Music from the Trading Spot

One of the trading world's really underrated guys is John from Johnny's Trading Spot. I say he's underrated because the guy literally drops fantastic packages on every one of his trading partners whenever he sends something. Johnny has sent me boxes of bobbleheads, massive and jammed Priority Mailers, and tons of awesome parallels that I have distinct difficulty finding in the wild at card shows or online.

John is right up there with Wes/JBF in my book -- both of them are incredibly generous fellow SEC fans who go above and beyond and seemingly ask for very little in return generally. John recently (within the past two months) sent me yet another excellent package. To thank John, I did a little research and found some of his favorite bands from his past. That means I read his blog, by the way.

Anyway, let's get to the music and the cards!

One of the first things I found on John's blog was a post where he showed off a TON of cards from a set all about Kiss from the late 1970s. I think it's a Donruss set based off a search on Trading Card Database. Every time I see a set like that, I think, "Man, I need to look more at non-sports cards and collect some." 

Then that feeling passes as I look at my mounting want lists for the Brewers. I have chipped away at those in terms of organization, though -- I'm all the way up to 2014 in terms of getting all the Topps parallels, inserts, and autographs into binders!

Speaking of parallels and inserts...here are four parallels that I needed. It's always interesting to get a Yuniesky Betancourt card. How he started in 152 games at shortstop for a 2011 team that won 96 games and won the NL Central is one of sabermetrics biggest questions. Betancourt "hit" for an OPS of .652 and tallied -0.5 WAR. And the Brewers paid him $4.3 million for that "production." Wow.

For whatever reason, it makes me chuckle to look at that team page on Baseball Reference and see the photos of the top 12 players from that team -- nearly everyone is shown on a team other than Milwaukee! The list goes Ryan Braun (MIL), Prince Fielder (TEX), Shaun Marcum (CLE), Corey Hart (PIT), Nyjer Morgan (CLE), Yovani Gallardo (SEA), Rickie Weeks Jr. (TAM), Randy Wolf (DET), John Axford (OAK) Carlos Gomez (TEX), Zack Greinke (ARI), and Jerry Hairston Jr. (BAL).

By the way, that Surhoff #1 pick is one of my favorite cards. I loved that subset in the 1985 Topps, and I was disappointed that it came out too early in 1985 for B.J. to be included. 

Now, when I saw John was a CDB fan, I knew damn well that he is a true Southerner despite his questionable choice of being a Florida Gator. Charlie Daniels comes from that late 1970s pop-country music time when country was really still country, but, as always, certain pop sensibilities had invaded. You have your Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelsons, of course, but folks like Eddie Rabbitt and Ronnie Milsap and Barbara Mandrell were their generation's versions of Luke Bryan, Tim McGraw, and Miranda Lambert. 

By the way, be sure to watch this video at least from the 3:30 mark on to see what happens when someone learns a new special kaleidoscope camera effect.

Let's get on the Upper Deck here. Two Prince Fielder inserts to go with a card from Carlos Lee to commemorate his short-lived Milwaukee stay and a Mat Gamel "Signature Star." Man, if Mat Gamel could have stayed healthy. All I got here, though, is that he went to the same Jacksonville High School as the daughter of two good friends of mine in Jacksonville (she's there as a senior now), and that his brother Ben is off to a pretty good start in Seattle this year.

I'm just not a huge fan of the song "Freebird," but I've listened to "Sweet Home Alabama" literally hundreds or thousands of times. I do hope that Neil Young will remember that a southern man don't need him around anyhow.

Of course, this is a big song for the University of Alabama, as you might expect. 

Man, I miss college football about this time of year.

Anyway...baseball cards....

Bowman seems to go well with the collegiate feel here for me. The whole "Bowman is about prospects" thing works in this regard. 

So, who is Cody Scarpetta and how did he end up on a Bowman Platinum card? Scarpetta was an 11th round draft pick in 2007 out of high school in Rockford, Illinois. His dad Dan was a third-round pick of the Brewers in 1982 who made it all the way to Triple-A before crashing out at the age of 25. Cody worked his way up the system all the way to Double-A Huntsville (Sweet Home Alabama) in 2011 and, in addition, made five appearances in the Arizona Fall League that year at the age of 22. He got shelled, and it was an indication that something was wrong -- as in, yup, Tommy John surgery. That really killed his career, though he continued to pitch in independent league baseball last year.

There are literally dozens of better songs from Steve Miller Band that I could have posted. But, I'm a child of the 1980s, and this song from 1982 is the one I most remember personally. Yes, "The Joker" is a thousand times better in my opinion, even if Billboard put this song at #70 on its list of Greatest Songs of all time. 

I bet my list would vary greatly from theirs.

Here's "the rest". Seth Lintz in the 2010 Pro Debut set as a blue parallel got into that set because he was a second round draft pick in 2008 out of high school. He barely made it to the Midwest League with the Brewers -- total of 14 appearances as a reliever in 2011 and 2012 with Wisconsin -- before he was cut loose. He made the independent league rounds some as well for a while, but it doesn't look like he has pitched since 2015.

Jed Bradley -- from Huntsville -- recently retired from baseball. He made it to the major leagues briefly last September with the Braves and appeared in 6 games in the same city where he went to college (he's a Tech kid). His card mate, Taylor Jungmann, was sent down to Double-A Biloxi earlier this year to be stretched out as a starter. Jungman and Bradley were both first round picks in 2011, but neither has really panned out. Jungmann's been passed not only Josh Hader, but also by Luis Ortiz and Brandon Woodruff and maybe even journeyman Paolo Espino.

My thanks go out to John as always for a great package of baseball cards. I would have played Molly Hatchet, but there's no damn way I'm putting any song called "Gator Country" on this blog!

I Wanna Baseball All Night

Peter from Baseball Every Night has been extremely generous to me. Hopefully, my latest envelope that was sent to him -- now, for a second time...thanks USPS! -- gets to him so that he can drink in all the Strawberry cards I've sent to him. 

Of course, with the title I've used here, there can only be one theme song for the second batch of cards Peter sent my way last week:

Here's the setup: the past two years, I have come out of the gate rockin' when it comes to collecting the Brewers for the Topps flagship set. By that, I mean that both in 2015 and 2016, I bought into case breaks for Series 1 and ended up with about a dozen of each of the base cards, about a half dozen of any inserts, and even a relic or two. 

By the time Series 2 rolls around, though, I miss it. I don't even notice it. Series 2 sneaks out into the world like the stealthiest of leopards, unleashing itself on an unsuspecting collecting public.

Or, at least unleashing itself on me.

I mean, I think I still need a Jason Rogers from 2015 Series 2 at this point. Seriously. I haven't found one at my local show, and no one has sent me one either. I mean, I'll probably just end up getting it eventually if it doesn't show up, but that is pretty indicative of how Series 2 usually treats me.

Since that first song got me in the mood, how about a KISS-powered post to go with the 2016 Topps Series 2 cards that Peter sent my way?

Perhaps the most appropriate KISS song for the 2016 set -- I'll call it forevermore the "smoke" set -- this song from Animalize (which I owed and may still own on a 33-1/3 RPM record):

Let's go for the basic ones first:

That top card -- the Brewers Team card -- features Ryan Braun giving third base coach Ed Sedar a low five after hitting a homerun and passing third base. I'm now tied up in knots thinking of all of the terrible Passover puns (pass, seder/Sedar...) so I'd best move on.

Ariel Pena lasted one outing with the Brewers this year to start the season before getting sent to pitcher's hell, er, Colorado Springs. Interesting trivia tidbit: Colorado Springs is the highest elevation stadium featuring professional baseball. It's a full quarter mile higher in elevation than Coors Field. The Brewers ended up with a Triple-A team there thanks to the classless organization that is the Nashville Sounds -- which used the Brewers to get a new stadium built then promptly changed affiliations. 

Michael Blazek just returned to the bullpen from the disabled list. He's the rare player who started in St. Louis, left, and got better instead of worse!

Finally, Keon Broxton suffered one of the worst starts to a major league career that I could imagine. He went 0-for-2 last year with Pittsburgh, then went 0-for-16 to start the season this year with Milwaukee. He got sent down on April 16. He came back on May 20, and he went 0 for his next 6 before finally picking up his first major league hit in the 13th inning against the Atlanta Braves on May 25 (and giving Michael Blazek the win). Broxton's big problem so far is making contact. In 71 plate appearances, he has struck out a ridiculous 33 times. That is no way to make a major league career take off.

Okay, we need some help to get through these next cards...

How about a little Cold Gin? 

To be fair -- and I'm sure to the chagrin of at least a couple of you -- I'm not a huge KISS fan. This is probably the first time I've heard this song. It's not awful. It's okay. It's too repetitive in the guitar licks for my taste, though.

Peter sent me a couple of gold parallels as well. Topps has been doing these gold parallels for what -- fifteen or sixteen years? They are okay, I suppose. It's sort of like that guitar in Cold Gin. 

These two cards are of two guys having very different seasons. Jeremy Jeffress wasn't the experts' pick to be the closer this year -- Blazek, perhaps, might have been, or Will Smith, or maybe even Tyler Thornburg. But Jeffress ended up being the guy coming out of spring training almost by default being the only one healthy and pitching well. Lo and behold, as of June 27, Jeffress is in fifth place in the NL with 21 saves in 22 opportunities. Not too shabby.

On the other hand, Wily Peralta has been a train wreck wrapped in a volcano eruption thrown into a hurricane hit by a tornado. He looked like he might be a stud in the making in 2014 as his numbers looked pretty good -- 17-11, 3.53 ERA (4.11 FIP) 9 H/9, 1.0 HR/9, 2.8 BB/9, 7.0 K/9. He was hurt in 2015 and his numbers all went the wrong way -- 10.8 H/9, 1.2 HR/9, 4.84 FIP, 3.1 BB/9 and 5.0 K/9. 

Then, this year...UGLY: 6.68 ERA (5.60 FIP), 13.2 H/9, 1.6 HR/9, 3.7 BB/9 and 5.7 K/9. All of those numbers are terrible. Every single one of them. It has a lot of folks in the Brewers organization scratching their heads. It also is likely to end up with Wily getting non-tendered, joining the Cardinals, and winning the Cy Young in 2019.

I need a pick me up now.

  

At least it is an uptempo song. The more I listen to old KISS, the less I like it, to be honest. I know -- sacrilege, right? But the music is kind of...mediocre. Sorry guys and gals who have devoted your lives to KISS -- basically they are an average band with a great gimmick.

I'm probably wrong about that, so please -- attack me at will for that comment in the comments below. 

Speaking of repetitive and mediocre, I sure am glad that we have our 948th version of Robin Yount's rookie card making an appearance in the Berger's Best/Cards your Mom Threw Out/whatever the excuse is this year insert set. I think the real reason this is in the Series 2 inserts is to make up for the typo in Series 1 which said this card was from 1974. 

Of course, it also said that the mini 1974 version was highly sought after. And that is so true. I am still looking for it.

Peter -- thank you again for the great cards, and I hope that KISS isn't one of your favorite bands since all I've done here is call them average, mediocre, repetitive, and gimmicky.

Then again, I'm a baseball card blogger. What do I know about gimmicky or being repetitive?