opened quite a few packs of the Upper Deck First Edition set in repack boxes, so the card design was familiar to me.  The glossy finish and the silver foil on these cards was not.  I know I sound like a fan boy and I know that a significant portion of collectors don't like the full-bleed photos on cards, but, well, I love the full-bleed photos on cards.  It makes them feel cooler and more expensive, I guess.  Anyway, here are the cards I got from the blaster that I really liked:

I even got a Prince Fielder "Infield Power" insert.  And I think I'm collecting all Carlos Gomez and Jean Segura cards at this point.  Lucroy's too, of course -- I mean, who wouldn't collect the best player in the National League (oh God, please don't let there be an SI website curse)?

Finally, I believe Dennis was using some football cards as filler simply to keep the other cards from moving around.  While I'm not exactly a football collector, I didn't mind getting college football cards for my Georgia Bulldogs!

The NCAA would have you believe that the number 8 here is just generic and has nothing to do with A.J. Green.  Nothing whatsoever.

Dennis, thanks for the cards, the giveaway, and even for the Georgia Bulldogs cards.  I'm starting to contemplate whether I should try to collect college football cards of the Dawgs at this point!