THREE!!!!!

When I was in college, nothing was better to me than watching Vanderbilt basketball. I stuck it out through four miserable football seasons (1-10, 5-6, 4-7, 4-7) in the marching band simply because I loved being in the basketball pep band. That was especially true thanks to getting to watch games like this one in person:

Early next season and assuming that this streak continues for the rest of the year, Vanderbilt will mark its 1000th consecutive game with a three-point field goal. Only three teams in NCAA basketball have had a three-point field goal in every game since the rule was passed prior to the 1986-1987 season: Vanderbilt, Princeton, and UNLV. 

As I mentioned yesterday, today is the three-year anniversary of my deciding to start writing incomprehensible drivel understandable by and interesting to perhaps 25 other people on this planet. Actually -- somewhat surprisingly to me -- my readership stays consistently between 100 and 250 hits per post, and I'm a little under 7,000 pageviews from hitting the 150,000 pageview mark. This is all very cool to me considering that some of my posts in my first month have yet to break into double digits even three years later. 

Maybe I'm more interesting now?

Tease me with a title like, "Worst Song Ever!!!" and I'm probably going to click on it. Give it a listen -- it's like what would happen if those "Ricola" horns met up with a yodeler trained by the people who sing Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo, but only if those people had stuttering problems. It's fantastic.

Last year, I made some "resolutions" for the beginning of my blog year. Let's revisit those to see how I'm doing.

1.  Grow the Robin Yount Collection to 1000 items: As I mentioned yesterday, this one is a SUCCESS, since I have pushed the count to 1,041 items (and I just got in a few more cards to add to that collection yesterday and today). 

2.  Get More Organized, Again: this one related to the need to sort through about 30,000 cards from the "Christmas Horde" that I got from my in-laws for Christmas in 2015. I will say that I have gotten someone more organized within my card room. However, my time allocation has been bad, so I still have about 20,000 cards from 1989 through 1993 to sort through.

That is a FAIL...like on the level of this kid, who calls this his worst trumpet playing ever:

Be sure to ask this kid why his video is so orange. Also, if you play an instrument, there is no need to put your practicing on YouTube.

3.  Winnow down my collection: Nope. Haven't really made a dent. I had less time than I wanted this year to devote to collecting, and it showed. I actually have been downright awful this year in sending out trade packages. 

FAIL

4.  Send out Cards to the SuperTraders: This was and is a great idea -- to have an identified team collector to whom you can send cards. I got plenty of packages just before Christmas this year from some of the SuperTraders, so it's been good to add some new trading partners. I even bought a couple of boxes early in the process to help kick off the group -- and pulled a Yoan Moncada autograph card for Mark Hoyle:

Of course, now Moncada is with the other Sox, having been traded in the Chris Sale deal. Can't blame the Red Sox for that trade -- they can always spend more to get players and their hitting prospects were deep already.

Anyway, I didn't do all that well here in sending cards out, but I did do some. Minor success

5.  Stick to a budget for cards -- or create one.

6.  Get my Brewers Parallels, Oddballs, & Paninis organized and get my post-1965 Milwaukee Braves organized and get want lists created.  

I've been sort of successful here. Little did I think about what getting want lists put together for all those damn Bowman parallels would take. I'm to the point now where I am thinking about giving up on serial numbered cards with serial numbers under about 250 or 500 as going into my team sets. I don't catalog cards numbered 100 or fewer any more except for wanting them for my player collections. But, I'm almost done with Bowman, and I'm getting closer to typing up all the checklists on Topps for parallels.

After that, it will be Donruss, Fleer, and Upper Deck. Ugh.

Then, it will be the police cards and oddballs getting the full treatment.

Finally, after that, I'll pick up the Milwaukee Braves. The Milwaukee Braves are difficult because online checklists will often list cards as Boston Braves or even Atlanta Braves when the player is wearing a Milwaukee hat. It's annoying. Fix it, people. Fix it for me. 

7. Keep on the 1982 Blog and the "Meet the Brewers" Posts. The 1982 Blog is about dead. I fought the 792, and the 792 won. I was too ambitious, basically writing far too much about each card. When I have time, I'm busy creating want lists. So, bye bye 1982 Topps Blog for me. Anyone want it?

The Meet the Brewers posts are actually turning into my personal favorite posts. I have gotten the opportunity to speak with two former Brewers already thanks to that series, and I am hopefully going to get the chance to speak to a few more. I may need to get some drafts done there, though, in order to get ready for speaking with those players -- so I can ask more informed questions.

As the song says...Moving On.

What about this year?

Let's set a few goals.

1. Increase my main player collections. Not just Yount this time. Let's do a list:

a. Robin Yount: Current: 1,041. Goal: 1150

b. Paul Molitor: Current: 516. Goal: 610

c. Gary Carter: Current: 261. Goal: 310

d. Eddie Mathews: Current: 183. Goal: 225

e. Warren Spahn: Current: 143. Goal: 180

f. Joe Adcock: Current: 44. Goal: 60

g. Lew Burdette: Current: 36. Goal: 50

h. Harvey Kuenn: Current: 58. Goal: 70

I set lower goals for some of those older players for obvious reasons -- there just aren't as many cards available. 

2. Get the Parallels, Inserts, and Oddballs organized and bindered up. Carrying on last year's work. This one will be a continuing challenge. It's not like Topps has decided suddenly to reduce the number of parallels, inserts, and card sets they are issuing.

But I also want to add the minor league cards from the Brewers organization to my lists as well. 

I am a glutton for punishment.

3.  Trade More: Time conspired against me over this past year. My goal this year will be more tangible: to send out at least 4 packages per month. It's a small, attainable goal.

Who wants some cards? Comment below and email me your address.

4. Care Less about the surrounding bullshit.

That has grown. 

I know that I get too worked up about Topps ignoring the Brewers in things like Topps Now and Archives. It's a simple answer, of course: focus less on the current and more on the holes in my collection. If Topps doesn't want my money, well, it doesn't have to get my money.

5. Keep up the Meet the Brewers. Like I said, I enjoy these posts a lot. It's a great excuse for me to read old newspapers, old news, do internet sleuthing, and generally find out about guys who played the game. I'm disappointed, though, that one of my main sources of information -- Google Newspapers -- no longer has the Milwaukee Journal and Milwaukee Sentinel online for free any more. When Gannett -- owners of USA Today -- bought the newspapers this past year, they decided to monetize that archive for their own profit rather than allowing the world to have access to it for free. 

F*ck Gannett.

That said, my SABR membership has given me access to the archives of The Sporting News, so I have something of a substitute. It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing.

6. Write anywhere from three to six times for the SABR Baseball Card Blog. That's a tough audience, to be fair -- tons of big names read it and write for it, like Keith Olbermann and Rob Neyer and Jeff Katz and Mark Aubrey and Mark Armour and Matthew Prigge. But I enjoy writing there so I'll try.

Hopefully I can stick to these better than last year's goals. 

Finally, let me close with five cards I got at a recent card show. I've started a binder called, "Cards I Like" as I have mentioned before. Here are the five cards I dig from that card show:

The Topps Tribute space race card just feels and looks cool in hand. It's from back when Tribute sort of did what Allen & Ginter does now -- with random rivalries and such. But Tribute cards are cooler. 

Then, we have Josh Gibson and his Tape Measure Blast in Yankee Stadium and, on the bottom, Judy Johnson. I have had a fascination with the Negro Leagues ever since I read Only the Ball Was White followed by I Was Right On Time. Even as a kid, stories of those leagues intrigued me -- I couldn't imagine why a Negro League was necessary, and it struck me as ridiculous that it existed. Then I read Buck O'Neill's book, and I realized that it wasn't ridiculous -- it was just life, and the guys who lived it actually loved it. Sure, those players would have loved the opportunity in the major leagues, but they loved the opportunities they got.

In the middle row, we first have Paul Gauguin. I've actually featured Gauguin's art on this blog in my first year, and I've been an admirer of his work since high school. I like this Mayo set -- using old photography makes the card more attractive to me, for some reason, over using faux old art like Ginter does.

Finally, we have David Price. The only reason I bought this card was because he is wearing his Vanderbilt uniform. Maybe I'll start a Vanderbilt-uniform collection at some point, but for now, it's going to be a "I like that card" visceral basis.

Thanks for sticking around for these three years. Even though I rarely respond to comments, I enjoy getting them. It means that I struck a chord with someone enough to get them to stop and take a few minutes to write a comment.

Here's to a few more good years here for me, and thanks for reading.

Pressing F5 to Refresh The Blog

It's been just four months that I've been "Off Hiatus."  In many respects, I am still way behind in figuring things out.  I mean, I'm still complaining about all the parallels and inserts when the fact is that those things have been filling up packs and collections for over 20 years now.  

In other respect, though, I have a much clearer vision and idea of what I'm collecting and why than I ever have in my life.  In the 1980s, I was a pack rat.  I pretty much kept anything and everything.  In many respects, that is a good thing for my collecting these days because I still have most of that stuff and because much of that "stuff" is Brewer collectibles that I would want anyway.

In some respects, though, I have a lot of cards and sets that are surplus to requirements.  I'm happy to have two rookie cards of Wade Boggs from the 1983 Topps set, but the only good thing about that is that I have two rookie cards of Wade Boggs.  And yes, I'm glad I have complete sets of 1982 Topps, 1983 Topps, Donruss, and Fleer, 1984 Fleer and Topps, etc., but I'm not sure at this point that I care that I have those.  They sit in the same box, pretty much, in which I got them 30 years ago.  I don't look at them.

This type of thing has been gnawing at me lately.  It does not comport with my collecting philosophy in 2014 to have boxes of cards from 1984 or 1985 that are not a part of my Brewers or Milwaukee Braves collection.  Yet, I'm not in a position where I want to jettison those cards completely -- at least not yet, I don't think.  I struggle with that.

I feel like I need to contemplate in my collecting the questions that the great Post-Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin was contemplating while he lived in Tahiti with the massive canvas that he painted in 1897-1898 called, "Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?" As an aside, if you are an art lover and get the opportunity to see this in person in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, by all means do so.

As I think about Gauguin's questions in my head, things get clearer.  I came from a position from which many bloggers have started -- reacquainting myself with what cards I have, what cards have been available in the past, and what cards are available now. I'm close to getting a handle on what I have and what I need. 

All the trades and packages I have gotten from fellow bloggers and readers have helped fill in gaps in my collection.  Before, I could say without reservation that sending me Brewers from any set with a date between 1991 and 2010 would be sufficient to give me 100% cards that I need for my collection.  I can't say that any more.  The window is smaller and the number of sets I don't have is smaller, though the number of cards I think I need seems to grow regularly as I discover additional sets, Milwaukee Stadium Giveaways, etc., that I want.  So, tighter and more coherent organization is needed but it's getting there.

Yet, where I am now is a better place.

With all these things in mind, I've started working on revamping this blog to make it cleaner, easier to use for others and for me, and easier for me and others to find things.

So, here's what I've done so far.

I have nested the Robin Yount collection page as a linked page off my "Player Collections" tab, and I have added the update date to each tab there. I'll still be updating my Robin Yount list regularly as I add new items -- I mean, I still don't have literally hundreds to thousands of Yount items, and I'll never have a "complete" set certainly -- but I'm also working on creating complete lists for each of my player collections.  That level of organization has escaped me to this point as I sort through cards, but I'm getting closer with each passing day of having my sorting done.

Second, I've changed the "Brewers Want List" to being just a "Want List" that will encompass all the cards that I would like to get -- whether it is for the Archives sets, for my Gary Carter collection, for my Brewers "collect everything" collection, or a player collection.  To make them easier to follow and have somewhat less scrolling involved, I have broken the lists into groupings by year.  I'm sure there will still be plenty of scrolling, but it will be less than before. Also, you will see that a lot of the cards and items listed there will have (x2) after them as a reflection of needing two of a certain card for both his PC and the Brewers collection.

Finally, I'm working on listing out my "trade bait by team."  Those lists will not contain all the base set cards I have for each team, but I am trying to list out the more interesting oddballs, relics, autographs, and inserts for each team that I have that I am willing to trade away.  As of this moment, I have completed the Diamondbacks, the Braves, and the Orioles, so take a look if you are a fan of one of those teams to see if I have anything in which you are interested.

So, that's a lot of text again from me.  At least I'm not whining about the 2014 Archives set again.