It Makes Common Sense

Lawyers are a spoiled group of people. We are used to being able to spend money on rather pricy things, such as overseas travel or Broadway musicals. As I mentioned yesterday, I spent the better part of three days in Chicago last week for an American Bar Association meeting. While in Chicago, several people I know decided to spend at least $200 a ticket to see Hamilton. 

In case you are not familiar with the show, Hamilton is the "it" show on Broadway -- it was nominated for a record-setting 16 Tony Awards and won 11, including Best Musical. It also won a Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album and the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The Chicago production opened on September 27. The show is about Alexander Hamilton, and what makes it so highly acclaimed is how Lin-Manuel Miranda (who wrote, scored, and starred in the original Off-Broadway production) took Hamilton's life and updated it in a way that is influenced greatly by rap music.

The video below is a song called "The Schuyler Sisters."

Of course I picked that video because Angelica Schuyler says that she has been reading "Common Sense" -- Thomas Paine's pamphlet advocating for independence.

I'm okay with Broadway musicals, though I tend toward the old school more than the current stuff. To me, these rap-influenced Broadway songs suffer from the same problem that most Broadway songs have -- they are too vanilla. For storyline, the song's lyrics need to be very clear and clearly enunciated, after all, and most rap that I like tends to have an edge to it that is more conversational than lyrical. 

All of this is a long way to get to baseball cards. As I've started to feel like I've exhausted the local card show option by going too frequently (#FirstWorldProblems), I have turned more and more to Just Commons. 

I'm pretty sure now that Just Commons is like one or two guys or gals working out of a small house on Long Island. That actually makes me happy too -- I'd rather it feel like I'm ordering from a small business with people who work their tails off than to be giving money to some troll through COMC. The best thing about Just Commons, though, is that I can load up on Brewers -- who almost all end up in the commons box, after all -- for far less money than the other online alternatives. Plus, when I get to $15, I get free shipping. That does not suck.

So, since I'm not chasing any particular cards and, instead, I'm simply trying to satisfy my OCD and get "everything", Just Commons works out great for me. I spend $30 and I get a bunch of cards. It's a win for me because that isn't much to spend, and it's also a win for me because $30 is barely something that makes my wife take any notice. So, I can get away with getting cards more frequently as a result.

I'm continuing my efforts to load up on Bowman from about 10 to 15 years ago, so let's see what came in this shipment. Just the highlights, though:

Look at how young Rickie Weeks looks here. My goodness. He looks like a little kid. With all the cards I have of him from his later years with his long dreadlocks, seeing him with short hair is almost shocking.

Of course, with the timeframe I mentioned, Rickie was the hot prospect for the Brewers at that point. A high draft pick (2nd overall) with great bat speed and plate patience, Brewers fans were actually quite disappointed in Weeks and his performance in Milwaukee. He wasn't bad -- he just wasn't as good as everyone had hoped. 

His real problem, though, was his health: he had two seasons in Milwaukee of playing over 150 games (2010 and 2012). He had two more seasons -- 2008 and 2014 -- in which he reached 120 games. Otherwise, it was 96, 95, 118, 37, 118, and 104. He just could not stay healthy. He left a bad taste behind as well in that he did not want to play anywhere but second base in his last Milwaukee season. Since he's left Milwaukee, he has not played second.

A little Geoff Jenkins came in as well. I hate to say it, but I sort of wish Topps would recycle the Bowman Heritage idea again. Bowman in the 1950s was miles better than Topps. They had better designs, real photos, and better color on the cards with color. The story of how Bowman ended up getting bought out by Topps is fascinating and worth a read here.

Okay, maybe I spoke too soon about recycling the Heritage idea. This Ryan Braun rookie/first year card makes him look like he has jaundice.

Now that's more like it. If we could get a few more uses out of this set, that would be fantastic. Let's be honest -- the 1955 Bowman set design is truly excellent. I know it got rolled out about five times in five years by Topps in the early 2000s, but can we bring it back now? Maybe?

Last two. I like these knothole cards all right. They aren't great, but they aren't bad. I just wanted an excuse to figure out who Ozzie Chavez was and to talk about Lou Palmisano. 

Chavez first. He was an international signee out of the Dominican Republic. He came to the States at the age of 17 in 2001. He played well in the Arizona Rookie League, so the club pushed him aggressively to full season Beloit in the Midwest League in 2002. In 128 games there, he made 29 errors at shortstop, hit just 1 homer, and slashed at .255/.323/.315 in 531 plate appearances. That performance convinced Topps to put him on this 2003 Bowman card. Chavez actually stuck around the Brewers organization until 2008 -- making it all the way to Triple-A by 2006 at the age of just 22. But he just never hit. He moved on to the Phillies organization in 2009 before ending up with the White Sox and then in the independent Atlantic League in 2011. The Brewers signed him for organizational depth in 2013 before cutting him loose. 

Lou Palmisano looks a little like he got the Gary Carter catcher perm. He was drafted in the third round in 2003 by the Brewers out of Broward CC in Fort Lauderdale and hit a ton in Rookie league that year. The Brewers kept promoting him the next two years, and he hit Double-A Huntsville in 2006. He stayed there in 2007, and he stopped progressing. He is now a volunteer coach with the University of Miami baseball team. I really hoped that Palmisano would become the next Brewers catcher, but he got passed quickly in 2007 when Jonathan Lucroy joined the organization.

The great thing about all the failed Brewers prospects from the 1990s and early 2000s is that none of the cards are expensive now. Sure, these cards were probably more expensive than if I had found them in the wild at a card show, but who brings 2003 Bowman cards of Ozzie Chavez to a card show in the crazy hope that a Brewers fan would show up?

Let's close with more common stuff.  Common People.

This stuff isn't vintage stuff, but I need it all the same.

An Envelope from Cards on Cards

When last we spoke, I was saying that Just Commons made a couple of mistakes in putting my most recent order from them. Well, unlike the customer service from other card operations....

Unsurprisingly I've received no response from Topps. https://t.co/h8vALnPtYP

— Tony L. (@OffHiatusBBC) September 9, 2016

...Just Commons responded the very next business day, and they made things right. They sent the two cards I was missing in a well-protected PWE nearly immediately and made sure I was okay getting the parallel version of the cards they had missorted from 2001. Kudos to Just Commons for great customer service.

As for Topps....well.....

But I beat that drum like a dead horse, so perhaps, some day, I'll stop. Or Topps will listen.

I'm thinking that I'll stop first.

At any rate, there are more important things in the world than my raging against the machine that is Topps. For instance, Kerry from Cards on Cards sent me a mailer jam packed with Brewers cards. Most of the cards in the envelope came from the 1990s:

Like this gloriously ridiculous (or, depending on your point of view, ridiculously glorious) 1994 Score Rookie & Traded card of eventual Red Sox stalwart Troy O'Leary. O'Leary played 46 games for the Brewers and didn't look bad doing it. 

For whatever blisteringly stupid reason, Sal Bando cut O'Leary outright -- waived him -- at the end of spring training in 1995. O'Leary believed it was to protect a younger player, but from the transactions report it appears that the Brewers wanted David Hulse instead. Hulse lasted a total of 200 games in Milwaukee and in the majors after the Brewers got him, hitting .243/.281/.320 (OPS+ of 53). O'Leary spent another 9 seasons in the majors. Great job, Sal! 

The Red Sox employed Dan Duquette as its GM at the time. Duquette was the Brewers' Director of Scouting when O'Leary was drafted out of high school and was instrumental in the Brewers' decision to draft O'Leary. As the Boston Baseball History website noted, it took Duquette about ten minutes to claim O'Leary and promote him to the majors.

If you ever wondered why the Brewers were so damn bad in the early 2000s, look no further than decisions like this.

Thankfully, most of the cards that Kerry sent to me were either more recent cards or were from the 1980s. Let's see the recent cards:

That Matt Garza card is the first Topps Chrome card that I've added to my collection so far. Part of me thinks that this year's Topps design was meant more for the digital apps and the Chrome design than it was for the flagship set. That's not necessarily a bad thing. 

A lot of folks get themselves in a tizzy whenever people are successful in selling digital cards for a lot of money on eBay. The complaint is, "why the hell would anyone pay money -- any money -- to buy what is nothing more than a JPEG?" There are others, of course, who egg those people on and who view collecting actual cardboard as a dying hobby.

Both of them are correct and incorrect at the same time. Collecting cards in physical form will always be around. Someone will collect them. After all, people still collect stamps, postcards, Depression glass, perfume containers, lamp -- any number of items that make no sense whatsoever to collect and are far more difficult to store, showcase, and sell than cards are. As long as people like baseball, there will be card collectors.

At the same time, people collecting digital cards is probably more of a fad that will fade off into the sunset than collecting cardboard. Digital cards are more of a fad because of their ephemeral nature. Topps could cease to exist tomorrow, or its profit-loss analysis on running the apps could change from positive to negative and the app could be shut down tomorrow. The thing is, no one will ever go into an attic 30 years from now and find a secret stash of digital cards. It's more likely to be the introductory collecting drug for kids than it is to be the final end point for the addiction.

Speaking of addiction, let's look at the cards from the 1980s:

Cards and stickers like these are the addiction. There is something inherently cool about getting miniature cards that were printed 30 years ago by a card company that no longer exists. There's also something inherently cool about 1981's Gorman Thomas sticker featuring his fat sideburns, bushy mustache, two-day stubble, and the painted-on eyeblack that doesn't contain a Bible verse, an area code, a message to mom, or an advertisement for a shoe company. And, there's something inherently cool about getting kids to eat fat-filled snack cakes by throwing baseball cards inside the package.

Kerry, many thanks for the great cards that plugged some big holes in my collection.