Living in Enemy Territory

Living in Atlanta as a Brewers fan isn't too bad, for the most part. I'm disconnected from the day-to-day crap that can inhabit fans from local news and local sports radio, so it's easier to come to my own conclusions about things going on in Brewerland. At the same time, I am also living in a city that really does not have any strong feelings about the Milwaukee Brewers. Braves fans generally think of Milwaukee as that place that the Brewers came from and that's really it.

On the other hand, living in Chicago -- especially the north side of town -- cannot be easy. Sure, Cubs fans will claim that they really don't care about the Brewers, that their rivals are the Cardinals. Historically, yes, that is accurate. But I would venture to guess that the next few years will make Cubs fans dislike the Brewers more and more.

I bring this up because I recently traded with a fellow Brewers collector, Robb a/k/a Brewers 792 (whether at his blog or on Twitter). I sent Robb a bunch of my early Brewers duplicates, and he filled in some gaps in my collection for me with some old and some more recent. Robb is the man who lives on the north side of Chicago, so he has to live among our enemies. So, let's see what Robb sent me with some appropriate music.

 Let's start with the recent cards:

Scott Podsednik would not have had a baseball career in the major leagues without the Brewers. He was drafted by the Rangers out of high school in 1994. He played a couple of years in their system before being the player to be named later in a trade to bring back prodigal son Bobby Witt to Arlington. Two years later, the Rangers suffered from seller's remorse and grabbed him back through the Rule 5 draft. He struggled to stay healthy and/or play well in reaching Double-A Tulsa in 1999 (a .155/.190/.190 slash line in 123 plate appearances is pretty bad) and the Rangers cut him. 

Seattle signed him, and he played well in a couple of years at Triple-A, but Seattle had enough outfielders in 2000 and 2001, so he only got 31 plate appearances in the majors. So, after his age-26 season, the Brewers plucked him off waivers. He impressed greatly -- .314/.379/.443 in 628 plate appearances led him to finish second in the rookie of the year race in the NL in 2003 behind Marlins phenom Dontrelle Willis. Pods only lasted 2 seasons in Milwaukee before being traded for Carlos Lee to the White Sox, though, so he's just a fan-favorite footnote from a period when fan favorites were tough to come by.

The White Sox...yeah, they used to be big enemies.

The one time I ever attended a White Sox/Brewers game in Milwaukee, the bleachers about a section over from where we were sitting looked pretty similar to the end result of this Shinedown band meeting. Those games in the days when folks could easily get overserved at the game -- it was, after all, the days of the origins of the Two-Fisted Slopper at County Stadium -- led to tons of fights and arrests. It's tough to describe, but Milwaukee people and Chicago people don't always get along all that well.

The late 1990s and early 2000s is a common black hole for many of us who left collecting as younger men or youths and came back in the past 5 to 10 years. So, these UD Choice, a Turnbow SP Authentic, and a random Pacific of Jeromy Burnitz were greatly appreciated. 

As an aside, that same time period featured the worst Brewers uniforms ever. I'm not a huge fan of the current uniforms either, but they were tons better than that weird ass font that the team used then. I'm pretty glad that none of the card companies even bothered showing Milwaukee in that timeframe.

I'm thinking that Butch Vig would agree with me that the Cubs and White Sox are the enemies. As his band Garbage with the lovely Shirley Manson tells us, "Sex Is Not the Enemy." Remember -- Butch Vig and his band mates other that Shirley (Duke Erikson and Steve Marker) are all originally from Madison, Wisconsin. They may not care about baseball, but that's not important here.

The true highlights from this package were these awesome Milwaukee Braves from 1960 (and one thrown in from 1958 too). It's not often you get a 58 year-old card of a Hall of Famer in a trade package, but there's that Red Schoendienst to make that happen. Throw in future manager Chuck Cottier -- whom I would have sworn was much younger than his 48 years old when he took charge of the 1984 Seattle Mariners near the end of that season. Those lines on Chuck's card are on the card too, which I suppose makes it okay that this one here ended up being a second copy of a card for me. 

This was actually the song in my head that got me started on the path of finding songs about enemies. Green Day is total pop punk, which means to me that their version of punk is less nihilistic and more hook-filled and lighter. 

Still, I bet Robb really knows a ton of our enemies living in the midst of them. To be fair, it still seems weird to me to dislike the Cubs since I didn't grow up with them being the focus of boyhood hatred -- that role was reserved for the New York Yankees and, to a lesser extent, the Chicago White Sox. 

Thanks, Robb, for the great cards. Everyone else -- be sure to follow him on Twitter and try to cajole him into blogging again. 

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.

Angus Sends Me More Cards

Angus of Dawg Day Cards has sent me cards so many times by this point that I'm running out of new or innovative ways to write blog posts about the cards. Today's angle:

A movie "from the Producer of 'Cool Runnings' called Angus. The movie came out in 1995 and was sort of the typical high school movie -- fat geeky kid who is good at football and science gets picked on by the jocks but, in the end, the geek wins the heart of the hot girl at the high school dance and the jock gets his comeuppance. By 1995, I was a bit old to be in this movie's target market -- I mean, I was 23 years old and started law school in 1995, so I was more about Clerks. 

But Clerks didn't have a character named Angus, so I'm not writing about that movie today.

All those high school movies seem to have stock characters. So, let's compare the cards I got from Angus to the characters in Angus.

Also, please note -- if you haven't seen the movie, this post will ruin it. Probably.  

1.  The Wise Old Man Providing Advice

In Angus, George C. Scott (an Academy Award Winner for his role as General George Patton) played Ivan, Angus's narcoleptic grandfather, who counsels Angus that he shouldn't worry about fitting in and, instead, he should just be himself and let people decide whether they like him or not based on that. Ivan dies midway through the movie, and his death is the turning point for Angus. 

The wise old man in the cards that Angus sent is none other than Warren Spahn. Completely unrelated information tidbit: Spahn grew up in Buffalo, New York, and attended South Park High School.

2.  The Mom Trying Her Best to Help Her Son

The truck-driving mom is called Meg and is played by a second Academy Award Winner, Kathy Bates. Meg and Ivan disagree as to the right things for Angus to do to succeed, though both only want the best for the boy. Meg and Ivan disagreed about whether Angus should transfer to another school to get away from the toxic atmosphere in his current school. Meg believed he should while Ivan believed that Angus needed to stand up for himself and get tougher.

Buck Rodgers was named the permanent Brewers Manager late in 1980. He had filled in on an acting basis during the 1980 season when George Bamberger suffered a heart attack. Bamberger stepped down in early September, and Rodgers took over the reigns again at that point. In what was the turning point of the 1982 season, Rodgers was fired on June 1 with the team record at 23-24. The team won 72 of its remaining 115 games to win the AL East and go to the World Series. I put Buck here because, well, what he was urging the team to do in 1982 was pretty clearly wrong and not working.

3.  The Mean Jock Antagonist

In the movie, the football king of the high school always dates the hot girl, calls the fat kid names, hurts others physically and mentally, and, in the end, he gets shown up. In Angus, James Van Der Beek of Dawson's Creek fame gets his major motion picture debut as the jerk jock. 

Because none of the players on the cards Angus sent to me really fit the "jerk jock" mold -- at least that I'm aware of -- I'll show this cool Fleer fabric logo patch from some time in the early 1970s. 

Anyone have any idea as to the specific date?

4.  The Geeky Sidekick to the Main Character

Another actor famous for another role played the part of the geek sidekick. His name is Chris Owen, and Owen became much more well known in the late 1990s for his role as Sherm -- "the Sherminator" -- in the American Pie franchise of movies. Owen has remained close friends since this movie with his co-star lead in the movie, Charlie Talbert.

While Cecil Cooper probably is not a geek, the oddball 7/11 coin from 1984 with its magic motion discs is sort of the geeky sidekick to the rest of the cards Angus sent. 

5. The Jock's Yes Man Sidekicks

James van der Beek's character Rick had two fellow jocks who followed along with him everywhere to help belittle all in their wake. These two characters were Mike and Andy. Mike was played by Salim Grant, who in recent years has produced music for Snoop Dogg and performed under the name Autobotic. Andy was played by Kevin Connolly -- who is far better known today as E from "Entourage."



The two yes-men in Angus's envelope to me are played by a John Axford mini from 2011 Allen & Ginter and a Bowman Heritage certified autograph of Rickie Weeks. These are both cool cards generally, but these guys are supporting characters and not the main star.

6. The Hot Girl Love Interest Who's Dating the Jock But Ends Up with the Geek

Ariana Richards played Melissa Lefevre, the girl on whom Angus had a crush. Richards was better known at the time as the "Jurassic Park" girl. She quit acting to attend college, and now she is as much an artist as she is an actress.



These two Robin Yount cards definitely were the "pretty girl" in the envelope from Angus. Both are numbered to 1000, and both were needed parallels from the parallel-happy Donruss sets/inserts of the mid-2000s.

Angus, thank you very much once again for the great cards. To take us out of this post, let's go to the big song off the Angus soundtrack -- "J.A.R." by Green Day.

Je suis un collectionneur

It's a sad truth that the French people have a reputation among tourists of being rude. Whether it's this story from Scotland's National Newspaper, The Scotsman, proclaiming, "The French admit they're too rude to tourists" or this story explaining five reasons why Americans might think this is the case, it's easy to find complaints on the internet about the "rude French."

The major problems with this generalization? Well, the first is simple: when people say that they think French people are rude, they are referring to Paris. Big city people tend to be more cautious around strangers generally -- it's how you survive in a city, after all -- and that caution and reservation can be seen as rudeness.

Second, I think there is a perception that Paris is supposed to be like what people see in the movies for Paris. It's supposed to be all high fashion, the Moulin Rouge, and baguette-carrying, mustachioed, guys giving the okay sign.

The reality is, though, that French people are just people like you and me. They are courteous -- especially when treated with courtesy themselves. They are cautious in unfamiliar situations -- especially when someone they've never met comes up to them demanding that they speak in an unfamiliar language and tell them how to get somewhere.  

And, they are collectors. Like Kevin a/k/a the Card Papoy. During the week before Christmas, a package from France appeared in my mailbox. I'm pretty sure that it's my turn to send some cards Kevin's way at this point, so it was a welcome surprise. Thankfully, with the massive Christmas gift I got producing some interesting cards, I'll be able to send some cool stuff out in the next few months.

But, that's in the future. For now, let's get through the cards Kevin sent, starting by getting Lucky Pierre (caution: that link goes to the Urban Dictionary) out of the way.

Canadian buzzkillers out of the way, how about some late 1990s Upper Deck cards?

Now, other than Trevor Hoffman -- who may or may not make the Hall of Fame this year in his first year on the ballot -- these three cards are like baseball card representations of a Green Day song.

Todd Dunn and Brian Banks...yeah. 

Dunn was a sandwich round compensation pick in the 1993 draft for the Brewers (35th pick overall). The best thing I can say about him is that he attended Bishop Kenney High School in Florida, which is the same school that the daughter of two good friends of mine attends. 

Banks was the second round pick in that same 1993 draft out of BYU. The fact that he got 249 plate appearances for the 1999 Brewers (.242/.317/.352) says more about the Brewers than anything I can say.



Four more Upper Deck cards from 1997. 

Eldred, of course, is a PC. As his card caption mentions and as I've said before, Eldred got put through the Phil Garner meat grinder in 1993, facing a league high 1087 batters that season. That number is the fourth-highest total from 1993 to the present and sixth-highest in the past 25 years. For comparison's sake, only three pitchers in the past ten seasons (2006 to 2015) have topped 1000 -- CC Sabathia had 1023 in 2008 when the Brewers pitched him about every second day because they knew they didn't have to worry about his future health, Felix Hernandez's 1001 in 2010, and David Price's 1009 in 2014. (I think I mention that meat grinder every time I write about Eldred...apologies!)

Okay, on to the shiny cards with autographs and wood chips and leather embedded!



So, Jean Segura. These are great cards -- a blue chrome parallel and a Topps Tribute serial numbered 24 out of just 50. As for the player, though...I mean, I've put a fair amount of time, money, and energy into collecting Segura's cards. The only reason I haven't abandoned his PC at this point is, well, I keep getting these good cards of him. I'm thinking, though, that it might be time to cut bait. 

I'm pretty sure that Segura is going to get traded or designated for assignment or non-tendered within the next year or so. The Brewers have stocked up on replacements for him already -- with Orlando Arcia getting to Double A in 2015 and adding former Astro Jonathan Villar in trade for minor leaguer Cy Sneed -- so it's just a matter of time. At that point -- if not sooner -- I'll relegate Segura back to the Brewer boxes, I'm guessing.  Maybe. 

And, when I do, perhaps I'll replace him with Demi Orimoloye. I mean, after all, who wouldn't want a PC of the first African-born major leaguer (assuming that he makes the long trip to the majors)? Especially one trained to play baseball in Canada....

Next up -- a game used "ball" card. I'm surprised that Topps hasn't revived this type of relic card, considering how cheaply one can purchase game used balls.

Okay, last three cards, none of which are related to one another. First, let's look at some player collection inserts I needed:



The Braun Starquest is a "Starquest Rare." I haven't looked much at this, but I don't have a clue as to how much rarer a Starquest Rare" was over a "Starquest Common."

The Molitor Kimball Champions mini card is pretty cool. I do wonder how much further the "using old card designs" thing can go, though. I'd like to see revived use of oddball designs, for what it's worth. Use some of those cool "Topps Cereal Series" card designs from 1984 instead of yet another cigarette company card. Just my $0.02.

And finally, it's shiny happy Overbay:

From 2004, it's Lyle Overbay on a Leaf Certified Materials Red Mirror bat relic card. 2004 and 2005 pretty much destroyed any joy that parallels, inserts, and relic cards might otherwise have brought. Anyone who has tried to put together their own "comprehensive" checklists for their favorite team or player hates 2004 and 2005 for the ridiculous numbers of parallels, insert parallels, and base sets. Donruss/Leaf -- then owned by Playoff -- likely was largely responsible for massive glut of cards that led to the limitations on licenses in 2006. That, and financial viability for the card companies, of course.  

Still, all that just doesn't matter. What matters is that these cards and the unquestioned kindness Kevin displays to all of us in the Blogger world.  Thanks, Kevin!