Correcting the Record with an Old Photo

I'm very embarrassed to say that my post yesterday regarding Glenn Braggs contained an inaccuracy. I linked to the Glenn Braggs swing-and-a-miss on which he broke his bat over his own shoulder and said, incorrectly, that he struck out on the at bat. I didn't check myself against the Baseball Reference play-by-play, and there was the mistake. 

I still hadn't realized I'd made a mistake, though, until today. Late yesterday afternoon, I tweeted out the link to the post again, but this time including Glenn Braggs's Twitter handle in the Tweet. Imagine my surprise today when none other than Mr. Glenn Braggs himself corrected my mistake:

@OffHiatusBBC @pksteinberg Thanks for mention btw it was a fly out not a k! These things matter to hitters! Lol

— Glenn Braggs (@Gbraggs) May 9, 2016

Thankfully, as you can see, he was a good sport about it. Trust me when I say that I would not want to be on his wrong side.

Braggs actually holds another distinction: he was the first player to attend the University of Hawaii to make it to the major leagues. He actually had some pretty stiff competition for that distinction, as the second Rainbow Warrior to make it to the major leagues was one of Braggs's collegiate teammates. He's also one of my player collections: Chuck Crim. Perhaps surprisingly, the Brewers had four of the first eight Hawaii alumni to make the major leagues -- the other two being Joey Meyer and Scott Karl.

Apropos of thanking him, here's another Glenn Braggs item. This one is about 28 or 29 years old. When I was in high school, my mom had a job in a photo finishing factory -- one of those "overnight" photo developers. That meant, of course, that the second and third shifts were the busy time of the day for the place, and my mom worked third shift. 

Every once in awhile, she would come home with photos of baseball players. The place where she worked sponsored the Brewers "Photo Night" at the stadium, so that was often the time I'd most likely get some extra copies of photos. 

After the 1987 version of Photo Night, I got a bunch of 5x7s of various Brewers players. One of them was of Glenn Braggs, and I was lucky enough to get him to sign it:

I also got an unsigned 8x10 of him:

I worry about unleashing that photo on the Internet, though, because that look on his face could turn into a meme pretty easily...but if it does, I think someone should notify Mr. Braggs immediately.

Thanks to the wonders of Twitter, I was able to thank Glenn Braggs today personally for signing that autograph about 28 or 29 years ago...after he read a post I wrote and took the time to correct me on it.

Isn't technology a wonderful thing?

Thanks again to Mr. Glenn Braggs for being a good sport, and thank you all for reading. 

Memorabilia Monday: The Ball that Was My Pride and Joy

I like trivia. I especially like baseball trivia, but really, any trivia will do. Whether it's pub trivia, trivia websites, or trivia TV shows, I enjoy watching and participating in trivia contests. 

This has been true for most of my life. As a young kid subscribing to Baseball Digest, one of my favorite parts of the magazine was to test myself with the trivia questions and answers.  If the trivia related to a team or player I cared about, then there was no question that I would get the question correct.

In 1982, I remember there being one weekend -- perhaps in June, because the weather was not hot outside -- when Jim Gantner was making an autograph signing appearance at a marina in Pewaukee. I think that it was competing with another appearance at a location closer to Milwaukee at which both Paul Molitor and Robin Yount were signing autographs at a shoe store, but I may be misremembering that.

I think that was the case, though, because when we got to the location where Gantner was supposed to be signing, the place was dead. Now, I also seem to recall that Gantner's appearance hours were from 1 PM to 3 PM before a 7:30 PM game, and we were arriving at around 2:45 PM.  So, coupled with the fact that usually, a Brewer making an appearance would draw a line, we (my mom, my older brother [who had to come along], and me) thought that perhaps they had wrapped up the appearance a bit early.

We took a chance and went inside anyway.  We found Jim Gantner standing next to a boat, checking out its dashboard and talking to a salesperson who was pretty clearly his liaison of sorts for this appearance.  When we walked in, we must have looked a bit apprehensive, because the salesperson and Gantner both said, "come on over, good to see you!"

The salesperson then posed a trivia question: in 1980, what Brewer finished second in the American League batting title race with a .352 batting average? Even now, that would be an easy question for me, but for little ten-year-old Tony you might as well have asked for his name, address, and telephone number.  I knew that answer immediately and without missing a beat said quickly, "Cecil Cooper." 

The guy goes, "You're correct! Here's your prize!"

And he handed me a plastic covered baseball with the Brewers team name and logo on it, which Jim Gantner promptly signed.

That ball was my constant autograph companion for the next year or so.

The problem with a plastic covering, however, is the fact that ink fades pretty badly from plastic.  Only a few autographs remain legible.

Anyway, here are some photos of that ball, which I still have today.  It used to be my pride and joy, and in some respects it still is:

The Brewers name.  If you squint, you can see Roy Howell's signature on the left of the team name and a badly retraced Robin Yount signature on the right side.  Underneath the team name is Bob Gibson, the version who played in Milwaukee in the 1980s who was not very good.  On the far left side in black is Charlie Moore.

The fading old Brewers Logo.  The black sharpie signature there is Ted Simmons. Barely visible on the logo itself (and upside down) is Bob Uecker.

On this panel are three Hall of Famers.  Yes, once again, 12-year-old me was disappointed in how much the signatures had faded already at that point and took a sharpie to darken the signatures from Rollie Fingers and Paul Molitor. Under Molitor, of course, is Don Sutton.  Above Fingers in ink is reserve outfielder Mark Brouhard.

Finally, on this part of the ball, you see the badly retraced Robin Yount at the bottom.  Above his signature is now-Commissioner Bud Selig.  Above Selig is fifth outfielder Marshall Edwards, whose twin brother Mike played for the Oakland A's.  Above Edwards is the first ever signature on the ball from Jim Gantner.  Above Gantner is baseball arsonist Ned Yost, the backup to Ted Simmons at catcher in 1982.

Also on the ball but faded so badly I'm embarrassed to show them are Buck Rodgers, announcers Pat Hughes and Steve Shannon, Don Money, Sal Bando, Mike Caldwell, and a couple more that are so faded that I can't read them.

The enjoyment I got in chasing those autographs -- as I got them all in person -- was incredibly high.  I just wish that they were still legible.

Memorabilia Monday: Cecil Cooper Signs

As a ten-year-old, Cecil Cooper made me mad. 

It was a sunny Saturday in May in 1982.  It was the first game that I can remember attending, and my mom was patient enough that day in May to say that I could stay after the game to try to get autographs. Whether it was instinct or asking a security guard or asking any one of the dozens of other kids hanging out after the game, we figured out where the players parked next to County Stadium.  I had my ballpoint pen in one hand, my 1982 Brewers police card set in my other hand, and I was ready.

We autograph chasers had to cover two exits from County Stadium. An informal communication system was set up.  Kids were telling their friends and whoever else was in earshot who was signing, whether they were staying long, and whether they were being nice. I'm pretty sure that the players that day had the patience that Job longed for in the Bible, because I know I came home with a bunch of autographs.

But I came home mad too. I've said before that I think I may have related to Paul Molitor because he was a midwestern kid.  Robin Yount grew up before our eyes in Milwaukee. 

Cecil Cooper was a fully formed player by the time he got to Milwaukee.  He was the cool one. He was the guy whose batting stance everyone emulated from the left side -- the bat so loose in his hands that it looked like you could knock it out, weight poised over his back leg with his front leg in an open stance.  He would always take two or three practice loops with his bat in the box, point the bat at the pitcher, then slowly loop his bat back into place.  

You can see the very end of it here in one of my favorite hits of his entire career:

I saw Coop that May day in 1982. He was wearing a flat cap -- Samuel L. Jackson would call it a Kangol hat these days -- with the brim pointed forward.  He had his sunglasses on.  He saw those kids -- myself included -- who said, "Mr. Cooper, could you please sign an autograph?" or "Hey Coop, just one? Please?" or even "Cecil, come on man!"

He did not respond to any of our requests.  He just kept walking, head held high, to his car.  And that disappointed me.

Now, I won't say that Cecil Cooper lost a fan that day, because I still liked him a lot -- he was still one of "us" even if he was an African-American from Brenham, Texas, and all of "us" were white kids of pretty much all Northern or Eastern European descent.  He will always be the first baseman of the Brewers to me.  But he did make me mad, because he just could have said, "I'm sorry, I don't have time today."  

But he didn't.

In his last year in Milwaukee in 1987, Cooper was not even a shadow of the player he had been.  He only played in 63 games that season, and none after July 12 -- the Sunday before the All-Star Break. Cooper had been supplanted at first base by Greg Brock, so he was the designated hitter in that game.  The next time that the Brewers played was July 16, and in that game, the Brewers had a new designated hitter -- Paul Molitor.  July 16 was the first game of Paul Molitor's 39-game hitting streak.

During his last few months in Milwaukee, Cooper made a public appearance at a local department store or mall and signed autographs there. As I learned in May of 1982 and learned again several times after that over the next 6 seasons, Cooper was a tough person to get after games in Milwaukee. The lines for autographs were long that day in 1987, but I finally got a few cards signed by Cecil Cooper:

Cooper hung around a bit too long, frankly -- that .308 lifetime batting average as of 1984 fell to a .298 career average and killed whatever long-shot Hall of Fame argument he may have had.  

But, these cards signed in 1987 made the 16-year-old me a lot less upset about a day 5 years earlier.  Thanks, Mr. Cooper.

Memorabilia Monday: "Mr. Molitor, would you please sign this?"

I've talked quite a bit about my Robin Yount collection here.  To be fair, I've put in a lot more money and work into it than any other player collection since I got back into collecting.  That's in large part because the Yount collection is my favorite now.

When I was a kid, though, Yount really was my second- or maybe even third-favorite Brewer.  My absolute favorite player when I was a kid was Paul Molitor.  I can't blame him for leaving Milwaukee when he did -- Bud Selig and Sal Bando lowballed Molitor on a contract offer in the offseason after the 1992 season, so Molitor left for Toronto at age 36 on a three-year deal with an option for a fourth year.  The fact that Molitor actually played at a very high level until age 41 is extremely impressive, especially in light of his injury issues in the 1980s in Milwaukee.

Of course, those issues were exacerbated by the fact that the team was jerking Molitor all over the park position-wise.  He came up as a shortstop -- the position he played at the University of Minnesota -- but Robin was there.  So, Molitor moved to second base.  He got hurt in 1980, and Jim Gantner showed he was a decent enough player to man that position.  Thus, in 1981, Molitor went to centerfield because (a) the Brewers had traded RF Sixto Lezcano in the Rollie Fingers/Ted Simmons/Pete Vuckovich deal, and (b) the Brewers felt Gorman Thomas would be better in right than Molitor.  Molitor promptly tore up his knee on May 3 and used the strike to recuperate.

With the Brewers getting Ted Simmons, though, and having a backup catching solution in-house with Ned Yost, they moved Charlie Moore back to the outfield in 1982 to play right, pushed Thomas back to center, and Molitor moved again -- this time to third base.  He played two full seasons before his elbow had to be fixed, so he missed most of the 1984 season.  After that, the Brewers even tinkered with him playing left field some in 1986, then first base starting in 1990, though he mainly was a designated hitter from about 1987 forward.

I loved his versatility as a player when I was a kid.  He also was the first genuine star for the Brewers who came up through the farm system in my memory.  Yount was already established by the time I was just 2 years old, but Molitor came up in 1978 -- and my 6-year-old brain latched on.

As a result, I loved chasing after his autograph, and I would take any opportunity I could to get one.  Here are the ones I have:

The Milwaukee County Stadium Chair from 2000

The Wavelength Waterbeds photo that was my first ever in-person autograph, signed in late June of 1981 in a waterbed store in West Bend, Wisconsin.  Molitor was sitting upright on a bed with his leg in a cast.

The 1981 Fleer card I had Molitor sign at the waterbed store.  Damn did I mangle that card.

1981 Topps, signed with a black pen before I learned to bring Sharpies

1985 Police set, almost certainly signed on that day of that game.

1984 Topps

1980 Topps

1983 Police set Card

Another one.  I think I was "sneaky" and turned my hat backwards to get this one and the previous card both autographed on the same day.

1984 Donruss Action All-Star

1985ish Mr. Z's Pizza 5x7 photo

While I don't have as many Molitor autographs as I do Carter Autographs, the thing was that it was easier to get a bunch of Carters signed all at once by sending them in the mail to him.  With Molitor, my desire to get lots of autographs was weighed against not wanting to be a hog of his time and the fact that I was often catching him right after a game.  He would stop to sign before getting in his car to go home, so he would make sure everyone got one signature. 

Molitor was a Midwest boy too -- a Minnesota native, after all -- so I think that helped me to connect with him as well.  Because he left, I did not want to go head first into collecting his cards, though.  My distaste for Bud Selig's mismanagement of the Milwaukee Brewers franchise would be dredged up with every Toronto Blue Jay Molitor I collected.

In honesty, though, it's probably a good thing that Molitor left.  He played until age 41 -- unlike his friend Robin Yount who quit at age 37 -- and he got to stay in the American League and DH when the Brewers decamped for the National League because, well, Bud wanted it that way.  

More importantly, he kept playing because he got to play for a winning club -- a direction that Selig ensured Milwaukee would not go under his watch.

Thanks for the memories, Molly -- we Brewers fans still appreciate them.

Brewers Police Cards

I have mentioned the Milwaukee Brewers Police Cards before in this blog.  In working on my Robin Yount and Brewers collection, I started paging through an old "What's Brewing?" magazine, which was (and may still be for all I can tell from the Brewers unhelpful website) the "Milwaukee Brewers Official Magazine." The magazine was printed on cheap newspaper stock, so it has yellowed over the 32 years I've had it, but I kept the May 1982 issue because this issue was autographed:

That issue featured a story not about how long-time Brewer Charlie Moore (who is fifth all-time in appearances in a Brewer uniform behind Robin Yount, Paul Molitor, Jim Gantner, and Cecil Cooper) was going to learn to throw left-handed but how he transitioned to being a right-fielder after being a catcher for his entire major and minor league career.  It also featured an interview with "Brewers-Pepsi Fan Club Captain" Paul Molitor about his third or fourth new position in just five years in the majors -- this time to third base.

For all the fun and nostalgia that those articles brought about, it was a story on the then-upcoming release of the first-ever set of Milwaukee Brewers Police cards that caught my attention:

The first Brewers game I consciously recall attending was the May 8, 1982 game between the Brewers and the Twins.  I think I attended one game before that one when I was about 4 or 5 years old and my brother went with his Cub Scout Troop in about 1977, but I have no real recollection of that.

Anyway, I was surprised a bit by the quantities of cards that were printed even for year one of the program. I mean, 40,000 cards is a lot of cards to give away, even if the Brewers succeeded in giving out 10,000 sets at the first game.  In part, I believe this accounts for the relatively low prices for which these cards sell.

After that first game in 1982, going to baseball card day became a family tradition for us.  When I got to be over 14 years old, we started taking my younger brother to the games -- he was born in 1983, so he was guaranteed to get a set of the cards whether they gave me one or not.

The beauty of baseball card day was that the giveaway gave all the kids an immediately usable medium on which to obtain autographs.  When I was going through my old cards from when I was a kid, I was surprised a bit to see how many Brewers police cards I had and, even further, how many were autographed.

So, first the autographs.  I believe that I got all of these in person at some point, though I'm not sure about the Doug Jones:

Doug Jones was on the 40-man roster for
the 1982 Milwaukee Brewers in the Spring

Some of those cards are yellowing a bit -- the card stock was white and very flimsy, and my mother smoked for many years as well.

1982 was the only year that Harry Dalton, then the General Manager, got a card. Harry was a true gentleman who presided over the Brewers system from 1977 through 1991.  Before that, he had helped build the Orioles team of the late 1960s and early 1970s -- indeed, his first order of business as Orioles GM was to pull the trigger on trading Milt Pappas and Jack Baldschun to the Cincinnati Reds for Frank Robinson.  He didn't do the trade immediately -- he tried to get another player from Cincy.

The trade helped lead the O's to the 1966 and 1970 World Series titles and the 1969 and 1971 AL pennants, and his underlings there included John Schuerholtz (the architect of the 1990s and 2000s Braves) and Joe Maddon, current manager of the Tampa Bay Rays.  In Milwaukee, he had both Sal Bando (his eventual successor who successfully plunged Milwaukee straight into the toilet) and Dan Duquette -- current Orioles GM and past GM of the Expos (1991 through early 1994) and the Boston Red Sox.

But I digress.

The most fun thing about Brewers police cards in the 1980s are the number of police departments which apparently gave these cards out.  The scans below shows just the varieties that I have collected through the years:

As I mentioned in a previous post, the police/safety cards have continued in Milwaukee into recent years:

Chasing all of the set variations from the 1980s especially is probably a foolish idea.  I still want to do it.  I call it a pipe dream of mine, though, because it really isn't clear how many police departments or which police departments had these printed up, the numbers that were printed, or who printed them.  But, if you happen to run across some of these cards, I'm very interested in them and would love to see what you have.

An in-person autograph of a different sort

So, for the first time since I started this blog about 4 weeks ago, I didn't post last night.  That is because, for a change, I was not home.  My wife and I went to the Fabulous Fox Theater here in Atlanta and saw Alton Brown Live.

Of course there's Delta.  It's Atlanta.

We did it up right, too.  I sprung for the "Full VIP Experience", which meant going to a Meet and Greet before the show.

Mr. Brown was very personable and friendly and appeared to enjoy meeting all the people at the Meet and Greet.  We had seen him at the pub next door before the show having a drink with his wife and a couple of friends too.  And, we had great seats -- 4th row from the stage.

It was a very entertaining show.  My wife, who isn't as big of a fan of Alton Brown as I am, said it was the most fun she had had at a show in a very long, long time -- so it must have been good.

And now, back to your regularly scheduled Baseball Card programming.

From the Archives

This is a strange strip of cards, though I can recall exactly where I got it. Growing up in Milwaukee in the 1980s, there was a fairly regular baseball card show that took place on the north side of town on 27th Street/Highway 41.  I don't recall where exactly the show was located, but I remember scouring the old Milwaukee Sentinel every morning looking for show announcements.

As the baseball card boom hit in the late 1980s, this show started bringing in former players to sign autographs for a couple of hours -- sometimes free, sometimes for a small $5 or $10 fee.  At one of these shows, the promoter brought back former Brewer pitcher Bill Castro to sign autographs.

At the time, I don't know if Castro was in baseball or if he was trying to get back into baseball.  He ended up getting hired by the Brewers in 1992 as bullpen coach when Phil Garner was hired as manager, and stuck as bullpen coach and, eventually, as pitching coach through August of 2009 -- when he was fired and replaced by Chris Bosio.

Strangely, I recall that the promoters of the card show had a stack of about 100 or 200 of the three-card strips of 1978 Topps cards shown above.  I don't know where they got them, why they got them, or why they felt the need to trim it so closely on the right side of the card but not on the left side of the card.  It was all around strange.  But, as a result, I think this might be the only Bill Castro autograph I got that day because time was short for Castro or something like that.

At least it shows two long-time Brewers on the card.

The Police

From 1982 through 1986 -- which I think was the last year I was eligible to get the set as an "under 14 fan" -- my mom made sure that we knew the exact day of the season on which the Brewers would be giving away the Milwaukee Police Department's police card set.  Since we didn't exactly want to try to flag down police simply to get baseball cards when we were in the city, that game represented our one chance to get the cards for the year.

As an aside, I don't know how anyone put together complete sets for the police departments outside of Milwaukee in any honest way.  By honest way, I mean by not knowing someone on the police force or being on the police force.  We are talking about a 30-card set (at least) that was being given away ostensibly in two-card lots.  Who saw (or wanted to see) a police officer every week during the summer?

This was especially true where I grew up 35 miles outside of Milwaukee.  We didn't see a sheriff's department car more than maybe once or twice a month, and the deputies tended to frown on 12-year-old kids flagging them down on the highway so that the kids could ask for baseball cards.

All that said, the cards through the 1980s and into 1991 were odd-sized, on thin cardboard, and carried safety messages apparently written by a kindergarten teacher trying to tell high school kids what to do.  To give an example, let's look at an example: the Robin Yount card from 1985.

This was signed in person by Yount at a public appearance in the mid-1980s.

The photos on the cards likely were taken by the team's official photographers, as I do not think I have ever seen any of the photos anywhere else.  For the most part, the photos are decent quality and improved as the years went on.  During 1985, as the card states, the local afternoon paper The Milwaukee Journal sponsored the set.  In later years, food companies and other media outlets got involved as well.

But, the real joy is reading the backs of these cards.  Take Yount's "statement" to the kids, and let's ignore things like teammates having "special feelings" for each other:

Special feelings?

All sage advice, for sure.  Most of us don't collect cards from our local gangs, though this could have been a funny Chappelle Show skit 10 years ago.  I don't know about you, but that rookie card for Ashy Larry actually would have been quite a hit in a pack.

Anyway, I have this longing desire to find a list of every single police department from 1982 through 1986 who gave out these cards and, then in masochistic fashion, I would like to attempt to complete sets from all of them.  If you can help, shoot me an e-mail or comment on the thread below.