A PWE from All Trade Bait, All the Time

One of my earlier blog trades was with Dodgers fan Stealing Home from All Trade Bait, All The Time. SH is a genuinely nice guy to trade with and talk to by e-mail.  He recently went on a PWE-sending spree, and I was one of the lucky folks to get one.  Here are the cards he sent to me:

This Kyle Lohse card is just an opportunity for me to point out that once again the current "throwback" uniforms have a design error.  Everyone who is a Brewers fan from the 1980s knows that the hat with the yellow panel on the front was the away hat -- the team wore a solid blue cap at home.

Just as this 1986 Topps Ben Oglivie -- about to take batting practice on the road in his baby-blue road uniform -- proves.

I miss having a leadoff hitter who actually got on base.  Actually, I miss having a team that didn't hit like it was a Triple-A team.  This year to date, the team has scored 170 runs in 45 games -- 3.78 runs per game -- while allowing 221 (4.91 runs per game, so yes, pitching is a problem too).  But, the Brewers have scored 10 or more runs in 4 games this year (and lost one of them...again, pitching is a problem).  Remove those four games in which the Brewers scored 43 runs, and the team over the other 41 games are averaging barely 3 runs per game -- 3.098 per game, to be super exact.  The team has a slash line of .227/.285/.378 (taking out pitchers, it's .234/.293/.392).

Now I'm depressed...

That's better.  The Clash always bring a smile to my face.  Okay, back to the cards!

Khris Davis is not known for his defense, but his card from both last year and this year show him making defensive plays.

Finally, the piece de resistance for this PWE.  I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that my grandfather probably was convinced that Johnny Logan was the best player on the Milwaukee Braves in the 1950s.  Perhaps the 1950s baseball fans were as enamored with great shortstop play as a lot of us bloggers seem to like catchers -- or perhaps that reflects more about bloggers tending to be more cerebral than the average fan and appreciating all the thought, hard work, and intelligence that goes into being a catcher.

At any rate, Stealing Home sent me this card with the note that it clearly belongs with me due to the fact that Logan was such a bad ass in my grandpa's eyes.

I have to say that this reason for getting a card is perhaps the best reason I have ever heard.  My memories of being a kid growing up pretty poor in Wisconsin (my mom, my brothers, and I lived with my grandparents as I grew up) were filled with stories of past sportsmen to come through Milwaukee.  My grandpa and I bonded in the mornings by reading the game stories in the Milwaukee Sentinel of the previous day's Brewer game, or Packers game, or Milwaukee Bucks game, or even the Milwaukee Admirals games. I'd then get ready for school and head off, not realizing that those days would be ones I'd look back on now with a fondness for how innocent those days were -- and how lucky I was to have a grandfather who indulged my sports fanaticism.

Thank you, Stealing Home, for that reminder.

The Monster Multiplies: Boxes of PWEs

My first day with Monster #1 from Jaybarkerfan saw my cat Gus vanquish Freddy Krueger with surprising ease.  It reminded me again of the cartoon from my post a few weeks ago:

But after opening just one of a total of 5 small Priority Mail boxes stuffed inside of a large one, I had to ask myself what the other boxes might contain.  

Oops, I should have put a spoiler alert in the title.  I already told you.  The boxes contained PWEs.

That's one box.

That's the second box.

And that's the third box.

In the final box?  No PWEs....just huge stacks of cards that added up to this:

Once opened, all the PWEs were spread out across my office floor...

You can see Gus resting in the background as he enjoys a job well done in defeating Freddy. As you can see, there were a lot of little Bippings.  Putting together the big stack with the PWEs, and just from 1990 Score, there were 7 Jim Gantners, 8 Dan Plesacs, 5 Joey Meyers, 5 Rob Deers, 8 or 9 Bill Kruegers, 6 Greg Brocks, a solitary Mike Felder, and 6 Ted Higueras.  From 1989 Upper Deck, there were twenty-two Paul Molitor checklist cards, six more Joey Meyers, and 7 Dan Plesacs.

You get the picture.  And, to be honest, I actually needed several of those cards for PCs.  

Some of the PWEs were more fruitful than others, though. You might be able to see that some of those PWEs also contained jersey cards and even another printing plate!  Here are the highlights from those hits:

Two jersey relics from 2009 Upper Deck Series 2 -- Hernan Iribarren (still playing this year in Cincinnati's system) and Eric Gagne -- in one of those "now playing for Milwaukee" type cards.

Marquis Grissom from 2001 Fleer Premium, serial numbered 121 of 125.

PC guy Geoff Jenkins from 2004 Donruss Elite, obviously serial numbered out of 750.

2008 Topps Co-signers PC guy Ben Sheets, SN250 out of 400.

Caleb Gindl from the 2008 Donruss Threads set, serial numbered to 50.

That's the thin version of Ron Belliard, serial numbered to 77.

A very young, almost clean-shaven version of Corey Hart, serial numbered to 99.

Rickie Weeks, from the height of parallel mania, 2004, in the Donruss Team Heroes set. This parallel is serial numbered out of 150.

Now, on to the autographs and the jerseys. 

The recently deceased Jose Capellan, who died in April 2015 at the age of 34 of a heart attack.  

Drew Anderson, a 24th Round pick out of Nebraska in 2003 who made it all the way to the majors three years after being drafted, never made it back again, and now is a scout for the Brewers organization.

Dan Merklinger was a 6th round pick in 2007 out of Seton Hall who never got to the majors.   

Carlos Lee...we talked about him yesterday. I still cringe when I see the trade the Brewers made to get rid of Lee -- giving the Rangers Lee and Nelson Cruz for Francisco Cordero, Kevin Mench, and Laynce Nix with his extraneous Y.

 Here's Johnny!

Gray/grey Ben Sheets.  Question: how do you usually spell gray? Grey or Gray? Is there a convention on how each should be used?

Shane Marcum shows off a swatch apparently from one of those awful yellowy/mustardy alternative jerseys the Brewers wear every once in a while.

A Rickie Weeks serial numbered swatch -- to 130.

 J.J. Hardy, whom trading away was probably a good idea since it netted Carlos Gomez.

Mike Penney was an 8th Round draft pick back in 1998 out of USC the California version. He made it to Triple-A, got shelled there in about 75 innings and was done after 2002. He made some law in Arizona in 2012 (assuming he is the same Michael Kevin Penney that was involved in this case) relating to the right to counsel and what police must do to allow a suspect -- here, one who was charged with aggravated DUI because of driving a car into a house -- to obtain counsel prior to speaking to police.  It was a bad night for him....here's the paragraph describing the scene:

Scottsdale police responded to multiple calls regarding a vehicle that had crashed into a home in the early morning hours of February 20, 2010. By the time police arrived, the driver of the vehicle had fled the scene. However, officers found paperwork in the vehicle that identified Penney as the owner. When officers contacted Penney outside his residence a short while later, he "appeared disheveled." He had cuts on his hands and wrists and bloodshot, watery eyes, and his shirt had "a white slash going from the top left shoulder to the bottom ... consistent with some sort of a friction burn." He smelled of alcohol and slurred his speech. Officers found the keys to the wrecked vehicle in Penney's pocket.

I'd refuse the blood test and demand to see a lawyer too.

This looks like one of those mismatched color swatches -- like Fleer couldn't be arsed to get a Brewers swatch and used a red one (and trust me, it's red, not orange) instead.  This one is serial numbered to 325.

Finally, Mike Walker was a 14th Round draft pick out of the University of the Pacific in 2010.  He advanced as far as Double-A Huntsville but could only slash at .223/.318/.367 despite being nearly a year older than his competition there.  The Brewers gave up on him, it appears, and that was the end of his minor league career.

And yes, there were two more printing plates. 

Bring back Topps Total! That's Justin Lehr (who had already thrown 32-2/3 innings with the A's the previous season) and Derrick Turnbow, who was the Brewers closer in 2005 when this card was issued and racked up 39 saves in 67-1/3 innings with a 1.74 ERA. 

Tomo Ohka had several years of being a very good pitcher in Boston and Montreal but struggled after back-to-back 190 inning seasons in 2002 and 2003.  He left MLB in 2009 and returned to Japan to pitch for his previous team, Yokohama Bay Stars, for two years. Then, in 2012, he unexpectedly signed as a knuckleballer with Toronto, but never made the team.

All of these hits and serial numbers...unbelievable.  I am going to have a hard time keeping up....maybe...we'll see what JBF thinks of the packages he's gotten recently. And, I have one secret weapon up my sleeve.  

At least one, that is.

PWEs in the War with JBF

As we speak, bubble mailers are making their way to Alabama, to carry the word of Off Hiatus.  Propaganda in war is as much a part of the game as bullets and boxes, after all.  One wins or loses wars not only with dropping bombs, but with dropping leaflets.

The leaflets heading to Alabama have shown Off Hiatus's superiority to date.  Don't get me wrong -- the PWEs I have received have been excellent, and the number of serial numbered cards and jersey/bat inserts are large.  But, as JBF himself admitted, Off Hiatus prevailed in the first round.  And that win was based not on serial numbers, but on vintage and oddballs.

We will see how future rounds proceed.  To be fair, I am expecting that, eventually, I too will be as overwhelmed as Bob Walk the Plank became...and let's be honest, if Matt can get overwhelmed, there's no way I will avoid it.

Wes hit my mailbox machine-gun style in the first days of the war.  On the first day, there was one PWE, then two, then three, then four...and then five and six.

Those five and six showed up on the same day here in Georgia.  Here's what that looked like:

Yes, eleven PWEs!

Let's just run right through these, same as we did before, but rather than posting all of the cards, I will hit the highlights.

From Envelope one, JBF hits me right in the Player Collections.  We have the Peter Gabriel parallel from 2014 (that's what I call it...it's red rain, pouring down...) and a Rickie Weeks All-Star Game work-out Jersey relic from the 2011 Topps Update set.  

What about PWE 2?  More PC cards.  There's a B.J. Surhoff as a Toys 'R' Us Kid, er, Rookie and then two Yo's -- one from 2010 Upper Deck at the plate (and Gallardo was/is an excellent hitter...too bad he is in DH land now in Texas) and one piece of his jersey or undershirt or arm sleeve from Gypsy Queen.  Very nice indeed!

Now, the third envelope didn't have any PC guys, but it did have a beautifully framed John Axford Allen & Ginter relic, with the frame color-coordinated with the color of the relic.  If Topps did that more often for its relics, I would not complain!

On the other hand, the fourth PWE had four PC cards -- two more Surhoffs, a Plesac Sportsflics card, and a Burnitz swatch in lovely gray nylon:

PWE #5 was highlighted by some mid-2000s cards that I did not have an a relic from the same time from from the much-traveled Chris Capuano (who is making his 2015 debut for the Yankees as I write this) and a card from the equally well-traveled Mike Cameron:

Halfway there.  

Yes, halfway...this next one is the middle envelope -- or the median, for you math guys.  This one is highlighted by a Yellow Deer, a color-coordinated Ramirez, and a Cobra sighting.

The next envelop had another B.J. Surhoff card that I needed (this time for the team collection), a Chris Johnson pitcher-type who never made it past Double-A and probably got on this card through a nice win-loss record (13-6) and ERA (2.98) in 1990, and Johnny Estrada Relic.  I'd almost forgotten he was a Brewer.

Envelope 8: It's a Rickie Weeks Wal-Mart Parallel from 2014 and a Bill Hall NL Artifact from Upper Deck serial numbered 45 of 50 -- Sweet!

The 9th envelope of the eleven brought another Wal-Mart Parallel -- this time of Khris Davis -- and a full-sized card relic from 2014 Allen & Ginter of PC guy Jean Segura (who appears to be playing pretty well despite finding himself on the DL currently):

The tenth envelope had the one card from before 1980 that popped up in the PWEs and a Carlos Lee "Ovation Apparel" relic:

And, finally, we have a Robin Yount sighting...it's a 1983 Topps card that I have already, but it's still a Robin, and it was accompanied by an autograph from a guy who didn't last long in the Milwaukee system named Tim Bausher:

Bauser started with the Seattle system in 2001, got released, pitching in the indie leagues for a little while in 2003 where the Brewers saw him and signed him.  Bausher has a Brewers uniform on him -- probably from his time in Beloit in 2003 -- but, by the time this 2004 card was issued, Bausher had moved on to Colorado's Double-A Tulsa affiliate. By 2005, Bausher was in Triple-A with the Red Sox organization. In 2006, he moved on to the Reds organization.  For 2007, he was with the Royals system, got bombed in Double-A Wichita, and ended up in the Independent leagues again at the age of 28.  That's where Baseball Reference loses him.

So, now, for me, it's on to battle a monster.  The first monster, actually:

Pray for me, y'all.