A Gift from my Wife

I read with bemusement the trials and tribulations that the blog world's favorite feathered friend, Night Owl, endured with his wife making an effort and buying him baseball cards for Christmas. Sure, they turned out to be all autographs from his absolute least favorite team -- the Giants -- and included three autographs of his least favorite player ever, Will Clark. 

On the other hand, I have been pretty lucky. I mean, who has in-laws who would drive 2 hours with a pickup truck bed full of binders as a Christmas gift? Even if the binders contained a lot of cards from that late 1980s/early 1990s time period that all of us have every card from in bushel baskets, it still had some pretty damn nice autographs, oddballs, and even some pretty rare Derek Jeter cards of him in high school (note: I still have those cards too).

This year, I did not get any cards. Well, not directly -- I got cash that I took to my local card show and blew on a bunch of stuff I haven't shown off yet. I did get one baseball item, though, from my wife. 

She did better than Night Owl's wife did:

It's one damn sturdy bottle opener, and it's made from what purports to be a "Game Used Bat from the Milwaukee Brewers."

My first thought was, of course, to be completely dubious of that claim. I almost did not want to be responsible for a bat having been carved up. Then, I was wondering where the pine tar is. 

In my looking at the bottle opener, though, I saw something on the end with the hanging rope:

It's an MLB authentication hologram. I looked it up, and the print out informed me:

Major League Baseball Bat Bottle Opener made with the handle section. A piece of Game Used broken bat from Cardinals @ Brewers on 9-20-2006/Damian Miller Cracked bat, 7th Inning

I looked it up. In the bottom of the 7th inning of a scoreless game, LaCrosse County native Damian Miller stepped up to the plate. Miller was actually a Minnesota Twins draft pick in 1990 -- in the 20th round. That was the year that the Brewers were supposed to take me in the 48th round, but I guess that one game that I played in front of a Brewers scout that summer (and hit a homerun) did not impress them enough to get me on their radar. Miller had come to Milwaukee for the 2005 season as a free agent after bouncing from Minnesota to Arizona in the expansion draft and, from there, to the Cubs and Oakland. 

Miller was the second hitter in the inning, having followed third baseman David Bell. Bell flew out to deep right field for the first out. I must admit to not recalling the David Bell era in Milwaukee. It lasted all of 53 games and it was the end of his career, so I guess I should be forgiven for that.

On the mound for the Cardinals was Jeff Suppan. Suppan was in the final year of his three-year contract with the Cardinals, and he positively owned Milwaukee. Over his career, he sported a 13-2 record over 23 appearances (21 starts) with a 3.20 ERA -- his best as against any major league team -- in 135 innings. Maybe that is why, in the offseason that followed, the Brewers gave him a stupid 4-year contract for $42 million. It was such a stupid contract that the Brewers decided in June of that fourth year (2010) just to cut him.

Miller took the first pitch from Suppan for a ball. The next pitch, he broke his bat and hit a weak ground ball to shortstop. Miller lost a bat, and, just ten years later, I gained a bottle opener.

Thankfully, the Brewers ended up winning that game thanks to a Geoff Jenkins walk-off home run off a guy named Tyler Johnson -- one of those interchangeable left-handed reliever parts that Tony LaRussa and Mike Matheny love in St. Louis. Of course, the Cardinals went on to win the World Series that year, so I guess they'd probably take that.

In the end, I'd say I did a lot better than Night Owl did. My wife put a lot of thought into this gift and did very, very well indeed.

A PWE from 2x3 Heroes and Contest, Part II

First off, thank you to the folks who have already entered the card show Contest. I started thinking about the fact that there are a lot of folks who may never have been to a card show, and that I should try to make an effort to include them in some ways.  

Let's do that here: if you have never been to a card show, comment on this post and tell me what card or cards you would look for at a card show.  I'll do the same prize here as well -- $10 spent at my local card show trying to help you live out your card show dreams.  Please note: you are only allowed to win one time -- either on this post or the other one.  

Last week while I was roaming around the country's midsection, I received a PWE from JediJeff at 2x3 Heroes. I was happy to see it because I now can confirm that I am in his PWE club, in which he randomly sends out a PWE based on your collecting interests.  Jeff is the kind of guy who will take those miscuts off your hands -- yes, he collects them, and he even spelled out his criteria last year as to what it takes to be a true miscut.  He also tends to put songs on each of his blog posts, which is always a big win to me.

Songs? Sure, I overuse the song-introducing-a-card posts here, but dadgum it, I'm a big music fan. So, using whatever songs catch my ear today, here are the Brewers that Jeff sent my way.

2008 Upper Deck Ryan Braun

Wholly appropriate song to go with the card that popped into my head?

One of my wife's favorite artists:

The song is called "Before He Cheats," though I can't be sure that this card came before Braun cheated.

Carrie Underwood sure is easy on the eyes. The first concert my wife and I attended together was in Milwaukee at Summerfest in 2010, and it was Carrie Underwood. My wife was then just my fiance, and she had not met my family in person. When I saw that Carrie was playing the last day of Summerfest, I jumped on the tickets and made that our gift to ourselves for going to Wisconsin.

Oddly enough, that was the last show that Carrie did before she came to Georgia and Lake Oconee and got married to hockey player Mike Fisher at the Ritz Carlton Reynolds Plantation.

1991 Topps Tom Edens

What fits this card?

So, when I think of 1991 and the name Edens, I think of going back to college for my sophomore year at Vanderbilt. My drive to Vandy from where I grew up took me south on I-94 (eastbound, officially) from Milwaukee to Chicago before cutting into Gary, Indiana. I-94 in Chicago is the Edens Expressway.

What does that have to do with REM? Well, in the spring of 1991 and as happened every spring, the Southern Baptist Church has some sort of big get-together on campus at Vanderbilt and they rented out the 15,000 seat Memorial Gymnasium for it. It was my first time seeing that big meeting there.  As I was walking back to my dorm from that side of campus, I walked by the Beta Theta Pi fraternity house. Blasting from their speakers was the entirely appropriate "Losing My Religion."

2009 Topps Allen & Ginter Jeff Suppan

I'm not a Jeff Suppan fan. But, I'll make the best of this:

The Soup Dragons biggest U.S. hit was "Divine Thing." I listened to this song a ton a couple of years after it was released because the "New Rock" station in Milwaukee in 1994, New Rock 102.1, had this song in constant rotation at that time. 

It's still a pretty good song, I think.  It holds up well...and a lot better than Suppan did as a Brewer.

2000 Upper Deck Mark Loretta

I have few strong memories of Mark Loretta. He was a Brewer around the time they moved to the NL, and then he became an Astro.  Based on his Twitter feed, it appears that Loretta is drawn more to the Padres than anything else.  Loretta is only about 4 months older than me, and yet, he feels like he belongs to a distant past.

I guess if I were a pro athlete, I'd belong to a distant past as well.

When I think of Loretta, though...

There's only one Loretta Lynn. Even though she is 83 years old, the Coal Miner's Daughter from Butcher Hollow (that's pronounced "Holler", by the way), Kentucky, is still touring -- playing casinos and theaters from Tyler, Texas, to Tarrytown, New York.

Personally, I'll be lucky to make it to age 83.

Okay...last card to share, even though Jeff sent a bunch more.

2013 Topps Mike Fiers

Yeah, I had this card already. But I always get a particular song in my head whenever I see a card of the Astro's no-hit thrower:

I didn't start the Fiers.  He was always burning since the world's been turning.

Jeff, thank you very much for having me in your PWE club. I'll be on the lookout for some good Chisox to send your way.

Completed Trade with All Trade Bait, All The Time

Mr. Stealing Home from All Trade Bait All The Time posted a Ryan Braun insert about a month ago that I really liked.  I reached out to him, and we were able to work out a deal.  The Braun actually ended up being one of the lesser cards that Oscar sent.

Now, if you read his profile, you can see that S.H. is a Dodger fan, but he's been kind enough as well to fill us in on some of his favorite music.  He likes The Stones, The Clash, X, Roots reggae, the Cramps, and Social Distortion. So, let me pick some songs out of those catalogs -- massive though they may be, especially since roots reggae is like "grunge" rather than being a band -- and introduce some of the cards that he sent.

Hang Fire

One of the Stones most overtly political songs (Keith Richards said in a 1981 interview with Rolling Stone that he relates this song to English politicians who did nothing and caused the country's decline when times got tight) is also the only song to introduce a Prince Fielder insert from Upper Deck:

I remember that Stones song from being a kid -- it had a catchy hook to it, and something about the song did feel at least a little countercultural.  Fielder's Pure Heat card pales in comparison, but it's tough for cardboard to beat out music.

The Magnificent Seven

When I saw that SH liked the Clash, well, that is what inspired this entire post's theme.  To be fair, this theme is a bit better than, "Hey, look what I got y'all!"

I've loved The Clash since I heard Rock the Casbah as a 10-year-old.  Then, I went to college and had a good friend who was a huge Clash fan.  He gave me a dubbed version on cassette of London Calling, and I was totally hooked.

The Magnificent Seven clip above is from the Tom Snyder Show in 1981.  The song itself comes from the triple album Sandinista!, which Rolling Stone magazine ranked as #404 of the 500 best albums all time. I own it on CD.

This song is not that much of a stretch for introducing four-time Brewer All-Star Don Money who, you guessed it, wore the number 7 in the mid-to-late-70s and early 1980s.

That is some 1977 goodness right there; SH also sent me a 1979 Topps of Money.  Money's best year probably was 1977 -- he hit 25 homers, drove in 83 runs, was an all-star, and played 152 games split amongst second base, left field, third base, and designated hitter.  He was Tony Phillips before Tony Phillips was.  Money retired at the end of the 1983 season, and he is a guy who is one of my player collections I'm putting together.

We're Desperate (NSFW Lyrics)

The band X is not one I've listened to much, to be honest -- I should have by now because I do like punk, but I just haven't.  Anyway, when I saw this song and its title, I knew exactly which card had to accompany it -- the guy whose 2006 signing screamed "We're Desperate" to free agents everywhere...at least in my book:

The Brewers signed Suppan after the 2006 season from St. Louis.  Taking a page from the late Al Davis, the Brewers brass apparently believed Suppan's NLCS MVP Award meant that Suppan was primed to become an ace -- contrary, of course, to everything in his career otherwise.  To be fair, Suppan was coming off a 190 inning season with a 4.12 ERA and a ERA+ of 108.  Otherwise, Suppan's career screamed "MEDIOCRE INNINGS EATER."  By the time his albatross of a contract was nearing an end -- four long years later -- the Brewers had realized that you do not qualify as an innings eater if you only pitch 31 innings in 15 games...at a 7.84 ERA and just cut him.  Of course, Suppan caught on with St. Louis and pitched reasonably well for them.

Tear It Up

In honor of the year that he had in 1981, the only one who could be honored appropriately with "Tear It Up" by The Cramps -- the innovators of psychobilly (a subgenre that is alive and well, thankfully -- just stop at the Star Community Bar in Atlanta for that) -- is Rollie Fingers.  Now, I have had this card since it came out in the early 1980s, but, well, my card looks like it.  This one is a huge upgrade in condition for me:

 Ball And Chain

"Well it's been ten years and a thousand tears and look at the mess I'm in...."

In his tenth season with the Brewers organization and with a contract that, in fairness, may look like a bargain at some point but could easily end up an albatross, the only player who could be feted with Social Distortion is none other than Ryan Joseph Braun:

Both of these will work well in my team and player collection.  There were a number of other cards, but I worry that I will bury this theme if I go for another round!

Many thanks to Mr. Stealing Home for the trade, and I hope that both you and he enjoyed the musical interludes.