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.

Nothing Can Replace #SuperTrader Brad's Blog

Have you ever watched TV ads and tried to determine what the demographic the advertising company is attempting to reach? Or, more to the point, have you ever watched an ad and wondered who actually gave the green light to the particular advertisement? 

Car insurance ads, in particular, seem to want to be cutesy so as to make people like the pitchman in hopes that that people remember and like the company. 

Liberty Mutual has an ad that appears to be an attempt to appeal to millennials, perhaps, and probably millennial women. It's about an Asian-American woman who names her car "Brad." You have probably seen this ad -- the woman stands with the Statue of Liberty ostensibly behind her talking about how she went through everything with "Brad" before she totaled her car and then breaks into her happy dance in the end.

It all seems rather trite if someone is going to break into a happy dance after destroying their car that they named. 

It probably goes without saying, but I have never understood the whole giving names to a car thing. Anthropomorphizing a car just makes no sense. Then again, this ad is even more disturbing if you treat Brad as a person...

"Nothing can replace Brad!"

I agree -- here in the Blog World, nothing can replace Brad's Blog. After all, he's the Phillies representative in the SuperTraders group. Brad sent me some great cards in a recent mailing, so let's take a look at some of them.

Let's start with some little Allen & Ginter from last year. Both of these cards have the A&G backs on them, so they are parallels of the parallel.

I really did not like the look of the cards last year. I've taken to calling it the Measles set. I showed the cards to my wife and asked her what she thought. Her first response was, "Do those guys have measles?"

Sure looks like it to me. I'm not the only one to say this either.

A few other cards that Brad sent appear to be less contagious. 

Then again, these are from the 1990s. There may be parallels proliferating in a warehouse somewhere in Philadelphia, or England, or somewhere...wherever Gavin Rossdale is these days as his ex-wife dates a country singer.

Speaking of the 1990s, here are a few more additions to the Greg Vaughn collection. 



It's funny how some of my player collections have grown while others have been more stagnant than a swamp. I mean, I haven't added a new card or item to the Jerry Augustine collection since December 17, 2014. Then again, that's largely a function of how few Jerry Augustine cards there really are. I think the only one of his cards that I am missing is the 1981 Fleer error version of his card that actually shows Bill Travers on it. 

That's largely a function of the fact that Augustine simply wasn't a very good player, I suppose.

Brad sent me a couple of true highlight cards -- one a relic and one autograph. Let's see the relic first:

J.J. Hardy is still a very good player for Baltimore, and this nice blue swatch is a cool addition to my collection that I needed. Well, pretty much every relic or autograph is "needed" in some way, I suppose.

Let's see that autograph:

A Leaf Certified Materials of Scott Podsednik! Very cool. Podsednik parlayed his baseball stardom into marrying a Playboy Playmate named Lisa Dergan. Seems like a good excuse to me to post a photo of her.

That will do nicely.

Many thanks to Brad for the great cards and the great excuse!

Group Trade/Box Break: Subjectively Great

With my recent job change, I have been attending a number of networking events. Networking can seem painful at times -- being the new guy means you are never sure whether the person you are talking to is a good person or a schmuck.  

Being the new guy, though, means I have to put more work in at these events. I want to make a good first impression on people so that they will be happy to talk to me at another event, to introduce me to someone that they think would be a good contact, or to think of me when they need a lawyer.

While the interpersonal dynamics are different online, there is not that much difference when it comes to the blogging community.  It takes time to build up a network, to build up trust in others that you will be as generous as they are when it comes to trading, and that you can be trusted to be honest and, frankly, to be the person you say you are.  As in the "real" world, it can take a long time to build up a good reputation, and that reputation can be ruined quickly.

Someone who understands how blogger networking works is Brian from the still-fairly new Highly Subjective and Completely Arbitrary.  To make a big splash and build up trading partners immediately, Brian did what he called a Group Trade Box Break: he opened boxes of 1996 Pinnacle, 1999 Fleer Ultra, 2002 Topps Gallery, 2002 Fleer Greats, and 2003 Topps Stadium Club and offered up teams to anyone who would send him cards from the years between 1995 and 2004.  I joined in and got a great bunch of cards in return.  

To highlight the cards I got and because keeping with the "networking" theme would be tedious, I'm going with my old, reliable "music from that year" theme.

1983
The year 1983 was in the days where we were transitioning from the late 1970s-early 1980s disco dancing into a weird melange of electronica, reggae, soft rock, and imported one-hit wonders such as Taco:

Baseball cards in 1983 was a year of transition as well. It was the year when Fleer and Donruss went all in with respect to starting to produce multiple sets in multiple formats -- and not just those full size "star stickers" that Fleer had.  It also had some imports, though it's unfair to call an O-Pee-Chee card of Jim Gantner a one-hit wonder:

1987
Music started fracturing into more subgenres in 1987 than before.  One of the major chart influences that year came from the rising popularity of hair metal.  Yes, metal bands had enjoyed some chart success in the past -- notably Van Halen in 1984 with "Jump" -- but 1987 saw the emergence of Bon Jovi as a chart force -- notably, the number 10 hit of the year and now a required karaoke sing-along song:

Baseball in 1987 was dominated by a sudden surge in home run hitting -- you know, the year that Wade Boggs hit 24 homers and then never again hit any more than 11 in any one season.  Leading the way for the Brewers was Rob Deer:

1992
Hip hop dominated the charts in 1992.  Admittedly, I listed to very little of it -- except "Tennessee" by Arrested Development...because I was going to college there in 1992:

Baseball cards were in the midst of the overproduction era. Topps (and everyone else) started pushing as many gimmicks as they could to keep their bottom line going up.  This included issuing "1993 Pre-Production Sample" cards for certain players, including Gary Carter, for the supposed reason of raising interest in the next year's set:

1996
The first time I heard the #1 song of 1996, I was in Sanford Stadium in Athens, Georgia, waiting for the women's soccer bronze medal game to begin.  I can't recall how I got tickets for the two women's medal games -- I think a friend got some and offered me one. It is still one of my favorite sports memories to say that I was able to see my country win a gold medal in the Olympics in person when, in the second game of the doubleheader, the US beat China 2-1 in front of 77,000 people.  That song?

Sorry.

I was pretty out of the loop in 1996, with the good reason for that being that I finished my first year of law school that year and started my second year.  So, please forgive me for not having seen these Pinnacle cards in person before:

2002
By 2002, music had fractured completely into rap, alternative, country, pop, and dance. Looking at the Top 10 hits from that year is just a mess.  I mean, Nickelback had the number 1 song of the year!  Of that top 10, though, I can find two songs I listened to without cringing.  #10 was "Blurry" by Puddle of Mudd and number 7 was this song:

That song hit home for me that year because I went through a pretty tough breakup from a woman I dated for a year.  So, in the end, it really didn't matter.  

On the other hand, Paul Molitor's baseball career mattered a lot:

2006
By 2006, the alternative music I favored had itself splintered into more mainstream alternative, emo music, and electronica dug in as well.  Looking at the list of Top 100 songs from that year, I can recall hearing about 15 of them...and that includes songs I heard only years later.  My 2006? I was in my own little world musically, but I did like this song featuring an Atlanta resident/native:

Topps's 2006 Allen & Ginter was the original offering for the set, and it arguably is the nicest looking version:

2014
Last year's musical chart actually had more songs on it that I liked than many previous years did. I couldn't possibly use Bastille's "Pompeii" again here, even if it is the highest charting song that I really liked.  So, the following song came in at #23 -- a song that I saw Jennifer Nettles cover live in a concert I took my wife to see last year for Valentine's Day:

To follow that cross-over hit, how about a blue-bordered and serial numbered card?

Brian threw in a couple of hits in the baseball card sense as well that need to be highlighted as well:

Two former Brewers -- one at the beginning of his career, one at the end -- who are both known or remembered for their play with other teams.  Sort of like the music from this earworm:

I shouldn't end a post about Brian's very original (to me) idea of a group-break-trade with such a derivative song (as per the jury; musicians disagree and, for the sake of musical composition, I hope that verdict gets overturned), but there it is.

Thank you, Brian, for the great cards and the great idea.  Welcome to the blogger group....which is a group I'm still working on being a part of!

A Career, Summarized by a Bobblehead?

About a week ago, John at the appropriately named Johnny's Trading Spot posted the cards that I had culled out of my Braves collection and sent to him. He was especially enraptured by the real Goudey Braves card of a gentleman named Randy Moore that I sent to him. In discussing that card, he said, "Because of this Jim Dandy card, I have worked up an incredible return for Tony. Evil Grin. . . . I can't wait for him to get the package I'm mailing out this week."

That package arrived here on Saturday, and I'm still trying to wrap my hands and head around all the items that the box held. This package was amazing.  Seriously. I hate to be cliched and always say, "this deserves more than one post", but this package is most definitely going to be shown over a few posts.

I mean, just look:

Because I'm short on time this evening, I am going to post the conundrum. The enigma wrapped in a puzzle. The oddest item in the box was this:

That should not strike anyone as strange.  J.J. Hardy was a very good player even as a Brewer, and the only reason that the Brewers traded him away was because (a) they thought that prospect Alcides Escobar could be the shortstop on a pennant winning team and (b) that Carlos Gomez was well worth trading away the incumbent shortstop with Escobar waiting in the wings.

Strangely enough, the team was correct on both points. It's too bad for Milwaukee fans that Escobar was a Royal when he won a pennant, though.

But, I digress as always.  

The reason that this was the strangest item in the box was because J.J. Hardy's bobblehead was not in this box.  What was?

Tiger Woods?

Yes, Tiger somehow pushed J.J. Hardy out of the way and crawled into J.J.'s bobblehead box.  You might notice, though, that Tiger appears to be wearing a cast and a leg brace. He is, indeed, wrapped up in a baseball card trader's best friend, blue masking/painter's tape.  

Apparently, J.J. Hardy's bobblehead was a bad ass bobblehead, because he put a hurting on Tiger before vacating the premises:

I especially like this angle of the bobblehead. It makes it look like Tiger is screaming in pain from the hurting that was put on him rather than celebrating a put he made.  

But really, with all the leg problems that Tiger has had over the past several years, perhaps the "Tiger in a cast and walking brace for a torn ACL" bobblehead is more anatomically correct than any of us might wish it to be.  

My cat Gus, in the background, certainly thinks so.

All Tiger needs now is a blue wrap around his back and a scorecard in his right hand showing a 43 on the front nine.

Even though Tiger came a bit beat up, putting him back together with the masking tape led to many laughs around Off Hiatus headquarters -- my wife is sports fan but she does not like Tiger (I think it was the whole marital infidelity thing), so she got a huge laugh out of this one.  The entertainment value of this alone is worth having him.

I'll unwrap the remainder of the bobbleheads from that box in my next post.  

And, no matter how you slice it, this box was fantastic!