A Lifelong Fascination: The 1982 Milwaukee Brewers

I don't remember a time in my life when I was not a baseball fan. With other sports for me, I can identify when I became a fan and why I stopped being a fan or stopped paying as much attention or started paying tons of attention. 

NBA? I loved watching the Bucks on TV as a kid during the days of Marques Johnson (before he was traded), Sidney Moncrief, Paul Pressey, and Terry Cummings. I grew up listening to Jon McGlocklin as the color guy on the 10-15 games a year that made it to TV. But, all those guys got old at around the same time in the late 1980s, and then the team was marked by draft decisions and ownership choices that made them easy to discard when I went to law school.

NFL? I was a Packers fan by 1980, watching every fall weekend with family. I still follow the Packers...but not as closely. I stopped paying as much attention to the Packers due to fantasy football, and I stopped paying much attention at all to the NFL in 2016 when I quit fantasy football. It's been freeing not to care.

College basketball? I liked Marquette as a kid. That changed when I went to college at Vanderbilt and I became a huge Vandy fan. Then Eddie Fogler left and Jan van breda Kolff ran the program down, and Kevin Stallings settled for good and mediocre. With VBK at Vandy in the mid-1990s and me studying a lot more thanks to law school, college basketball was not something I watched from that point on. And don't even get me started on college baseball -- Vanderbilt only got good well over a decade after I left.

College football? I had moments as a kid when I cared -- the 1981 Garden State Bowl between Wisconsin and Tennessee, for example. Between Wisconsin football under Dave McClain being awful and being a high school debater with debate competitions every Saturday, I really didn't care about college football until I got to college. Then, by the time I left Vanderbilt, I hated college football because Vanderbilt had about 12 fans who were serious fans and came to every game like the rest of the SEC. Then I went to Georgia for law school and I became a serious Georgia fan. But I am still not a big time "collector" when it comes to that part of my sports fandom -- despite some great items I have received.

Finally, professional soccer? I played a little pickup soccer in college, and I even watched highlight shows in 1994-1995 on cable. But I did not start to watch pro soccer until 2003, when I had Fox Soccer Channel show up on my cable system and my dog would wake me up early to go for a walk in the morning. That led to my Manchester United fandom, but, once again, it's not a major collection thing for me.

But baseball has been a constant. It's like the Thomas Mann soliloquy in Field of Dreams. Even as life moved inexorably forward, the one constant in life has been baseball. As a fan, I've attended NL and AL playoff games, a World Series, and an All-Star game. I've been to games in California, Illinois, Georgia, Pennsylvania, New York, Florida, Ohio, and Canada. I have come back to collecting baseball cards after nearly 25 years away.

And yet...current cards are...well, just okay. Perhaps it's my age and that baseball cards are a nostalgia game. What else explains the popularity of Topps Heritage and (to a lesser extent) Topps Archives and the inserts based off old card designs? It brings us collectors back to the days when we collected the original design.

Collecting baseball cards and other memorabilia is something I do as a hobby. It's my pastime. It's fun. Sometimes I start losing the fun, though, and I get cranky. Irritable. Pissed off at Topps for ignoring my favorite team. Unhappy that there are no other options except Topps for properly licensed cards. 

So, my focus here is shifting. Of course, I want to complete team sets. That's why I have tried to put together my Brewers want lists in such meticulous and exhaustive order. What I really want, though, are the players from my youth. 

I find myself inspired by blog commenter extraordinaire Mark Hoyle. His devotion to the 1967 Impossible Dream Boston Red Sox is legendary. While I am not going to say that getting everything for everyone on the 1982 Brewers is where I am going with my collection, I am saying that I really want everything related to the Milwaukee Brewers from the 1980s. 

Matchbooks, schedules, pins, programs, pennants, stickers, oddball cards, police sets, photos inserted from pizza packages -- you name it, I want it. 

And yes, I want the stuff that the Brewers keep putting out to celebrate that wonderful season that is now 36 years ago. Stuff like these cards inserted into the middle of the 1992 Brewers yearbook to celebrate the 10th anniversary, which I just bought this past week on eBay for a few dollars:

It's easy to see how much I really enjoyed the 1982 Brewers -- just look at those cards next to my player collection list. 14 of the 18 cards are of guys that are player collections. Only Rollie Fingers, Don Sutton, Pete Ladd, and Pete Vuckovich are not.

It is difficult to put into context how well that team hit compared to the league and historically. For example, 2017 was a hitter-happy environment; the highest scoring team was the Houston Astros, who averaged 5.53 runs per game. Joining the Astros in scoring over 5 runs per game in 2017 were the Yankees (5.30), the Indians (5.05), the Twins (5.03), the Rockies (5.09), the Cubs (5.07), the Nationals (5.06), and the Diamondbacks (5.01). 

The Brewers averaged 5.47 runs a game in 1982. The only other team in the major leagues to join Milwaukee at over 5.0 runs per game were their ALCS opponents, the California Angels, who averaged 5.02 runs per game. The MLB average runs scored per game per team in 2017 was 4.65; in 1982: 4.30.

That's just one average. In terms of individual performances: Robin Yount had a 10.5 WAR in 1982. That led the majors by 1.9 wins over 2nd place Gary Carter. Looking only at the AL now, the Brewers had 4 of the top 9 players in offensive WAR -- Yount, Molitor, Cooper, and Thomas. Three players -- Molitor, Yount, and Cooper -- scored over 100 runs, with Molitor first at 136 and Yount second at 129. Those three teammates each had over 200 hits that season; no one else in the AL had over 194.

Robin Yount's season was truly unbelievable. He was second in AVG behind Willie Wilson but was 10th in OBP, 1st in SLG, 1st in OPS, 2nd in runs scored, 1st in hits, 1st in Total bases, tied for 1st in doubles, 3rd in triples, 11th in HR at 29 (his teammates Thomas, Oglivie, and Cooper all had over 30 in a league where only 10 players hit 30 or more), and 4th in RBI. Even in advanced stats his season was excellent -- 5.5 Adjusted batting wins, .731 Offensive win percentage, 5th in power/speed number, 1st in base-out runs added (RE24, whatever the hell that means), 5th in win probability added, 1st in situational wins added, 1st in base-out wins added and first in OPS+. He was truly a dominant player that year.

I could go on and on and on. That 1982 team should have won a Championship. There were no missed calls to blame, though -- no Don Denkinger moments on which to rest our complaints. No, the Brewers just couldn't win the four games they needed to win against the Cardinals. It's a shame as a Brewers fan of that era that this team was not a Series winner so as to get the level of respect that such a win would have provided. 

All of this is to say that I don't mind duplicates from the 1980s. This may lead to a "project" and maybe eventually I will have as many projects as Night Owl does. At this point, though, it's just a recognition that I am more focused on the past for my collecting because it makes me happy. Just like Oddballs make me happy, and like knocking cards off my want lists makes me happy, and just like my Warren Spahn and Harvey Kuenn collections make me happy.

Just as I wish current cards could make me happy. But those are just different. Not bad. Just different.

Back from Nashville with Cards from #SuperTrader JayBarkerFan

Nashville is a city near and dear to my heart. I lived there for four years for college (minus summers, of course). I have said frequently to others that I love the city and, if I didn't live in Atlanta, I would look to live in Nashville.

I don't think that is true any more. 

It's nothing that Nashville "did," really. All cities change and evolve, and Southern cities in particular have experienced rapid growth and change. Atlanta has been experiencing that rapid growth since at least 1980, and Nashville especially started its ascent once the Titans moved in from Houston in the mid-1990s.

There's something else, too: I realized how much of a bubble I lived in while I was a student at Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt is not Nashville. It is in Nashville, but it is its own little world. Even so, even Vanderbilt has changed massively since my time there. The area around campus has been bought up, torn up, and built up again all over -- and it's totally different now. 

Thomas Wolfe's book title was You Can't Go Home Again. Sometimes, "home" is a state of mind, and the realization hits that you can't go back in time to a comfortable place because, often, that place no longer exists either.

I think that desire to go back "home" is something that draws a lot of us back to our baseball card collecting again. Growing up as kids, our cards were a happy place -- our fortress of solitude, our escape from bad stuff around us, our place to daydream and think we too could be big leaguers some day. 

Unlike my trip to Nashville, the good thing about card collecting is that we can all pick up wherever we left off and ignore current cards, if we choose. We can also choose to embrace the changes and dig in to the new fun aspects of collecting while ignoring as best we can those things that we dislike.

In many respects, the package of cards that I received recently from the legend himself, Jaybarkerfan, wraps all of that up in one neat envelope. 

For instance, there were cards that could only come from the 1980s and early 1990s -- home, you might say:



We get Dave Parker in two store-specific sets, Angel Miranda and Joe Kmak from a deck of cards, Ted Simmons from a set fashioned after credit cards, and Teddy Higuera from one of the multitude Fleer Box sets from the mid-to-late 1980s. Oddballs to me are like getting a hug from an old friend -- it's heartfelt, warm, not awkward at all, and it feels welcoming. 

As time passes, different cards take the place of these oddballs. Sometimes, they are oddballs of a different flavor -- such as minor league cards issued by Burger King:



JBF sent me a complete set of the 2001 Huntsville Stars team. For a long time, Huntsville was Milwaukee's Double-A farm team. Last year, after Huntsville refused to be held hostage by the team for a new stadium, the team relocated to Biloxi. It's telling about this team that I chose to highlight Mike Caldwell and Ed Romero -- two members of the 1982 Brewers -- here. The only hitter of note on the team was Bill Hall -- who only got 168 plate appearances. 

Pitching-wise, there wasn't much to look at either. Coppinger was 27 and made his final appearances in the majors later that year. Neugebauer made it to the majors later in 2001 at the age of 21 years old. In typical Brewers fashion for that time period, Neugebauer would suffer a rotator cuff injury in 2002 which led to surgery in February of 2003. The injury could lead to his release in September of 2004 and his retirement.

As a final note, my wife especially liked the list of Burger Kings participating in the promotion, as several of them are owned by the company at which her father is in upper management.

Collecting these days, though, is full of gimmicks. Some gimmicks are still kind of cool -- who doesn't like a certified autograph, after all? 





Patrick Ryan was a 19th round draft pick out of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida. That is an odd place for a pitcher to attend school, I'd say -- it's more known as a place to learn to fly as a college major than anything else.

Okay, back to cards. As I said, autographs are excellent. Cards that are jersey relics or bat relics?

They are okay, I suppose. Granted, getting a Molitor relic is very cool -- especially one with some color to it. 

One of the most common -- and overused -- gimmicks are parallels. Bowman is fairly famous for this, but Topps does it in other sets as well:



JBF opened up his Bowman Chrome prospects and Prince files and pulled out these beauties. As you may have heard, Prince Fielder actually was named after the late musician Prince because his mother was a big fan. 

It's not that I hate parallels for being parallels. I just think there are way too many parallels without any reason. 

Finally, JBF sent me a couple of cards that will always be like home. Going back to 1980s Milwaukee will always be home. That "home" includes the Milwaukee Bucks of the 1980s. Even though they never won a championship, I will always have a soft spot in my heart for Sidney Moncrief, Terry Cummings, Paul Pressey, Dave Cowens, Bob Lanier, and even Alton Lister. Whenever those teams were on TV back then, the man on color commentary was 1971 Bucks member Jon McGlocklin.  

Similarly, Athens, Georgia will always be home. I visit Athens enough -- and it's close enough to Atlanta -- that I am never surprised completely by changes there. And, JBF sent me something unique that I really appreciate:

Malcolm Mitchell was selected by the New England Patriots in the fourth round of the NFL Draft. Malcolm's almost better known for being a fantastic example for all of us generally -- even having written a children's book called The Magician's Hat:




JBF, thank you very much for the great cards and the printing plate from Malcolm Mitchell. All of them -- especially the plate -- are greatly appreciated!

Commenter Extraordinaire: Mark Hoyle

One of the best ways I've found to focus Google searches is to limit my search to a specific domain. For example, when I'm trying to find those snippets about players from old newspapers, my search is usually "site:news.google.com *name of player*" because that gets me a lot of great, focused information about the player usually from the time that they played.

So, to try to talk about Mark Hoyle sending me yet another great PWE, I thought, "I wonder how many time Mark has sent out great cards or commented on another blog post?" I typed in my search: (site:blogspot.com "Mark Hoyle").  Now, I'm not sure if all of these results are our Mark Hoyle, but there are 2,760 results. It took me until page 14 (at 10 results a page...) to find even one reference that wasn't either Mark commenting on something or someone thanking Mark for yet another great vintage-filled envelope.

That is absolutely extraordinary.

To thank Mark today -- in particular today -- I have to turn to the Thin White Duke, may he and Ziggy Stardust and David Bowie and all of David Robert Jones's other personas rest in peace.  It's Bowie's music to match up with the cards I received from Mark.

The Man Who Sold the World

A song that many people my age first became acquainted with thanks to Nirvana's Unplugged in New York album is "The Man Who Sold the World," the title track to Bowie's third studio album. 

The Man Who Sold the World here is Bud Selig, of course. My complaining about his decision to let Molitor leave after the 1992 season. Molitor had over 1000 hits left in his bat despite leaving after his age 35 season. Of course, the counterfactuals are huge -- would Molitor be as motivated as he was after leaving if he stayed in Milwaukee with a fair-to-mediocre team? And, once Bud flipped the Brewers to the NL, could Molitor have played the field and stayed healthy? We will never know.


Blue Jean

In the 1980s, Bowie released a couple of songs that were ubiquitous. "Blue Jean" was the only real hit off the album Tonight, which was released shortly after his big hits off Let's Dance the previous year. According to a 1987 interview, Bowie said the song was "not very cerebral" and is "about picking up birds." 

Who doesn't like a song about picking up birds? Not Mark Clear!

The ubiquitous 1986 Topps Traded set included a number of Brewers, including Mark Clear -- who I literally just learned today by way of a Google search is Jewish and was born in Los Angeles. I guess I never really thought about or noticed his being Jewish before just this minute. All I remember him for was his huge hammer/12-to-6 curveball and the awesome kneehigh stirrups he wore (as shown below in a card that I do not own):

Suffragette City

I listened to and loved this song literally for at least fifteen or twenty years before I found out by accident that it was a David Bowie song. The guy musically was as much of a chameleon as he was a chameleon in appearance. Dozens of groups -- everyone from Mr. Big to Alice in Chains to Big Audio Dynamite to Warrant to the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Franz Ferdinand (with Scissor Sisters) -- have recorded covers of the song.  Lots of hair bands did, actually -- Poison and L.A. Guns and Vixen also did.  Strange, that.

Salome never really panned out. He was the #79 Prospect in baseball before the 2009 season per Baseball Prospectus, yet Salome never got any more than the 3 major league at bats he got in 2008. The good thing is that Salome is in a Brewers hat, so I can use this card if I ever get any further than 1995 for my "Meet the Brewers" series.

Diamond Dogs

This is a song that I had never heard before, to be honest. But, I couldn't not use it for this card:

I mean, that would be negligent blogging. 

Modern Love

and

Under Pressure

My two favorite Bowie songs (though "Rebel Rebel" is pretty damn good, and "Changes" is a great song too).  It's odd -- "Modern Love" is a song contemporaneous with the one Bowie song that I despise because it got played to death: "Let's Dance".  I'm not sure why at 44 I have such a visceral reaction to a song that was overplayed when I was 12 years old, but I do. I don't mind "China Girl," but "Let's Dance" seemed to be on the radio, on Friday Night Videos (when it started in 1983), and on my Saturday morning music video show that I taped all the time.  

These two songs celebrate the three cards that were my favorite in Mark's most recent PWE. I'm not a basketball card collector, but these are pretty awesome:



Jim Price was an NBA journeyman point guard in the 1970s, spending parts of 4 seasons with the Lakers, parts of three seasons with the Bucks, parts of two seasons with the Nuggets, and a few games each for the Pistons and the Buffalo Braves (n/k/a Los Angeles Clippers).

Elmore Smith is the NBA record holder for most blocked shots in a game with 17 -- a record that has stood for over 42 years. He is originally from Macon, Georgia, and he has a company that sells his Gourmet All-Natural BBQ Sauces. I noticed that they serve these sauces at all Egg Harbor Restaurants, so I may have to try it out.

Finally, there is Jon McGlocklin. McGlocklin is a Milwaukee fixture. He is noteworthy for having founded a nationally recognized charity called the MACC Fund -- Midwest Athletes against Childhood Cancer.  McGlocklin was (and still is) the television color voice for the Bucks. 

Milwaukee has been very lucky that its major sports teams have enjoyed very long-term announcers calling the game locally. Bob Uecker in baseball has been with the Brewers since 1971 as the play-by-play announcer. McGlocklin has been the Bucks' color guy since he retired from the NBA in 1976. Wayne Larrivee has been calling Packer games since 1999, and before him it was Jim Irwin who called the games from 1975 through 1998.

Maybe I should start an announcers collection!

Mark -- thank you very much for the great cards. 

RIP, David Bowie.