A Card from The Hot Corner

A quick post before I head out first to my local card show for the first time in four months and then helping to entertain my wife's aunt, who is coming to stay with us tonight.

With the recently threatened winter weather here in Atlanta -- and, for the most part, it stayed as threatened rather than real -- I was home on Wednesday afternoon when the mail came. And what to my wondering eyes should appear but a PWE from Michigan with one tiny .... well, the story works better if it were a Rob Deer card.  But, instead, it was a Green Gypsy Queen parallel from 2013 of the PED Man known as Ryan Braun:

As you can see from this scan of the back of the card, it was numbered to 99:

The PWE came from Pat of Hot Corner Cards, who has been spreading the PWE love around the blogosphere as of late.

I'm glad that Pat included me in the mail day -- thank you very much!

Where Was I When?

I recently received a big package of Brewers cards from Pat at Hot Corner Cards. Many of the cards were duplicates for me, though in that vein many of them were needed for my team collection. All of them are greatly appreciated. 

But, seeing the years on these cards flash by made me start to think. I've been very reflective lately for a number of reasons, and that reflectiveness had me contemplating this question:

When these cards came out, what was I doing instead of collecting cards?

Now, I'm not going to be able to pick out all of the years successfully, but let me highlight a few.

1991
The cards:

What was I doing/where was I?
Some of these are easy. 

Assuming these cards were released around April of 1991, I was finishing up my freshman year of college and worrying like hell that I wouldn't pull my grades up enough to stay in school on a scholarship. It was close, but I pulled through. Otherwise, I was your typical 19-year-old -- hanging out with friends, staying out late, drinking at each other's houses sometimes, and generally trying to avoid all responsibility for as long as possible.

1992
The Cards:

What was I doing/where was I?
By this point, I had navigated my way through as easy a couple of semesters as I could find at my school to pull my grades up enough so that I wouldn't have to worry any more about my scholarship (so long as I didn't screw up...I didn't, either, thankfully).  I was dating a girl from Texas, had gone snow skiing for the first -- and still only -- time with her and her family, and otherwise life was pretty good. I helped coach my brother's little league team too while working for an electrical contractor.

In other words, it was a very good year.

1999
The Card:

What was I doing/where was I?
I started working in Atlanta as a lawyer in 1999, and I thought I knew a lot at that point. I did know a lot, but I could have learned more by not talking about how much I knew.

It was a good year, though -- lots of hanging out with new friends and old, lots of times hanging out at an Ally-McBeal-like watering hole near our office with other lawyers, and lots of money spent on beer. 

2006
The Cards:

What was I doing/Where Was I?
I changed jobs at the beginning of 2004 after a stressful time looking for that new job. I'd moved from a smaller, specialized firm into a much larger general practice firm in the world of what is called -- sometimes derisively -- BigLaw.  I had learned by this point to keep my mouth shut more, to avoid socializing every day with co-workers, and to pay more attention to what others had to say.

That gives context to what I did in 2006, which is change jobs again to an even bigger firm that paid more money. I thought I had it made.

I also had bought a condo five years earlier and moved into the heart of Atlanta. I loved living there, and there are days that I miss it. I was single, 35 years old, in walking distance of great restaurants, grocery stores, and my office. 

Finally, I even left the country for the first time, spending my 35th birthday freezing my butt off at a soccer game in London:

That is the game between Fulham and Charlton, at The Valley (Charlton's home ground). I got to see American Carlos Bocanegra score a goal for Fulham, even. Both teams have since been relegated to the Championship.

2008
Bear with me...I won't hit everything along the way:
The Card:

What was I doing/Where Was I?
My busiest year to date, workwise. I got involved in the largest case in my career, I thought about moving overseas, and I traveled a ton. 

I thought about moving to Dubai:

That's me in front of the Dubai History Museum.

I visited Italy:

And, to be honest, I wasn't happy because I was doing all this alone. I didn't move to Dubai -- I honestly hated the place. I liked Italy, but Rome was terribly seedy in many respects and had so many places covered in graffiti (that is, after all, a world from the Italian). And while I enjoyed all my travels, I found myself a bit lonely.

That would all change soon enough.

2010
The Cards:

What was I doing/Where Was I?
I met my now-wife in 2009. We got married in 2010 and went on a great honeymoon to Spain and Morocco -- yeah, we did it up. 

Hams at the market in Barcelona

Olives at the market in Tangier. Hey, we like markets!

Life was great in 2010. It still is pretty good too.

Why did I go through all this?
The cards that Pat sent were from so many different times that it got me pensive again. Next time, I'll put on some more Frank Sinatra! 

Seriously, though, it is interesting to me to contemplate what it was I was doing with my free time in the days before I came back to collecting. I was definitely traveling a lot -- both for work and for fun. When I was in town, a great night for me on a weekend often involved music, a book, a bottle of wine, and hanging out with my dog. I didn't have space for much more than a bunch of bookshelves at my condo, though I'm sure I could have come up with something if I had had to.

Anyway, I hope I didn't bore you too much with my brief reminisces.  

More to the point, a big thank you to Pat for your kindness and for the cards. I'm putting together a package this weekend for you.

An Envelope from the Hot Corner

On the Saturday before I went to the card show, a little white envelope showed up in my mailbox. It appeared literally a couple of days after I said that the mail had run out, and it was marked as being "From the Hot Corner."

It's always a good thing to see that mark on the envelope, and this time was no different. The envelope contained two Ryan Brauns and a Yovani Gallardo.

This card was an insert in the 2012 Topps set, and it highlights a day when Braun won the Brewers a game against the Pittsburgh Pirates on September 25, 2008.  The Brewers were in a tight race with the New York Mets for the one and only Wild Card spot that year. The race was so tight that the Brewers had fired manager Ned Yost with the Brewers standing at 83-67 and replaced him with Dale Sveum.

The Brewers had put their chips into the middle of the table in July of that year, sending to the Indians Rob Bryson, Zach Jackson, Matt LaPorta, and a player to be named later -- which turned out to be the best player the Indians got in the deal, outfielder Michael Brantley -- in return for three months of CC Sabathia. Two weeks later, the team picked up Ray Durham from the Giants as a backup for Rickie Weeks.

Things started falling apart, leading to the Yost firing. With just 3 games left in the season, the Brewers squared off against Pittsburgh. Karmically speaking, the Pirates winning out this season as wild card really should happen, because the Brewers were just 4 games over .500 as a team in 2008 except for the fact that they got to play the Pirates.

Coming into that September 25, 2008, game, the Brewers had gone 13-1 against their whipping boys from Allegheny County. For that night's game, Yovani Gallardo came back off the DL to throw four innings -- 67 pitches, 7 strikeouts, 3 hits, one run.  After that, the Brewers threw their entire bullpen at the Dodgers -- a bullpen which sounds today like reading a list of failed closers...Carlos Villanueva, Eric Gagne, Guillermo Mota, Brian Shouse, Salomon Torres, Todd Coffey, and, finally, Mitch Stetter.

For the Pirates, current Brewer Zach Duke was the starter. He threw 7 innings of 7-hit, 1-run ball against the Brewers and was followed by Tyler Yates, John Grabow, and Jesse Chavez.

The game went to the tenth inning tied at 1. Coffey and Stetter worked their way out of the 10th without any damage despite Coffey giving up a hit. In the bottom of the inning, Rickie Weeks led off and moved to second when bunted over by Jason Kendall. Durham pinch hit for Stetter and was intentionally walked. After Mike Cameron struck out swinging, Chavez walked Craig Counsell.  Up stepped Braun. He took the first two pitches for balls. He then watched as Chavez threw strike one. Braun fouled off the next ball, putting the count at 2-2.

And then, Braun crushed the 2-2 pitch to hit his first-ever career grand slam for the walk-off win. The Brewers racked up a 14-1 record against the Pirates that season. Add in the Brewers 9-0 record against the Giants and the Blue Jays that year, and the 90-72 record looks almost like overachieving. Indeed, it was 23-1 against those three teams, and 67-71 against everyone else.

This card is an insert in the Donruss packs from this year. It's the whole "background that looks like nothing" issue, matched up with the "we can't show you logos" issue that makes this card a tough one to love.

In other words, the card is a lot like Braun has become. As much as the heroic retelling from days of yore makes a Brewers' fan's heart flutter, one look at Braun's contract and his chronic thumb issue this year makes the Brewers' GM and ownership have heart palpitations. Soon, Brewers fans (well, okay, at least one fan, probably me) will start making Samuel Taylor Coleridge references when discussing Braun.

Trust me, that's not good.

Finally, it's Yovani Gallardo. The one thing I appreciate about the Donruss/Panini efforts in this year's set is that they didn't go with those bizarre pajama-looking uniforms that dominated the Panini Hometown Heroes set from last year. While this card is suboptimal due to the logo-less hat, it's not as bad as it could be.

In my card-show purchases post, I mentioned that Gallardo has a team option for next year at $13 million. When that contract was signed, team officials were exultant about "having what we consider an ace of a staff, a No. 1 guy, tied up" (contractually speaking, I trust). It looked like a good deal in 2010, when Gallardo made the All-Star game. Frankly, it hasn't looked all that bad during the life of the contract.

What is very disconcerting, though, is the decline in strikeouts over the past two seasons.  From 2007 through 2012, Gallardo struck out 9.2 batters per nine innings -- pretty much one an inning. Over the past two years, that number has dropped to 6.9 K/9. Perhaps it's just the accumulation of innings on his arm; between 2009 to 2012, when Gallardo was 23 to 26 years old, Gallardo threw nearly 800 innings. 

Some guys can take that workload, and some guys cannot. Perhaps Gallardo will go on to pitch for another 10 seasons after this year without any problems. After all, he emerged from that injury nexus between the ages of 20 and 26 without getting hurt. But the declining dominance is disconcerting. Even in season, Gallardo's K/9 has dipped by another 0.5 K/9 between the first half and second half. 

So, do I want the Brewers to pick up his option at $13 million? It's a close call. The team has six guys who started this season other than Gallardo -- Lohse, Peralta, Garza, Estrada, Nelson, and Fiers. Marco Estrada turned into a batting practice pitcher, giving up homers at a crazy rate (1.8 HR/9 innings even after being relatively unscarred as a reliever). Mike Fiers alternates between being Bob Gibson (African-American of the 1960s) and Bob Gibson (awful white dude who pitched for the Brewers in the 1980s) -- and I keep waiting for the bullpen car to turn into a pumpkin again with him.

I think a lot will depend on what the Brewers think their outlook is for 2015. If they believe they can contend again, I think they pick up his option or work out a 2-year deal at a slightly lower salary. If not, then we might see Tyler Thornburg in the rotation next year.

Thanks for the cards, Pat. I hope that this post does not dissuade you from sending more cards for fear of another 750-word wishy-washy dissertation on whether the Brewers should pick up Yovani Gallardo's option. I'm pretty sure I'll change my mind again in a few weeks.

A PWE from the Hot Corner

I hereby interrupt the "here's a massive stack of cards I got" posts to bring you a "here's two cards I got in a plain white envelope" post.

It's Thursday evening. I am speaking to a group of architects in the morning and generally otherwise skipping out of going to work.  I'm in a good mood.  Well, except for having to replace an HVAC unit in my house...which also is tomorrow. But now, I'm just complaining.

Here's a song appropriate for being plain and white:

Now, on to the post. Pat from Hot Corner Cards sent me a two card PWE last week that had two cards I needed for my collections.  One is a Brewers parallel of Travis Ishikawa -- which means that I have gotten both the Target and the Gold parallels from fellow bloggers in the space of a week:

Granted, #45 in my mind is always Rob Deer until someone supplants him, but it's pretty cool to have gotten both of those parallels in rapid succession.

The other card Pat sent to me went directly into a player collection:

That Gypsy Queen mini of Jean Segura matches the mini-OBP that Segura has had this year. It's been a tough year for him -- he's struggled at the plate and, more tragically, his nine-month old son died just before the All-Star break this year.  Hopefully, his struggles were caused by those off-field issues and next year will be better.  Lord knows I'd struggle at my job if something similar happened to me.

Thank you, Pat, for the PWE.  I'm putting together a much larger package in return for your Brewers from the "team box break" post you had.   

"Who are *those* from now?" "It's John and the Hot Corner, Dear!"

That would be my wife talking.  She's seen a fair number of PWEs and bubble mailers showing up in our mailbox, as you can imagine with the eBay win trilogy of a couple of posts ago.  Today's post is to highlight a couple of those wonder PWEs that arrived recently.

Because I'm a little short on time, though, you'll have to make do with "the best of the lot" and the "single scan fits all" methods -- I'm being lazy and don't feel like fixing my scanner's failure to separate the cards out for me

First, I made a trade with reader John.  John saw some of my Repack posts and really liked a Chipper Jones refractor that was packaged in one of those $20 boxes of unopened packs.  So, he asked me if I could save that refractor for him along with other Braves and Mets too.  I sent those to him, and he mailed me some Brewers -- the standard operating procedure for making a trade with me, after all.  The three best cards I got from John were:

I love the Carlos Gomez Heritage Refractor in particular, though the Dave Nilsson Pacific Paramount and the Scooter Gennett Minor league cards both are great additions to my collection.  Here's hoping that Carlos Gomez hasn't started another fight with another Pirate tonight.

The other PWE I got was a random one from Pat at Hot Corner Cards.  I'm not sure if I sent him anything for this envelope, but I will definitely need to reciprocate soon.  He sent me some good recent cards as well:

That Ryan Braun card in particular was a great card to get for me, though all of them are greatly appreciated.

Thanks again to both of you for the cards and the trades.

I will write some tomorrow too, hopefully, but I will be out of town on Thursday night.  I'm heading to Savannah, Georgia, to speak to a group of architects about construction contracts.  If you'd like, I could see if the seminar could be live blogged on Twitter....any takers?

I didn't think so.

Trade with S.Mack Talk and Hot Corner Cards Trade #2

Tornados are nothing to trifle with.  Thankfully, I did not take the photo above.  Hopefully, I will not be seeing a similar sight overnight tonight or tomorrow.  We've had some rough weather here in Georgia -- though nothing like what our brethren in Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee have seen in the past few days.  I'm not looking forward to any kind of hunkering down tonight with storms, and I hope that it does not come to that.  

On a far, far lighter note, I have received a couple of PWEs in the past couple of days that put a smile on my face.  The first one came from an unexpected source -- Jimmy at S.Mack Talk Cards.  Jimmy is a Shane Mack super-collector.  He contacted me by e-mail when I put up my sidebar on the cards I needed to complete the basest of the 2014 Topps base sets (no short prints) and said that he had the cards I needed. The tough part was trying to find cards I had that he needed.  Thankfully, I found a couple of Opening Day mascot cards I could share with him, and we worked it out to where he sent me what I needed:  

 x2

Thank you, Jimmy, for the trade!

The other PWE came from Pat from the Hot Corner.  His note warned me that it was a "Super PWE", and that note was 100% correct!  It was all Heritage Brewers, all the time!

  

All of those are excellent, but the Jean Segura refractor serial numbered to 999 was definitely the best of the bunch.  All that for some purple card from Toys R Us?  Pat, you are truly amazing.

Thank you to both of you for the trades, and thanks to all of you for reading.  

Catching up on Trades

I have gotten buried this week by stuff going on in life and by having gone a little overboard on buying on eBay and buying unopened stuff.  The buying stuff this week is what led me to my reflectiveness in my last post, while the poker with the neighborhood guys is what led me to get behind on posting.  I'll get to the unopened stuff in another post, but I want and need to get caught up on some trades that came in for me this week.

First, Pat from Hot Corner Cards sent me a fantastic box of 2013 update and 2014 Topps cards to help me fill in gaps in my collection of those sets.  I am still sorting through all of them, but I wanted to say a hearty "Thank YOU!" to Pat.  In his honor, I'm posting something I got through the mail back in about 1987:

Pat, I agree with you -- Alan Trammell belongs in the Hall of Fame.  He had the misfortune of having a career at the same time as several all-time greats -- everyone from Robin Yount (who had a 4-year head start and started in the majors as a teen just a bit earlier) to Cal Ripken Jr. (on whom Trammell had a 4-year head start) to Ozzie Smith (almost a direct contemporary) to Barry Larkin (10 years later) and Derek Jeter, whom Trammell overlapped by a year.  He also had six injury filled years at the end of his career that cost him any chance at 3000 hits.  Trammell was a great player and one I thought at the time did not get enough credit.

I also grabbed a nice serial numbered card (325/499) from the Quarry and some other fine Brewers cards to help continue filling that gaping hole in my collecting years called 1991 through 2007.  Here's the cool Prince Fielder I snagged:

In the mail today I was the recipient of a bubble mailer from The Card Chop.  I still owe The Chop a return package, which I'm putting together this weekend along with a couple of other envelopes I'm about ready to send.  But I always appreciate getting a great oddball Robin Yount to add to my collection -- especially one with a note saying that Yount was going to a good home.

A Canadian General Mills sticker from MSA in the 1980s is heading to the Hiatus Yount binder to replace the yellow piece of paper placeholder.

Also making the trip from Idaho was a card from my childhood non-Brewer favorite, Gary Carter, from the Topps Archives set in 2012:

All in all, it was a good week for trades here.  Now, over the rest of this weekend, I have to figure out what I got in the other stuff I got this week.  It includes everything from one of the earliest Brewers sets ever printed to cracking three boxes of 2012 Topps Series 2 to two wonderful Hostess Panels from the 1970s.

Stay tuned!