Andy Makes Time to Send Me Cardboard

Hobbies take time. Whether your hobby is flying an airplane, reading, building models, racing cars, or collecting baseball cards, one must have some leisure time to engage in the hobby. After all, the very definition of a hobby is "a regular activity that is done for enjoyment, typically during one's leisure time."

Driving that point home is the new blog from Andy, a gentleman I have interacted with on Twitter, who named his blog "Ain't Nobody Got Time For Cardboard." Andy collected at the height of the junk wax era -- 1988 to 1992 -- so dumping Cubs on him from times other than that should be a thrill for folks like, well, me. So many Cubs collectors who blog are pretty well full up on 1980s cardboard, so putting a package together for Andy this past weekend was a true joy for me.

Anyway, Andy beat me to the punch in getting enough time to send out cards. I will highlight the ones that caught my eye.

Minor League Madness

Sid Roberson pitched at the University of North Florida. He spent 26 games, including 13 starts, with the Brewers in 1995 and then never pitched in the major leagues again. Sid had a 5.76 ERA and a 6.22 FIP, walking 37 and striking out 40 in 84-1/3 innings. Being a small man -- only 5'9" tall and 170 pounds -- apparently took a toll on him, as he had to have two rotator cuff surgeries. He's now working at Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Florida in Jacksonville (where UNF is located) as the Director of Major and National Accounts -- a position he's had since 2011.

Archer never made it to the Majors, topping out in Triple-A in 1995 and 1996. Bo Rosny at Baseball Cards Come to Life said that Archer was, in 2012, a sales rep for Western State Design.

Boze also reached the big leagues in just one season -- 1996 -- at the age of 25. He got knocked around to the tune of 7.79 ERA/6.88 FIP and a WHIP of 2.227 thanks to 47 hits and 25 walks (against 19 strikeouts) in just 32-1/3 innings. In 2001, he actually pitched in the Alaska Summer League in one game while spending the summer working as a pipefitter for VECO near Anchorage. It appears that he also has the distinction of being the first Alaska-raised player to make the major leagues; while he was born in Arizona, he was raised in Kenai, Alaska.

Stickers!

Yes, stickers. One of PC member Carlos Gomez, and then three of the sort-of Wacky Package stickers. I am guessing that those Wacky-Package-wannabes probably had to be scaled back dramatically to make sure that they weren't offensive or disgusting. After all, Topps probably would like to renew its exclusive license with MLB, and having a Brewers logo with some dude puking from drinking too much Milwaukee's Best or getting food poisoning from a bad oyster being shucked probably wouldn't help that process.

Heritage

It's the second day in a row that Scooter Gennett's half-smile, half-sneer stares out at everybody. Of the rest of the guys on these cards, Ariel Pena pitched on opening day, faced 11 hitters, and allowed 5 runs (including 3 homers) and was promptly designated for assignment. He cleared waivers and was outrighted to Triple-A Colorado Springs. 

Nevin Ashley got 12 games in last year in September, but he's not a prospect. He turns 32 this year, and he's actually in the New York Mets system now. So, it appears that card appearance for him is really meant to troll me and my continued pointing out of the fact that Topps forgets that there are teams other than the New York teams. 

Segura obviously was traded. 

Will Smith is on the disabled list after spraining his lateral collateral ligament taking off his shoes in spring training. No kidding. He's rehabbing right now to determine if he can avoid surgery. Before that happened, he was slated to share closing duties with Jeremy Jeffress.

Great Player Collection Cards

What a great group of cards to go into my various PCs!

It was great to add that Yount card in particular, because it allows me to vent for just a moment about what Panini does incredibly wrong with Donruss. I don't think Panini gets it. 

If they want Donruss to be their version of Heritage or Archives, then they need to work more at getting the design correct. The 1982 set did not have that massive "D" in the corner. In fact, I don't think any Donruss product did.  The year is way too large too -- so large as to be obnoxious and intrusive. Further, does Panini have to destroy the uniform colors now in an effort to avoid being sued for trademark infringement? Frankly, that Brewers uniform looks more like the 1978 Cubs:

Than it does any version of the Milwaukee uniforms:

Does Panini have to turn all the yellow to blue? Really? If so, then just stop making the cards that have guys in full jerseys. Get head shots, get home jerseys, but don't destroy the away blues the way that that 1982 wannabe card does.

Okay. Back to happiness. How about a song that I hear in my head every time I see Andy's blog's name?

Andy, thank you for the great cards you sent my way -- and especially for the opportunity to get that whole dissertation about Panini's unwarranted destruction of the Brewers' uniforms of my youth off my chest!

You Bought Cards Where?

When I first got back into collecting, I bought a fair number of packs at Target and Wal-Mart. That was because I was trying to collect the same way I did when I was a kid: collecting literally everything.

A month or so later, as I was looking at what a "complete" or "master" checklist looked like for just the 2014 Topps set, I began to despair. There was no way I could ever get everything -- not even every Brewer card, since there are others who collect the Brewers -- so I started drawing lines. Those lines have been refined and expanded over time out of necessity, since I do not have infinite money to spend on baseball cards.

One of the lines I drew is that I stopped buying unopened packs of new products unless I had some reason for it (like my SuperTraders break). This was a reaction to the fact that Topps loads up its products with teams that the Manhattan-based Topps sees as more saleable and drawing more money than the Brewers. I think it was the 2014 Archives hobby box I bought that spring -- a box I bought before realizing that Topps had included a grand total of four or five Brewers and twelve Yankees including John Ryan Murphy, a backup catcher who we will probably never see on a card again because he's now a Twin.

Yesterday, though, my wife and I went out to a late lunch to use a gift card we had and then to run some errands. Those errands included stopping at Target, so I bought a few packs/repacks there.

I didn't get a lot of great cards, to be fair, but here are the highlights.

The first thing I got was one of those 20-card packs of Heritage. I engaged in a bit of pack searching, to be honest. The packs are red cellophane, so you can see what the first card on the pack was.  When I saw one with "Brewers" peaking through, I grabbed it.  

The Brewer I got was Wily Peralta. Just as Heritage pays homage to the 1967 Topps design, it appears that Peralta is paying homage to a Hall of Famer who appeared in the 1967 Topps set: former Brewer, Astro, Dodger, Angel, and Athletic pitcher Don Sutton.

Peralta has some work to do to emulate Sutton on the field, but he has the Sutton pose down pretty well already. But he does need to get that bubble perm too.

A second pack/box I got was a blaster of 2014 Topps Update with two packs of the Update Chrome in it. I don't need any Brewers from the Update set except for one of those ridiculous sparkle variations of the now-long-gone Tom Gorzelanny, and unsurprisingly Topps decided that there weren't any Brewers that merited inclusion in the Update Chrome set. I got the box, though, because it was only $10 instead of the normal $15, and, I mean, it was a good deal thanks to two great cards that I needed that came out of those packs:



The Molitor came out of the regular Update packs, while the Aaron is a Chrome card that came out of those packs. So, even though I really didn't need anything from those sets that I knew of, I needed something anyway.  Can't complain about that!

Next, I bought one of those "four packs" of the 2016 Topps product that comes in a blister pack with an "Amazing Milestones" card showing. Knowing that I needed the Spahn Amazing Milestones for my Milwaukee Braves collection, I chose one with him on the front.

Having participated in a case break for 2016 Topps, I once again knew that I would not get anything in the regular cards that I needed.  But, still, I got something pretty nice in the packs -- though this time, it was not a card I need.

After pulling a Yoan Moncada autograph from the Panini Contenders box I opened a couple of weeks ago for the SuperTraders group, I'm starting to wonder if the cosmic powers are trying to tell me that I need to become a Red Sox collector.  Geez.

But, this does highlight the beauty of those blister packs. By keeping the packs safe from pack searchers behind plastic, everyone has an even chance to get a relic card. 

Finally, I decided to get one of those "four packs, 50 cards, and a surprise" repacks. My surprise was one of these:

To be specific, I got Adrian Gonzalez. Does anyone happen to have the Ryan Braun out there? Does anyone want this Adrian Gonzalez thingy?

The packs I got were all 2015 cards: Opening Day, a couple of Bowman packs, and a Gypsy Queen pack. Probably the best card I got out of those packs was a mini Bowman Chrome:

The remaining cards had a few duplicates for me, but there were a couple of cards that were interesting.

First, there was a former Brewer farmhand from the 1990s:

Boze was nothing special. He was a 12th round pick in 1990 after his first year of junior college. He worked his way up to the majors slowly but surety, putting up decent numbers in Single-A and Double-A in 1992 and 1993.  He spent 1994 through 1996 at Triple-A New Orleans where his strikeout rates shriveled up and died. But, because the Brewers sucked in the mid-1990s, he got to the major leagues anyway in 1996. In his 32-1/3 innings in the major leagues, he had an 0-2 record with a 7.79 ERA and a 2.227 WHIP, giving up 13.1 hits per nine innings and walking 7 batters per nine innings. 

I'd call that ugly, but that would be cruel to ugliness everywhere. That's just positively diabolical.

Finally, there was an excellent mid-1990s card in the repack:

Sophie Kurys was truly a superstar in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Indeed, as her excellent SABR biography notes, Ms. Kurys -- who passed away in 2013 at the age of 87 -- is still the holder of the all-time professional baseball record for stolen bases in a season. In 1946 and in just 113 games, she stole an incredible 201 stolen bases. Indeed, in just 914 games over her nine-year career, she stole 1,114 bases. Sure, Rickey Henderson has broken that record with his total of 1406, but it took him 25 seasons to get there!

All said, it wasn't a bad bunch of cards that I got yesterday. Still, I don't think I'll go back to buying a bunch of packs. I'll save my money to buy Brewers.