New Feature: Meet the Brewers #1: Lew Krausse

For the first time in quite some time, I find myself without any new cards to talk about. My work life has been a bit crazy lately, and my collecting focus has been 100% focused on organization. I haven't been to a card show in over a month, either.  It can leave a guy a bit tongue-tied.

It can also leave a guy a bit lacking for something to write about.  As a result, I've decided to start a completely irregular feature (read as: when I don't have new cards, I can use this) called "Meet the Brewers."  Because I have tendencies towards being overly concerned about organization, I'm going to try to go in the order in which the players appeared with the Brewers, starting in 1970.

So, player #1 is Lew Krausse.  Why Lew Krausse? Because Krausse was the starting pitcher in game 1 for the Milwaukee Brewers, a home game for the Brewers against the California Angels.  

Lew Krausse, 1971 Topps

Opening Day 1970 started out auspiciously for Krausse -- getting Sandy Alomar, Sr., to ground out to Tommy Harper to start the game. That was followed by two fly outs to left fielder Danny Walton.  1-2-3 to start the game and welcome baseball back to Milwaukee.  It went downhill quickly for Krausse and the Brewers, though.  Down 4-0 after three innings, manager Dave Bristol pulled Krausse before his pitcher's first at bat.  The bullpen then conspired to give up 8 more runs to lead to a 12-0 loss.

Hardly the way that Bud Selig wanted to reintroduce baseball to Milwaukee after four seasons away.

How did Krausse end up in Milwaukee? The Kansas City Athletics signed Krausse as a bonus baby in 1961 straight out of high school. Krausse's father -- also Lew -- was a scout for the Athletics whose debut in the major leagues came with the Philadelphia Athletics in 1931.

He made 12 appearances that year and pitched fairly creditably for a kid straight out of high school -- walking way too many guys but not allowing a lot of hits and having a FIP of 4.66 in a league with a FIP of 4.09 really isn't that bad at age 18.  He went to the minors after that until 1964. He stayed in the major leagues with the A's in 1966 -- having the best year of his career that year at age 23 (14-9, 2.99 ERA, 3.33 FIP).  

Krausse moved with the team to Oakland for two years. He was upset about being demoted to the bullpen in 1969 -- a move precipitated by Rollie Fingers's move into the starting rotation by manager Hank Bauer.  Krausse came back to the starting rotation thanks to injuries, but the first move to the bullpen presaged the team's decision that Krausee was expendable.

As a result, Krausse was traded to the Seattle Pilots after the 1969 season in a deal that sent Ron Clark and Don Mincher to the A's in exchange for Krausse, Mike Hershberger, Phil Roof, and Ken Sanders. Krausse did not like the idea at first and thought about refusing to report to Seattle.  But, then, Manager Dave Bristol assured Krausse throughout spring training that Krausse would have a job in the starting rotation with the team that would become the Brewers. 

Krausse appeared just twice in relief in 1970, racking up a career-high 216 innings while starting 35 games (8 complete, 1 shutout).  He finished with a 13-18 record with a 4.75 ERA (4.41 FIP).  With that record, though, the Brewers did not guarantee Krausse anything for 1971 and, as a result, Krausse ended up in the bullpen again, mostly in long relief. 

1971 Topps Coin

Krausse pretty much asked to be traded in that story I linked to from the Milwaukee Sentinel in 1971. Still, Krausse ended 1971 well -- at least on the surface. His 8-12 record was nothing special (though pitching for a team with a 69-92 record didn't help that) but his 2.94 ERA was quite flattering to him since his FIP was 4.20.

Finally, in the offseason, the Brewers accommodated Krausse's unhappiness and included him in a major trade with the Boston Red Sox.  The Brewers sent Krausse, minor leaguer Patrick Skrable (who never played after 1971), 1970 All-Star Tommy Harper, and 1971 All-Star Marty Pattin to the Boston Red Sox in exchange for Ken Brett, Billy Conigliaro, Joe Lahoud, Jim Lonborg, Don Pavletich (a Milwaukee native who never appeared with the team), and future home run king George Scott.  

To close out his career, Krausse threw 60-2/3 awful innings in Boston in 1972 and got released in spring training in 1973.  He was picked up by the Oakland Athletics and spent 1973 in Triple-A Tucson.  He made one two-inning appearance for the Cardinals in 1973 after being sold to them in September.  He then signed with the Atlanta Braves, got sold to Oakland, and got sold back to the Braves all in the space of six months between December of 1973 and May of 1974.  He finished 1974 with the Braves before they released him after the season.  He was back in Triple-A Tucson for 1975, but that season was the end of his baseball career.

To celebrate the forty year anniversary of the Brewers first year in Milwaukee, the team had Krausse recreate his first pitch to catcher Jerry McNertney in 2010.

Photo by Benny Sieu of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel;
posted on SnakeJazz.com by former Brewers pitcher Dave Baldwin.

And that, folks, is Lew Krausse, complete with the three cards/items that depict Krausse from my collection.

Thanks for reading.

Headin' for a Heartbreak

A few weeks back, Matt F. from Heartbreaking Cards of Staggering Genius was the recipient of one of my attempts to reduce my staggering number of baseball cards that are not Milwaukee Brewers.  I sent him a bunch of those 1972 minis from the 2013 Topps effort which were essentially collecting dust in a box in a cabinet in my house.  

Matt was kind enough to send me some cards and other items recently in return for those. Even in the midst of war with Hazel Green -- and trust me when I say that JBF has sunk to monstrous levels in the war -- these cards from Matt are far too good to wait.

In the spirit of another theme post, how about we use Matt's "Heartbreaking Originals" for the theme here?  Matt hasn't added to them in a while, though they are excellent and with the perfect sense of dry/gallows humor that Midwesterners are known for.  

Let's start with #12: an Allen & Ginter original 2008 "World's Greatest Victories" featuring Skrillex at the 54th Grammy Awards.  Skrillex is Sonny Moore, a 27-year-old from Highland Park, California, who has said he is influenced greatly by the Warp label, whose artist stable includes Squarepusher and Aphex Twin.  

Here's a little Skrillex for you:

That is music that may not be familiar to a lot of you. To be fair, I don't listen to much Skrillex myself, but there is a lot worse out there.  

Speaking of the unfamiliar, this card was in the envelope from Matt:

This Sports Kings Gum card from Series E is a card from a set that I have never even heard of before. It does not appear that Sports Kings Gum got very far, seeing that their website has not been updated for quite some time.  It's too bad -- who wouldn't want to have a dual memorabilia card featuring Joe Sakic and Sasha Baron Cohen on the same card? Or Terry Sawchuk and Paula Creamer? Or, more saliently, Maurice "The Rocket" Richard and Paul Molitor?

The next Heartbreaking Original is a 1975 Kellogg's 3-D Superstars card of Brett Favre's Lil Brett (NSFW, perhaps) that he texted to Jenn Sterger, the former Florida State "cowgirl" who, of course, was discovered and became famous in the time-honored tradition that made a name for Katherine Webb -- Brent Musburger perving over her in the stands while a national TV audience watched.

How about a real Kellogg's 3-D Superstars card instead, of Davey May (Derrick May's dad):

While Brett Favre will always have a place in my football fandom for bringing my Green Bay Packers back to the Super Bowl and winning it, Lil Brett should have stayed under covers.

What's next?

How about the 2009 Topps Heritage of Thom Yorke from Radiohead?  This one may be my favorite Heartbreaking Original.  It's an iconic set design from 1960 that works perfectly for Yorke.

Yes, we need Radiohead here:

In the mid-1990s, I really liked 'Fake Plastic Trees" a lot. Speaking of plastic...

Two plastic-protected Topps Coins from 1971 -- one of former Brewers announcer (and later Indians announcer), the late Mike Hegan and one of former bonus baby Lew Krausse, who made his debut in 1961 with the Kansas City Athletics and, in his first appearance fresh out of high school at the age of 18, threw a 3-hit (and 5-walk) shutout of the Los Angeles Angels (then not of Anaheim) and went 2-for-3 at bat to boot.

One of the sardonic cards in the Originals is the 2009 Allen & Ginter Hoaxes card called "Book Value."  Believing in book value and then bidding on eBay is a dangerous game.  You will outbid almost everyone on every auction.  I mean, think of how dangerous believing book value would be with these two cards?

I made the decision to subscribe for a little while to the Beckett price guide online when I first got back into collecting.  I wanted it as a reality check of sorts, and because the first thing people always ask when they hear that you collect cards is, "oh, yeah, I have a couple of cards.  What's this one worth?"  

One of my first experiences with that was trying to help a neighbor who has a bunch of cards from the early 1960s in really great shape to determine how much his cards might be worth.  I looked at Beckett, and then for a sanity check I looked at eBay.  Beckett was always high by at least 10% and sometimes 25% or more.  As I looked further, it got worse for the so-called high-end cards like Triple Threads -- even the non-relic base cards -- and the serial numbered cards.  These Molitors would be amazingly overvalued -- or at least they were then.  

After all, it is one of the world's greatest hoaxes.

I'm left now with two cards that do not have decent analogs on the Heartbreaking Originals. So, let's play one more Radiohead song in honor of the second Thom Yorke card -- this time, a 2008 Allen & Ginter.

This is what you get when you mess with Jean Segura or Dave May.

Matt, I thank you very much for the great cards. I assume that the Heartbreaking Originals may make a comeback when you have the time and the inspiration to undertake a few more cards. I hope that you do that.

Thanks again.