A #SuperTrader Package from San Jose Fuji

San Jose Fuji is a true stalwart in the blogging world. He has been blogging since 2010. He loves colorful posts featuring lots of colors. And he has very diverse collecting interests. He has player collections, memorabilia and autograph collections of teams, and then he collects odd things like hockey enforcers, surfers, Donruss puzzles (which Panini should bring back along with the "Donruss Champions" 4x6 cards), and even a Prime Numbers PC of cards numbered 1 or "last" (say, 50/50) or jersey numbers.

And, he has a new trading card out too!

Not that there was anything wrong with the old one based off the 2008 Topps, but this one just seems cooler. It also reflects that Fuji is the Oakland A's representative in the SuperTraders group that JayBarkerFan put together.

Fuji sent me a nice group of Brewers cards recently as part of the SuperTrader group. I'm going to share the highlights and go all random again -- whatever strikes me about the cards I pick is what I'm writing. I know that probably seems like every post here that's not music, but hey, it makes me happy. It can't be that bad.

Pat Listach was a frustrating player for Milwaukee. He was drafted by the Brewers in the 5th Round in 1988. That's not the Superstar round, obviously, so he had to work harder than some 1st round guy. But when he arrived, it was with a splash -- stealing 54 bases for a team that was a surprise contender in the AL East and, by Pythagorean W-L, actually should have beaten the Blue Jays for first place (96-66 Pythag for MKE versus 92-70 real record; 91-71 Pythag for TOR versus 96-66 real record...so I guess I can blame Phil Garner for that). 

Listach tore up his knee early 1994, but even in 1993 he was struggling and wasn't making adjustments that he needed to make. His major-league playing career ended with the Astros in 1997, but he soon became a coach. He started as a manager in the Cubs minor league system, then became the Nationals' third base coach in 2009. He moved to the Cubs as the bench coach for 2011 and then the third-base coach in 2012. He was an instructor with the Dodgers system in 2013, then became the Astros' first base coach for the 2014 season. He is now entering his second season as the manager of the Triple-A Tacoma Rainiers.

Speaking of guys whose careers were derailed by injury, we have Tyrone Hill. On this very blog, I've compared Hill to H. H. Holmes -- America's first serial killer. Wow, I'm a jerk.

Hill was the Brewers' first round pick in 1991 out of high school, and he was the first Brewers first round pick to be younger than me (Hill was born about 2-1/2 months after me; he was born in March of 1972). He was the #20 prospect in baseball before the 1992 season according to Baseball America probably because of his very live arm and his 11.4 K/9 innings in Rookie ball in 1991 (they ignored his 5.2 walks per 9, of course). He moved up to #10 before the 1993 season -- after more eye-popping strikeout numbers of 10.5 K/9 in 113-2/3 innings in the Midwest League...and, again, pay no attention to the nearly 6 walks per 9. He dropped to #54 before the 1994 season because he hit 8.2 BB/9 in the California League that year.

Then, well, things went off the rails. He missed all of 1994 because he underwent reconstructive shoulder surgery. After that surgery, he threw a grand total of 47-2/3 innings over three major league seasons. I wish I could give you an update on where he is today, but there are too many Ty/Tyrone Hills, making it very difficult to get a bead on the guy.

Dave Nilsson looks like the Dufex effect is blinding him in his attempt to catch the pop-up above him. Or he's been smacked in the back.

The Greg Vaughn card is interesting for the sunglasses while hitting. Those wraparound Oakleys were on everyone's "must have" list in the mid-1990s along with having a goatee and taking steroids.

I need some music. Let's see...I need a tenuous tie to a song I have in my head. Either yesterday or today, Andy Staples on SI.com put up his list of the top power ballads of the 1980s. He did not include one of the greatest ones of the era on his list:

Man, I wore out my tape of Skid Row in 1989. This song, "18 And Life", and "Youth Gone Wild" got more play on my tape player than I really should admit. 1989 was a great year for me personally -- I had a great, busy summer. I met a ton of cool people that I still keep in touch with through a music camp I attended. I even attended a high school debate camp that summer that helped my partner and I win our state tournament the next January.

And this was part of the soundtrack to it.

Now I'm all wistful. Weird.

Not to go all musical here. But now that I'm in a bit of a 1980s mood, how about another reference back to that decade?

With the autographs, I had to pick this song. To be fair, I liked "Wishing Well" a lot better. Sitting here today, though, I'm at a bit of a loss about all that.

Maybe it's because Terence Trent D'Arby (birth name: Terence Trent Howard; actual name now: Sananda Maitreya) is just like 8000 times cooler than I ever was or could ever be. He won the Florida Golden Gloves title in 1980, enlisted in the army and went AWOL to join a band. Later in his career, he played with INXS to allow them to play the opening of the Sydney Olympic Stadium.

Fuji, thank you so much for these great cards and all the others you sent as well. Maybe some day, you can come over to Atlanta and we can go to the Flea Market in Montgomery!

#SuperTrader Post: Cards JayP's Mother Didn't Throw Out

A fairly new blogger around the card world is Diamondbacks fan Jay P., the proprietor of Cards My Mother Didn't Throw Out. Jay P. has quickly integrated into the trading world, as evidenced by the fact that he joined in the SuperTrader group that JayBarkerFan put together.  

Even before joining that group, Jay P had sent me a trade package. So, this is the second time in 2016 that I get to feature a few cards from Jay P. But, since I used up the Arizona music angle the last time, well, y'all are stuck with my writing and seeing where it leads today.

Let's go to the cards and see where the stream of consciousness leads.

Turner Ward was a hotshot prospect in the Indians system after he was traded there by the Yankees along with Joel (Mule) Skinner for Mel Hall. Ward then went to Toronto for 1991 in another trade (with Tom Candiotti in exchange for Denis Boucher, Glenallen Hill, Mark Whiten, and that ever popular trade ingredient called cash). He stayed in Milwaukee for three seasons and really did not impress -- .233/.328/.362 in 655 plate appearances -- so the Brewers released him. 

Ward went to Pittsburgh for parts of three seasons thereafter before getting released two-thirds of the way through 1999. He hooked on with the D-Backs -- creating a tie between CMMDTO and Off Hiatus -- for 85 plate appearances over two seasons. He finished his career with 17 plate appearances for the Phillies in 2001. 

Thereafter, Ward eventually went into coaching. He got to return to where he grew up and attended college -- Mobile, Alabama -- to manage for a couple of seasons in 2011 and 2012 with the Mobile BayBears. He moved up to the majors to be a hitting instructor with the Diamondbacks for three seasons. He's now the Dodgers hitting instructor.

I wonder why so many less-than-great hitters end up as hitting coaches. Shouldn't a team want Barry Bonds rather than Turner Ward?

I see Jesse Orosco with the sun shining on him from the Pinnacle logo, and, for whatever reason, the first thing that came to mind was "The Old Man" since he stayed in the major leagues until he was 46 years old in 2003.  

So, enjoy Charlton Heston reading Ernest Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea." All 2 hours and 22 minutes of it.

Heston's voice is compelling. The video version, though, is not.

Jimmy Dean sausages are very tasty sausages. 

When I think of Jimmy Dean, though, I don't necessarily think of sausages. You see, Jimmy Dean was a real country music singer and variety show host in the early 1960s. He founded the Jimmy Dean Foods in the late 1960s, and he turned it into a very successful company before selling it to Sara Lee in 1984 for $80 million.

That's a really nice return on investment for a guy who sang one of those great story songs of the early 1960s about a giant of a miner named Big Bad John.

When I think of Gold Rush, I think of college. Yup -- another Nashville story. About three or four blocks from Vanderbilt's campus, there is a bar/restaurant called The Gold Rush. I know for a fact that I stepped foot in that bar perhaps once or twice during my entire time in Nashville. I really didn't drink that much in college, in large part due to the fact that I needed to keep my money for other pursuits -- frivolous things like food and books.

Anyway, it's not a bad place -- it is just a dive bar where people go to eat a little bit, smoke cigarettes, and watch a scuzzy rock show. If I lived near Vanderbilt today, I'd probably frequent the place (other than the smoking part, it sounds like my kind of bar, to be honest). In college -- wow, no chance.

Not a bad looking card generally. It's odd how the state of the baseball card world was all about those holograms for Upper Deck. As soon as the "chrome" technology came about, though, the hologram was set aside in the same way that that "Sportflics" 3D "technology" went away after the mid-to-late 1980s.

Even stranger is the fact that it appears that Upper Deck whiffed on its first attempt to register its use of the hologram logos that it used on the back of the cards. You remember those home plates, stars, diamonds, and racing flags? Well, their attorneys and Upper Deck tried to go a bit cheap and register those logos all at once under one trademark application. The application was denied for trying to register "an idea or concept, rather than a single mark." I can only imagine that Upper Deck "asked" its lawyers to file a number of other applications at a reduced rate (read as: file it right this time and we won't sue you to get our wasted money back for your first effort) going forward.

All three of these guys were traded by Milwaukee over the past eight months. The Gomez trade really restocked the farm system. The Ramirez trade brought over Yhonathan Barrios, who is now on the 15-day disabled list thanks to an unspecified shoulder injury. 

The Segura trade -- with the Diamondbacks -- was a real head scratcher among people who employ advanced statistical analysis from the Arizona side of the equation. Thankfully, there are still Dave Stewart-types in baseball who think advanced statistical analysis is something people have to "believe in" like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. Without folks like old Dave, who will focus on results caused by an overly high BABIP for half a season in 2013 and ignore the reality from 2014 and 2015? 

To be clear, I hope Segura does well for Arizona. Just not as well as Orlando Arcia does for Milwaukee.

And finally, there was this Pacific 2000 "Diamond Leaders" card of Jeff Cirillo, Jeromy Burnitz, Marquis Grissom, and Hideo Nomo. 

Since these guys were the team leaders in 1999, I think of Prince. Of course.

JayP, thanks again for the great cards. Hopefully my rambling did not dissuade you from sending more cards my way!

PWE from the Dime Box

Like many of you, one of my favorite things to do is to go to a card show and dig through the dime boxes.  Nick has taken that one step further, naming his blog after doing that.  The great thing about Nick's searches -- as is the case for many folks -- is that he will make some purchases with an eye toward sending some cards out too.  

I was quite happy to receive the PWE from Nick yesterday, as it contained a number of cards that I need either for my Brewers team collection or for my player collections.  

This card of a guy who lasted with the Brewers for a grand total of 15 games in 1972 and 1973 is also one that I needed for my Topps 1973 Brewers set.  

These six oddballs all go into my Brewers team collections for those years.  I'd picked up the Drake's cards in a team set purchase on eBay a couple of months ago, but all of them were needed for my "comprehensive" Brewers collection -- as was the big Prince.

That's a Mini!

These four cards -- well, three cards and a sticker -- were slotted promptly into the player collections for Don Money (a super sweet 1975 MINI!), Rickie Weeks, and Ryan Braun.

Finally, these cards also went into my Brewers collection as first timers:

Betancourt was part of the Zach Greinke trade. McGehee is with Miami now.  Bradley is hoping to become more than organizational fodder, as he is at Double-A Huntsville -- coincidentally, the city where he grew up -- this year after being drafted out of Georgia Tech in 2011.

Nick, thank you very much for the cards.  They are greatly appreciated and were a pleasant surprise to me when I got my mail on Monday.