Christmas with All Trade Bait All The Time

Here amongst the baseball card blogorati -- which is sort of like the Illuminati but with bubble gum stains-- discussions often turn from baseball cards and baseball to discussions on beer and bourbon and other similar vices. Since we are all collectors, a lot of us like to collect experiences on tops of our cards.

One of the guys with whom I interact regularly is Oscar from All Trade Bait, All the Time. Oscar is a unique dude. He is a Dodger fan -- which is as unique as sand at a beach in Florida in the blog world -- but he is studying Buddhism on the way to getting a Masters degree in Buddhist Psychology. Oscar also is one of the beer guys, as he gets together with buddies and samples beer and cigars.

Oscar is just a all-around good dude.

He confirmed that with his "club PWE" mailings recently. Here's what he sent to me:

This card is a subtly terrible photo. The way the lighting hits Brock's mouth makes it appear that he's missing a tooth or two up front in his mouth.  He also looks a bit hungover. 

Oscar, is Brock a member of your beer club?

This photo looks like Vaughn was in a photo studio in front of a green screen and the background was photoshopped in. In fact, I'd bet dollars to donuts that is what happened here. I don't think that lighting behind him occurs naturally.

Is Gary Sheffield a Hall of Famer? The answer to that question has to start with the elephant in the room: his steroid use is admitted and well known.  He gave an interview saying that Barry Bonds introduced him to the BALCO labs. He claimed he did not know that BALCO supplied him with steroids. 

I tend to give very little weight to such claims of a lack of knowledge.

The more relevant question relates to his overall numbers. On some levels, he should be a Hall of Famer. The Bill James Hall of Fame Monitor puts him #78 overall with a 158 score (likely HOFer is around 100). The Hall of Fame standards test is a Baseball-Reference creation that puts him at 61, with the average HOFer around 50. 

On the other hand, looking at JAWS and WAR, though, and comparing him to right fielders, his career WAR is below the average HOF RF, his 7-year peak is below average, and his JAWS is below average. And, the black ink and grey ink standards there also say he is not a Hall member. 

I think that's right. Just because he went over the 500-homer mark does not make him a HOFer. He doesn't get there without steroids, either. Sorry Gary.

Not sorry.

The Brewers paid Franklin Stubbs $4 million over 2 years, yet lowballed Paul Molitor after the 1992 season and offered less than $1 million a year. 

I don't get it either.

Minis! These UK Minis were never on my radar screen in the late 1980s. Apparently enough of them were printed then, however, that they are typical filler in repacks. The "Tiffany" version is pretty cool though.

This is what it would look like if a baseball player were also a stalker. Probably.

Another mini! I keep putting off buying the 12-pocket sheets for these cards, and yet with GQ and A&G pushing out more and more minis, I am probably going to have to break down and buy them. Zach Davies had a good year last year -- he's a solid mid-rotation starter for the Brewers. Hopefully, going forward, he will end up lower in the rotation thanks to others jumping him rather than him sinking down without being passed.

And, finally:

Thanks to all the random parallels that infect Topps sets like the Zika virus migrating into Miami, I feel like I have or should have this card already. But, it's a high number in Heritage, meaning it's a short print. Why is it that I have about three or four of those chrome parallels for it, but this is the first copy of this card in my collection? 

Are the chrome parallels more readily available than the regular base set cards? If so, that's ridiculous. Base set cards should be more plentiful than parallels. They should -- if set collectors meant anything to Topps, that is. 

Well, at least I like beer.

Thanks, Oscar, for the PWE, the beer recommendations, and the fact that you are just a good dude!

Red, Red Foley

Can we all agree that this pub where the video is set is the world's worst pub in the history of mankind? It's too full of people, there's a random dude wandering around without a shirt, the bartender is slow because of being on crutches, you'll get your pocket picked, it's totally smoke-filled with everyone smoking like fiends, it's a world fully in black and white, and at the end of the night the only person you end up with is the random dude walking two dachshunds. 

That really doesn't have much to do with this blogpost other than the whole "red" thing. I was doing some searches on eBay recently for things that I've had stuck in my head lately -- in particular, Red Foley stickers. For whatever reason and despite seeing these available for sale from time to time, Red Foley stickers have evaded me. I probably should have bought these with my random Amazon credit instead of those stamps, but I didn't.

Anyway, I found a buy-it-now of a seller on eBay who must have loaded up on a bunch of Red Foley books from 1987, 1988, 1991, 1992, and 1993 because the seller has a ton of "mega lots" of Red Foley Stickers for a total of $8 with shipping. Mega lot? $8? Count me in.

So, what did I get?

Lots of Younts:

And, other than that weird one at the top with the big green circle impinging on the photo of Yount, I've got at least four of each of these. It is interesting to see the two stickers both numbered 103 -- from 1992 and 1993 -- appear to have been photos taken from the same at-bat. 

Another interesting sidelight that I just picked up on is the fact that it appears that Yount must have had a shoe deal with Pony. That's a brand that I had totally forgotten about before seeing these stickers. Also, I don't ever remember seeing this ad for the shoes:

I didn't see Robin in there, though.

The good thing about buying lots like this that I often get multiples of players that I collect as PCs. With my oh-so-strict rules I've created for myself (which I break regularly if I choose), I try to get one card/sticker for my PC and then another for my team collection. As I have gotten into this more, though, I've started establishing more lines -- things like, "for cards serial numbered under 100, I only will list PCs on my want list rather than trying to build team sets for each" and, "I don't care if super old stuff isn't serial numbered...if the oddball is tough to find, having one copy of it is enough."

The downside to this lot buying is getting tons of doubles, of course. Also, for whatever reason, none of the different years contained any Paul Molitor stickers. I'm guessing that the seller parted those out in a separate sale.

Anyway, here are the rest of the 1987s:

Next, 1988, featuring "generic sticker with generic font yelling team name in manner that one need not worry about licensing!":

Here's 1991, even though the Deer Sticker features a photo taken at least a couple of years earlier:

1992's book included Gary Sheffield in his high-top Nike spikes (obligatory E-5 not included):

And, finally, 1993 only had one other than Robin:

Buying lots on eBay can be frustrating at times, in large part because most lots end up comprised of 80 copies of one card followed by just one or two of others that should have been equally available and, then, the lot ends up missing some key cards or players. At the same time, though, when a lot like this comes up -- of something I had exactly zero previously -- I'll take all the extras in order to get a cheap kickstart on completing the team sets and PCs.

And can't we all use a good kickstart on our collections like that?

#SuperTrader Package from Mark Hoyle

Mark Hoyle doesn't blog, but Mark is as legendary as any blogger around for his spreading vintage cards and packages around the blog world. No one was surprised when JBF included Mark in the #SuperTrader group earlier this year.

Mark has become more active lately on Twitter, showing off his various purchases of cards and items of Jimmie Foxx, Ted Williams, and even an old Red Sox scorecard from a game between Bob Feller and Sox hurler Lefty Grove. Seeing items like those make me wish sometimes that the Milwaukee teams that I collect were around before 1953. 

I mean, I suppose I could collect whatever I can find from the 1901 Milwaukee Brewers -- which moved to St. Louis and eventually became the Baltimore Orioles. I doubt there is that much ephemera from that team other than, perhaps, newspaper accounts of their games.

Similarly, I could try to find cards from minor league teams or Negro League teams that were based in Milwaukee -- everyone from the Milwaukee Creams of the Single-A Western League, or the Milwaukee Brewers of the American Association (which followed the American Association from Single-A in 1902 up to Triple-A in 1952) or even the Milwaukee Chicks of the AAGPBL.

It's really a long baseball history, but it is mainly a minor league history before 1953 -- one I don't know much about.

But, as y'all know, I digress.

Mark packaged up some Brewers that I had and a couple that I did not in a recent envelope. Here's a sampling:

A 1990 Panini Sticker of the old MB logo is a great place to start. There is a true groundswell amongst Brewers fans to go back to this logo rather than the Miller-beer-influenced M that the team uses now.

I mean, the current one is not bad, but the other one is more recognizable, more inventive, and just cooler. It's not a total corporate logo, either. You can tell the MB was the result of a fan contest, and the current one was the result of a soulless Madison Avenue bull session.

Because of my love for the "MB" ball-in-glove logo, I'm only going to highlight those cards that have that logo on it that Mark sent. Plus, I rarely talk about junk wax Brewers here because, well, I have most of those cards already.

Rickey Keeton lasted a grand total of 22 games over two seasons with the Brewers -- 1980 and 1981. Keeton's main claim to fame for the 1982 team was that he was not a member of it. In fact, he was traded immediately after the 1981 season to the Houston Astros in exchange for Pete Ladd. Ladd then became the incredibly unlikely closer during September and October for Milwaukee in Rollie Fingers's absence. 

As best I can tell, he went back to Cincinnati (where he grew up). Of course, my information is from a super-dodgy website, so I'm not sure that's true. But it's all I have.

Yes, the first overall pick in the 1985 draft. Sure, he was the ACC Athlete of the Year in 1985 and, no doubt, he was a good player. Why is it, though, that it always seemed like the Brewers never got the best of him? Surhoff played 1102 games in Milwaukee (.274/.323/.380 slash line), then went to Baltimore for a total of 1001 games (.291/.341/.451) and Atlanta for 210 games (.277/.332/.402). 

The 1211 games outside Milwaukee saw him improving as a player into his mid-30s and, at the age of 34, having his best hitting season with 28 HRs, 107 RBIs, and a .308/.347/.492 slash line. I hate to ask the question, but it kind of has to be asked in that context: was it steroids or just improvement, bad pitching, and a better offensive context generally? Tough to say for sure.

Juan Castillo was a scrub. Always was, always will be. He was done in the majors after 3 appearances at the age of 27 in 1989. He played in the Mexican League, though, at least through 1998 and the age of 36.

Amazingly, he played 116 games (372 plate appearances) with a .224/.302/.312 slash line (OPS+ of 62) for a good 1987 Brewers team. Seriously, imagine if this guy hadn't been the second baseman playing the most and, instead, a major league hitter was there instead. 

It probably wouldn't have been enough to make up the 7-game gap between the Brewers and the first-place Tigers, but it would be an interesting simulation to run.

Jaime Navarro left the Brewers coming out of the strike in 1994-1995. He went to the Cubs, where he pitched well, and then to the White Sox, where he did not pitch well. Still, he was probably the Brewers best pitcher for at least parts of the early 1990s.

As an aside, I'm always fascinated by baseball families.  Jaime is a member of one, as his father Julio Navarro was also a pitcher -- with the Angels and Tigers in the 1960s and the Braves in 1970. 

Rob Deer is Joc Pederson's spirit animal. Like Deer, Pederson is one of the three-true-outcomes guys -- either he walks, strikes out, or hits home runs. Like Deer, Pederson will have to learn to make sufficient contact to remain employed as a major leaguer.

Deer loved being a Brewer. He said so himself in an interview 10 years ago, and he loved the fans. Brewers fans will always love Deer for his Easter Sunday home run in 1987 against the Texas Rangers that tied the game 4-4. Dale Sveum then stepped up and won the team its 12th straight game to start the season.

Man, those were some good times. When I see that video, I think not only of that team, but also of my late Uncle Ed. His bald head was reflecting the sunlight along the railing next to the bullpen in right field where Sveum hit that home run.

Finally, let's end with a bit of a whimper. Greg Brock split his career nearly evenly between the Milwaukee Brewers and the Los Angeles Dodgers -- 496 games with LA, 517 with the Brewers. He came to Milwaukee in exchange for pitchers Tim Crews and Tim Leary at the winter meetings in 1986. He was far better with Milwaukee, and 1987 was his best year -- .299/.371/.438. 

Brock's problem in both places was that he was following a team legend. In LA, he could never be Steve Garvey. In Milwaukee, he could never be Cecil Cooper. Everyone tried to wishcast a season like his 1982 season in Albuquerque (44 HR, 138 RBI, 21 2B, 8 3B, 118 R, and .310 AVG in 135 games), failing to realize how altitude and dry air inflates numbers. For that crazy 1982 season, he was inducted into the Albuquerque Baseball Hall of Fame alongside Sid Bream, Kevin Kennedy, and Carlos Salazar in 2012. It appears that he still lives in Loveland, Colorado, on a lake there -- and he even signs some autographs TTM.

Mark -- thank you for the great cards and yet another fun walk down memory lane. When your team is as bad as the Brewers are probably going to be this year, memories are all the sweeter -- and may be all I have!