Autographs and No Hitters

I had to drive about two total hours today to take a deposition for work. It gave me time to think about whether I wanted to post today. I decided I did because depositions often suck. Today's pretty much did.

Depositions are sometimes fun, sometimes painful, and oftentimes frustrating. I sit in a conference room with a court reporter, another lawyer, and a witness -- in the simplest cases, that is...in more complicated cases, there may be 5 or 6 other lawyers in attendance in person or by phone and there may be a videographer present as well -- and I literally ask questions to the witness about events that took place one, two, or more years ago and expect the witness to have perfect recollection about seemingly inconsequential events that now have consequence. 

In the most frustrating cases, you end up with a witness who is long on generalities, short on specifics, but swears constantly that their generalities covered everything in the case perfectly. Then you ask them, "did you send an email about this" and their answer is "oh no, we did everything verbally."

No one does everything verbally anymore except witnesses who really didn't do what they said they did and are trying to claim they were perfect and your guys were the cheats, liars, scammers, and phonies.

It's a great system, let me tell you.

That said, last night about 12:45, the power flipped off in my house randomly for about 15 minutes. It woke me up, of course -- we have fans going in our room for white noise and to cool us off, and it gets deathly quiet without them. My nature is that I do not snooze or hit the snooze bar -- ever. Once I'm up, I'm up. That's a problem when I've only slept 3 hours, like last night. 

But, that inability to fall back asleep meant that I was awake at about 2:15 AM Eastern when Mike Fiers was trying to close out his second no-hitter of his career. I actually got to see the final out thanks to some guy on Twitter live streaming the TV feed using his camera on his phone, which was cool. 

It got me thinking today -- how many guys who have thrown no-hitters do I have autographs from? The answer was, "More than I thought."

There's the guy that started the discussion. Mike Fiers is one of only 35 pitchers to throw multiple no-hitters in his career, and he is one of only seven pitchers to throw no-hitters on more than one team -- Jim Bunning, Ted Breitenstein (1890s pitcher who threw a no-no in his first major league start), Randy Johnson, Hideo Nomo, Cy Young, and Nolan Ryan are the others.

Speaking of Nolan Ryan:

I'm pretty sure this is authentic. It was the result of an autograph request through the mail in the mid-1980s. While Nolan Ryan never threw a no-hitter against Milwaukee, he did win his 300th game against Milwaukee at Milwaukee County Stadium.

Speaking of the Brewers:

The one, the only is still Juan Nieves. Nieves threw his no-hitter in the middle of the 1987 Brewers 13-game season-opening win streak on April 15, 1987. He blanked the Baltimore Orioles 7-0 thanks to two great plays in the outfield -- one by Robin Yount and the other by the immortal Jim Paciorek -- and thanks to scattering 7 walks...

Two more Brewers ties. The first one is pretty weak, but hey -- I've got an autograph from the guy:

Carlos Villanueva never threw a no-hitter in the majors, but he was a part of a minor-league no-hitter as a Nashville Sound in 2006 in the Brewers system. I know -- kinda weak.

The next one is not weak, but he didn't throw his no-hitter as part of the Brewers:

Len Barker threw the first perfect game in the American League against a team using a designated hitter. He threw his perfecto on May 15, 1981 against the Toronto Blue Jays. Barker was never known for having good control, so his no-no may have been one of the most unlikely perfect games in baseball history.

Speaking of the Toronto Blue Jays:

Stieb returned the favor to the Cleveland Indians on September 2, 1990, throwing the first no-hitter in Toronto Blue Jays history. Stieb famously lost three other no-hitters previously by giving up hits with two outs in the ninth inning.

Many of us thought Dave Stieb had a chance for the Hall of Fame while he was pitching. He was good for a long time -- but not long enough.

Unlike the next no-hit hurler:

Hall of Famer Bert Blyleven threw a no-hitter on September 22, 1977 as a member of the Texas Rangers. He threw the no-hitter against the California Angels in his final start as a member of the Rangers. He was traded in the off-season to the Pirates in a four-team trade.

Blyleven was inducted into the Hall of Fame as a Minnesota Twin. This next guy never threw a no-hitter as a Twin, but he did combine on a no-hitter in spring training.

I got Viola's autograph in-person at a Brewers/Twins game in 1986 or 1987. Viola, Hrbek, Brunansky, Kirby -- all of them were incredibly nice guys even to Brewers fans.

Three more left, and all of these guys threw their no-hitters in the National League.

Fernando Valenzuela threw a no-hitter on June 29, 1990. Earlier that same day, his former Dodgers teammate Dave Stewart had thrown a no-hitter against the Toronto Blue Jays. Having watched that, he turned to his teammates and supposedly said, "That's great, now maybe we'll see another no-hitter." And Fernando went out and blanked the St. Louis Cardinals, scattering three walks and an error.

Perhaps the autograph most dear to me in recent vintage is this Charlie Lea card. I got this from Charlie about a year before he died. More importantly, I got the card because I was working at the time with his son Brian, who himself pitched some but who is an academic and legal stud who clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas on the U.S. Supreme Court. Brian passed along that his dad loved that I remembered him for this very card -- the huge wad of chewing tobacco in his mouth featuring, of course -- so Charlie sent me an autographed one and one of his 1981 Fleer cards.

And finally, a story about no-hitters and autographs would not be complete without this ball. It's a late-in-life autograph of the great Warren Spahn that my good friend Wes f/k/a Jaybarkerfan sent me a couple of years ago as part of our monster trading war. Those were fun days, what with seven priority mail boxes packed full of Brewers and Milwaukee Braves showing up in the space of less than a month.

So, what about you -- do you have any autographs from guys who threw no-hitters?

A Big Fun Game Leaves Me With Questions

Today in my office, we discovered that one of my law partners' Sonos system is accessible by anyone with a Sonos app on their phone so long as their phone is connected to the office Wifi. This led to a discussion about the proper way to prank him with terrible music. I offered up a couple of suggestions before doing a Google search and finding what might be the worst song ever.

Try this one on for size:

English bands have put out some of the best music ever. Unfortunately, England also produces some of the worst shlock in the history of music. This song is called "Fast Food Song" and it's by the unimaginatively named Fast Food Rockers. This band was a novelty act in 2003 and 2004. It's catchy, right? But is it catchy enough that it should have reached #2 on the UK Singles chart? It did, and it failed to reach #1 only because of the band Evanescence.

Moving to songs an American audience would recognize, there is one song that even the band that sang it has disowned -- or at least one of the singers has. In the 1980s, Jefferson Airplane had morphed into the pathetic excuse for a band called Starship and released this dreck:

It is such a bad song that GQ put together an oral history of the song discussing how it came to be. Basically, about everything in the song came together in stages and was written by an assembly line of songwriters. As Grace Slick said in "Vanity Fair" in June of 2012, 

I was such an asshole for a while, I was trying to make up for it by being sober, which I was all during the '80s, which is a bizarre decade to be sober in. So I was trying to make it up to the band by being a good girl. Here, we're going to sing this song "We Built This City on Rock & Roll." Oh, you're shitting me, that the worst song ever.

Yes, Grace, it's pretty damn awful.

So, why all this about the worst songs ever? 

I struck out badly in the "Big Fun Game" that ran on All Trade Bait, All the Time. I had two different lots stolen from me -- the 1960s lot and the 1950s lot. Rather than getting those -- both of which would have been excellent -- I ended up instead with a bunch of random stuff that I really could not use.

Such as?

Red Sox.

Lots of Red Sox.

Even Gypsy Queen Red Sox. With the luck I had in that game, of course, I got Rookie Star Andrew Benintendi at just the point when Benintendi disappeared from consciousness and Aaron Judge became the star outshining everyone on the planet and the only player in Major League Baseball, according to the MLB Network and Topps Now.

Complicating matters -- making them better or worse, depending on your position on weird oddballs -- was the main item on which the lot was focused:

For the Rangers fan who always thought Nolan Ryan should hang on their Christmas tree, I have just the item for you! A Nolan Ryan ornament!

It's not Oscar's fault, of course, that I happened to have the luck of picking two good lots only to see them stolen away from me. It's the luck of the draw. And I just had Bad Bad Luck.

Right, boys?

My thanks go out to Oscar for running the game, and my curses go out to my bad luck. At least Social Distortion doesn't suck like Starship or the Fast Food Rockers.

Memorabilia Monday: Photo Bombing

This week's edition of Memorabilia Monday features items that I received back in about 1987 or so.  I was at the height of my autograph-chasing days, and I had no fear in terms of sending cards -- even "expensive" cards -- through the mail to a player to try to get him to sign the cards.  I don't recall losing too many cards, to be honest, but there were a few times where the cards were returned unsigned.

In at least a couple of those instances in which the player did not sign the cards, either the player or his team (most likely some poor intern in the front office) was kind enough to package the cards up with a larger photo or postcard to at least have made my attempt at getting a signature pay off somewhat.

What you see below is what I got back.

This Eddie Murray is one of the team-issued postcards from the mid-1980s.  It was disappointing that Murray did not sign any of the cards that I sent, and it was similarly disappointing that the signature here is, at best, an autopen signing.

Kurt Bevacqua was the other side of the coin from Murray's disappointment.  Not only did he sign every single card I sent to him -- including one duplicate, I believe -- he even threw in an extra team-issued blank back 3x5 photo that he signed.  Gotta love the red sharpie too!

More disappointment from another future Hall of Famer.  Certainly, at his peak as a player, Ryno must have received far more mail than he could have ever hoped to sign and return. Getting back only an off-center team-issued blank backed photo with a stamped signature on it was very disappointing.  Perhaps this is the reason I never became a big Ryne Sandberg collector.

Another Hall of Famer, another stamped postcard.  This postcard is sort of cool for being one of those "he played for them? Really?" type photos, because no one really remembers Pete Rose as an Expo.  But, getting this postcard back after I somehow procured enough Canadian postage to get the cards I had sent to him back into the US was pretty annoying.  I never liked Pete Rose after this.

This one actually is from May of 2011.  I can date it exactly for a couple of reasons.  First, Mr. Lea passed away suddenly of a heart attack in December of 2011.  Second, his son -- whom I know through my job -- was kind enough to have his dad send me this photo card and a 1981 Topps card autographed to me...just because his son knew I really liked the old 1981 Topps card of Mr. Lea with the huge cheek full of tobacco. Mr. Lea had to be very proud of his son, because his son ended up as a law clerk for a United States Supreme Court Justice.

 
Another man who left this world way too early was the great Gary Carter.  Mr. Carter sent this postcard to me in 1985 -- probably in response to about my third or fourth envelope of stuff for him to sign.  At that time, he had stopped signing cards for free and asked for a donation for a cancer charity in honor of his sister (I believe).  I didn't have the cash to send him at age 14, but I did send him a letter expressing my condolences to him.  He sent me this postcard in response.  The world misses guys like Carter and Lea.

Then, there is the highlight of them all.  I couldn't swear an oath that this is a real Nolan Ryan autograph, but it does compare favorably to ones I have seen online.  He didn't sign any of my cards, but it does look like he was kind enough to sign a ton of photos for the Astros so they could respond to his fan mail with something nice.  If you did sign this, Mr. Ryan, I thank you.

Repack Gold, Part 1

I envy people who catalog every pack as they open them.  Their level of organization is far beyond what I can muster.  Frankly, their level of patience is more than I can muster.  I like -- no, I need -- to open all the packs that I've bought, sort through them, see what I have, and pick out my favorites.  With this blog, I add the step of scanning in a bunch of cards from what I've opened to show off and write about.

By the time I get through step two of sorting, I've completely forgotten what cards came in which pack. And, I don't like organization so much that I have to put everything into spreadsheets.  At least not yet.  Perhaps that time will come, but I'm still sorting through all the cards (probably around 50,000 or so) that I had as a kid in the 1980s.

Anyway, that's a long introduction to the first of two posts to share what gold the $4 repacks held yesterday. There were some fantastic cards.  In fact, this entire post includes only Hall of Fame members (sorry, Mr. Clemens and Mr. Bonds! HA!).  These weren't the only HoF members I got -- just the ones I liked best.

First, two 1980 Topps cards that, while a little off center, have incredibly sharp corners (in particular for being repacks):

The Stargell is in such good shape with good, sharp corners that I actually commented out loud on it while sitting by myself in my basement/card room.  Both cards are ones I had as a kid, but these two are in much better shape than anything I had from 34 years ago myself.

Topps UK Minis are fairly common in the Fairfield repacks -- I always get some, and sometimes I even get a Mini Tiffany (like the Dion James one I passed along to the Chop Keeper in Idaho).  These five had two or three Nolan Ryans, three or four of Ryno trying to grow a mustache to look older, 5 Dale Murphys, 3 or 4 Wade Boggs, and 3 or 4 Roger Clemens, among others.

If you've read my nascent 1982 Topps Blog, you'll have heard the story about how much of a conspiracy freak Steve Carlton is these days (or at least was 15 years ago).  This is his 1987 Topps Traded set card, straight from the repack.

Cards from the late 1980s usually comprise at least 60% of the repack loose cards.  Fun oddballs like that Cap'n Crunch Robin Yount show up pretty regularly, though not with enough consistency to try to put the set together solely from the repacks.  Well, okay, you could do it, but you'll end up with a LOT of 1989 Topps commons to show for your efforts.

That said, this nice 1988 Fleer of Cal Ripken, Jr. just struck me as an attractive card of the Orioles Hall of Famer.  I have this set in a Gary Carter box, but I don't have many 1988 Fleer outside of that.

Finally, Mr. Barry Larkin.  This past week, I was talking by e-mail with a guy I met at the last card show I went to about a month ago, Von.  We have been discussing some trading, and I mentioned my lack of 1994 through 2007 Brewers (which, thanks to all of you has been filling up some lately!).  One of the things he said was, "It's strange but you don't see too many cards from that timeframe in the repacks."

Perhaps that avalanche is about to be unleashed.  This 1996 Topps Barry Larkin might have been the only 1996 Topps in the group, but there were also a few cards from a number of those 1994-2007 sets.  The tide might be turning, Von!

Does "book value" matter?

I've bought a bunch of unopened retail packs and boxes in the past few weeks.  There were those three "nostalgia" boxes -- 2008 Goudey and the 2008 and 2013 Allen & Ginter -- that I blew through last weekend.  Then, during the week, my wife and I were at Target and she encouraged me to buy a bunch of things to open (so she could watch her various "reality" shows that she likes and I can't stand, like Survivor and The Bachelor).  Finally, I bought a few boxes from DA Card World on their "daily deals" page.

So, the cards and the inserts have piled up.  I'm talking about a mishmash of stuff too -- everything from this nice 2012 Topps Chrome Orange Refractor (which was on the front of one of those Fairfield repacks that includes an unopened 2012 Topps pack):

and two of these Nolan Ryan 2012 Topps Cut Above inserts:

to these two inserts from the 2008 Topps Heritage set -- a Chipper Jones refractor numbered to 559 and a Clubhouse Collection jersey relic for Ryan Zimmerman:

So, my question to everyone is this: should book value really matter to me with these items?  I mean, I know enough to store these at least in penny sleeves and a toploader.  But, how much do you look at either the Beckett value or the eBay auctions for cards when you are considering trading them to others?  

Or, is book value really just something that is a rough estimate to determine whether you keep or sell a card? Is it something else?

I don't want to fall into the 1980s-spiral of "I can't get rid of this card for that because Beckett/SCD/Baseball Cards Magazine/Zoltar the Magnificent says it's worth $8 and I'm only getting $3 of 'value' back!"  At the same time, I also don't want to feel like either I'm taking advantage of someone or vice versa in a trade.  

What do you guys think?