A One-Card Wonder Post

Over the past few months, I've kept up an email correspondence -- and even spoken on the phone one time when I had a spare few minutes -- with former Brewers pitcher Ray Peters. Ray is a wonderful gentleman. He's been very forgiving of me when I go missing for several days and don't have the chance to respond reasonably quickly.  

He is also a font of incredible information about the early days of the Milwaukee Brewers. I haven't done so yet, but I will be sharing soon some minor league team photos he scanned and sent to me. He's also been kind to me with his time and energy in reading and giving me more information about my "Meet the Brewers" series. I'm looking forward to bringing that knowledge into my series.

Recently, he topped himself. I got home from work late last week and found a package from Ray waiting for me. I was not expecting anything from him, so it was a surprise. 

Now, if you have read about Ray, you know that he is a graduate of Harvard University. His major at Harvard was Latin American History -- unlike what this otherwise good biography from author Chris Zantow said, where it tried to limit Ray to studying only South America. I was going to ask Ray his position on the thesis I wrote in college -- specifically, whether Brazilian populist Getulio Vargas's policies of trying to play the US and the Allied Powers and Germany and the Axis powers off one another in the 1930s and early 1940s was a good policy or whether Vargas could have done better by siding with one earlier in the war. But I keep forgetting to ask.

I bring up Ray's historian side, though, to emphasize the fact that he knows how to research. Certainly, it does not take much digging on my blog to find that I like oddballs, but it takes at least a bit of reading. As an oddball lover, though, I greatly appreciated and enjoyed opening the envelope from Ray. It contained just one card -- but it is a doozy:

This is one of the Dayton Daily News "Bubble-Gumless Cards" that the newspaper issued in 1970 and 1971. Like all good oddball things, the Dayton Daily News cards have had things written about them elsewhere before. The blog "Uncataloged Baseball Cards" features a post from 2010 (just highlight the text so you can read it, since the black text on black background does not really work too well) which mentions that the author SSchauer spent a significant amount of time going through microfilm to document the whole set -- all 357 cards (other than card 196, since his library was missing that microfilm roll).

My research also led me to the frequently excellent Net54Baseball Forum, which posed the question I had: why is this considered a "card"? Hobby icon and Big-Book compiler Bob Lemke responded by saying that:

Back in the day' when the Standard Catalog had two people working full-time, virtually unlimited page counts and the notion of building up a database for non-card baseball player memorabilia for future catalogs, we routinely sought out this type of item. Today, not so much. If the need arises to cut back vintage pages on the print edition in the future, this type of listing would be among the first to go onto some sort of rotational publishing basis.

And that kind of thing is a shame. As our hobby has changed and become more corporate in nature -- with profit motives outweighing hobbyist enjoyment for many and for the corporations issuing the cards and cataloging them on websites (like Beckett) -- these types of cards will fall by the wayside or will become relics of a foreign history that, perhaps, our children may never know.

It's thanks to historians like Ray and Bob Lemke and the folks at Net54, though, that we hopefully will not lose our hobby's past.

My thanks to Ray for this awesome piece of Milwaukee history. I don't think I've ever seen one of these before, so it's truly a pleasure to have it.

Burned Out

I'm feeling very burned out today. 

I don't mean that I'm burned out on blogging or sharing the great cards that folks send me. I mean that I've been writing literally all week at work.  A little known fact: the reality of being a lawyer for most people is that lawyers are not people who get in court and argue all the time. Some folks are like that -- criminal defense lawyers, for instance. But, most civil litigation lawyers and generally all other lawyers other than trial lawyers are really professional writers.

That's what I have been doing all week. I have a major court filing due on Monday that I still need to finish my first draft for over this weekend. 

In the interest of putting up a post, though, let me do a quick one-card post. It's just the tip of the iceberg of the cards that Mr. Haverkamp sent my way. And, once I get to Tuesday or Wednesday next week, I might actually have the opportunity to get some packages put together and post all the great cards that have come way over the past week!



This is just a cool card -- it is a 1970 Topps baseball Scratch off card of Mike Hegan, still with the Seattle Pilots.

More to come tomorrow, hopefully, or definitely later in the week.

Thanks for stopping by.

Meet the Brewers #4: Mike Hegan

Some of you may be wondering why I'm writing so many of these "Meet the Brewers" posts at this point in time. The truth is that it is my own fault. I've been self-absorbed with getting my want lists put together. I haven't bought any new cards lately. And, I really haven't sent out many packages lately either.  Finally, I changed jobs again. A firm sought me out to have them join me -- I wasn't looking -- but this opportunity was too good to pass up at this point of my career. So, the more things stay the same, the more they change and all that. But it's been a busy few weeks here at Hiatus Central.

That said, my next post will feature cards I received in the mail! Hooray!  

This post, though, is another history post. In the Brewers first game in Milwaukee on April 7, 1970, the first out the team recorded was a ground ball out, 4-3 on the putout. Leadoff hitter Tommy Harper was the second baseman, and catching the ball at first base for the out was the third hitter in the lineup: Mike Hegan.

1971 Topps

Hegan was a second-generation baseball player; dad Jim Hegan was a five-time All-Star who played seventeen seasons in the major leagues and was the catcher on the last Cleveland Indians World Series Champion in 1949. Jim missed three seasons due to World War II, but lucky for him that Mike was born in the summer of 1942 -- the year before Jim joined the service. 

Mike was raised partly in Lynn, Massachusetts, before the family moved to Cleveland in 1954 so that Jim could focus in his offseason on his appliance store that he started with Browns great Otto Graham. When it came time for post-high-school plans, as his SABR biography mentions, Mike decided to go back east to Worcester, Massachusetts to attend The College of the Holy Cross. 

1971 Topps Coin

He spent one season there (hitting .510...but don't get too excited; they played just 16 games) before signing a contract with the New York Yankees in August of 1961.  He got a brief taste of the majors in 1964, and he was considered to be a fairly good prospect in the minor leagues. The problem, though, was that he played first base and corner outfield. That meant he was behind Joe Pepitone, Roy White, Roger Maris, sometimes Mickey Mantle, and Tom Tresh, among others.  It was not a good situation for him.  

When the Yankees sold Hegan's contract to the Seattle Pilots on June 14, 1968, Hegan -- then in Triple-A Syracuse -- became the first official player under contract for Seattle. He had to stay in Syracuse for 1968, but for Hegan it was light at the end of the tunnel -- he'd finally have the opportunity to play regularly in the major leagues.  Hegan was named as the Pilots representative to the All-Star game in 1969 on the back of a first half in which he hit .293/.426/.463. But, he got hurt in the second half of the season and started in just 9 games.

As a result, Hegan's only full season as a major league starter was 1970. He played in 148 games and hit .244/.336/.366 -- not exactly the kind of production you'd expect from a first baseman, but Hegan was always known more for his glove than for his hitting prowess. Indeed, he set a major league record (since broken) of 178 straight errorless games at first base, starting on September 24, 1970.

1977 Topps

By mid-1971, the Brewers had decided that Hegan was not the answer at first for them. To be fair, the team traded and acquired players during these early years in Milwaukee as if they were the drunk guy at your fantasy baseball draft. 

So it's not entirely on Hegan that his contract was sold to the Oakland A's in 1971. There, he was a backup to the Superjew, Mike Epstein, essentially providing late-inning defense and a lefty pinch hitter off the bench (Career in Oakland: 238 games, 230 plate appearances over 2-1/2 seasons). In 1972, he then claimed another first: he became the first second-generation World Series Champion thanks to his role with Oakland. 

1970 McDonald's Milwaukee Brewers

Before he'd left Milwaukee, Hegan had identified what he wanted to do with his life after baseball. At the age of just 26, he was already working as an offseason announcer and sports commentator in Milwaukee for WTMJ Radio and WTMJ TV Channel 4. Thus, in 1973, it wasn't a surprise when Hegan was penciled into the starting lineup for the first three innings for the Oakland A's radio team when then-announcer Jim Woods wasn't feeling well. 

Soon thereafter, in August of 1973, Oakland sold Hegan's contract back to the New York Yankees. His father, Jim, had been working as the team's bullpen coach from 1962 onward and was still there when Mike came back to New York. While there, Hegan provided even more trivia: he was the last batter in the "House that Ruth Built" before it was completely rebuilt during the 1974 season.  

In 1974, Hegan was platooning with Bill Sudakis for the first several weeks of the season. Then, however, the Yankees picked up Chris Chambliss from Cleveland -- putting Hegan out of a job. So, Hegan asked the Yankees to trade him one of three places: Milwaukee (where he lived in the offseason), Boston (where his wife's family lived), or Detroit (where his father had gone after the 1973 season with Ralph Houk). The Brewers bit, and back to the City of Festivals went Hegan.

1975 Topps

Hegan closed out his career in Milwaukee, backing up George Scott and getting playing time at DH and in the outfield. On September 3, 1976, Hegan provided more Brewers trivia. He became the first Brewer ever to hit for the cycle -- hitting a double, triple, and home run off Mark Fidrych followed by a single off Bill Laxton.  

At the age of 34 in 1977, however, Hegan started to feel as though Manager Alex Grammas really didn't want him to be on the team. Hegan was quoted in an AP story as saying that, "Grammas is a nice guy, but as a manager, he makes a good third-base coach." I'm guessing that was not meant as a compliment. He fulfilled his duties at the All-Star break as the team's player representative, then stepped aside and stepped away from playing.

But his tenure in Milwaukee as a sportscaster continued. He immediately joined the Brewers broadcast team in 1977 and stayed with the club in that role until 1988. It is as the TV Color Commentator -- and as the namesake for Mike Hegan's Grand Slam USA (now Mike Hegan's Field of Dreams) -- that I remember him. 

Yet, he is not remembered now as the Brewers Announcer. After the 1988 season, the Brewers changed their TV affiliation from one UHF station to another. The new broadcaster (then a Fox affiliate, now "My 24") retained the play-by-play announcer, Jim Paschke, but pushed Mike Hegan out in favor of former Cy Young Award winner (and more recently a former Brewer) Pete Vuckovich. 

(A side note: that story about Hegan getting pushed out from Milwaukee quotes Super NFL Draft Genius Mel Kiper saying that Tony Mandarich was "the best offensive lineman I've ever graded." Thanks, Mel!)

1994 Milwaukee Brewers 25th Anniversary Commemorative Set

In many respects, it was a blessing in disguise for Hegan. The Cleveland native went back home to Cleveland. This was brought about by the fact that the general manager for a TV station in Cleveland had left Milwaukee's prior Brewers affiliate for Cleveland. Hegan had his choice from the Yankees, the Indians, the Expos, and the Padres, but Cleveland was an easy choice for him. 

He stayed with the Indians from 1989 until the end of the 2011 season. He left the broadcast booth at the age of 69, saying he wanted to coach his grandson's baseball team. He was also suffering from some health issues. For his work with the Indians and his high school exploits at St. Ignatius High School, he was inducted into the Cleveland Sports Hall of Fame in 2011.

Unfortunately, on Christmas Day, 2013, Hegan could fight an untreatable heart condition no longer. He passed away at his home on Hilton Head, South Carolina, at the age of 71.

You can see in this post the 6 cards of Mike Hegan that I could find reasonably quickly that I own.

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.