I Was An Owl Once

Pretty much everyone in the baseball card blog world knows Night Owl. He's been around a long time -- since 2008, in fact -- and is a prolific poster as well.  It must be all that quiet time he gets being a Night Owl that allows him to be that prolific. 

But it brings me to a confession of sorts: I was an Owl for a long time -- at least 13 years, in fact. My school mascot all the way through elementary, middle, and high school was and still is an Owl. The Slinger Owls.

We've never had anyone remotely famous attend Slinger High School, as far as either I or Wikipedia can tell. I mean, we've had a couple of NCAA Division I athletes, a few college professors here and there, and a few attorneys as well. But, no one truly famous.  

I lettered in high school baseball three years at Slinger, but I wasn't really good enough to do much after high school with it. Perhaps I could have gone to a small NAIA school and tried out, but even then I'm pretty sure that I was not all that good at the sport. I mean, I was good in the "better than people at my school" sense of the word, but not in the "better than other players my age" sense of the word. 

But at least someone now has come up with a great logo and a booster club now for the team:

So, my Owl-history aside, it's time to show off the cards that Night Owl sent my way.

I think that this 1982 Topps Ted Simmons sticker started the festivities off for this envelope coming my way:

While that alone would have been great to add to my collection -- I'm quite deficient in 1980s Topps Stickers because I insisted on putting them into an album all the time -- Night Owl didn't stop there.  

He hit two player collections with some parallel majesty:

The 2012 Gallardo refractor is followed up by a 2015 Stadium Club Gold Parallel of Jonathan Lucroy.  So, now all I need are the base cards for nearly all of the Stadium Club set.  Man, I need to get cracking on that.

Night Owl also sent a great variety of cards from other years that I needed.  First off, he sent me a tough-to-find 1972 high numbered card:

This is Mike Ferraro. I could have sworn that he managed a lot longer than parts of two seasons in the 1980s -- 1983 in Cleveland and 1986 in Kansas City.  He played one season of 124 games in Milwaukee in 1972 (and 5 games in Seattle in 1969) and 33 total games with the Yankees in 1966 and 1968 and was done as a player. He went into minor league management shortly after that, and then worked his way up to being a major league coach. In 1980, he waved Willie Randolph around third to try to score him in Game 2 of the ALCS. Randolph was out, and George Steinbrenner went ape$hit on him.  Steinbrenner cleaned house after the season ended, and manager Dick Howser led Ferraro out the door.  That 1986 season in Kansas City was the year Howser died. Ferraro took over, then was let go at the end of that season.

Night Owl then sent another great early 80s oddball:

The 1983 Fleer Stamp of Pete Vuckovich (I think it's '83, at least).  Fleer stamps were so exotic to me that I don't recall ever seeing them for sale in 1983.  I may have been too busy buying stickers and putting them in albums, though.

Leaping to the 1990s:

The Listach Leaf card from 1993 means that I am a Greg Vaughn away from a complete team set.  Someday soon, I'll have to highlight some complete team sets -- perhaps as a foil to falling back on "Meet the Brewers," though I will have to do one of those soon, I think. The Seitzer card is as 1994 as a card can get. It seriously looks like the Topps card designers borrowed from Pearl Jam's liner notes for Vitalogy...

...which also came out in 1994.

So, let's leave my enjoyed youth behind, as I slowly teeter toward my mid-40s, and go back to the cards again.

Night Owl sent me some great Upper Deck efforts from the Aughties too.  Those top cards -- 2007 Upper Deck Johnny Estrada and the 2008 Baseball Heroes Bill Hill -- are nice.  The Jeff Suppan O-Pee-Chee from 2009 with its black border would be much more beautiful if it weren't Jeff Suppan, of course (I covered my Jeff Suppan dislike here before and won't repeat it).  

But let's talk just for a sec about the 2008 Documentary set. What a great concept done incredibly poorly by Upper Deck. You know the set make up -- it's basically the same photos of the same players done over and over again ad nauseum without any reference as to whether the player on the card had anything to do with the game itself.  

Wouldn't this be a great set to revive today, though, in a limited release style? As in, release a set of 200 to 250 cards, for each major league team, perhaps in box set form or online only, that chronicles each game from the previous season with a player photo tied to the actual game action.  If the team got no-hit in the game, show the player who struck out to end the game, or the starter who didn't get any support.  Then, include photos for each player who made an appearance during the season (or, to simplify matters, the top 25 players) and the manager and coaching staffs.  I'd buy a Brewers set like that.  And who among us team collectors wouldn't buy our team's offering?

But I digress, because Night Owl sent me one final shiny card:

That's a Shaun Marcum refractor from 2012 Topps Chrome with a painted-on Brewers outfit. It reminds me of the paean to the airbrushers of the 1977 Topps set that Night Owl wrote recently.

Finally....

...off Duran Duran's weird "Thank You" album. Thanks, Night Owl, for the great cards and the randomness embodied in this blog post.

Backing up the Truck

As I was envisioning this post, I thought about the sound that a truck makes when it's backing up...you know:

And, if you watch/listen to all 60 minutes of that video, well, wow.  I've got nothing in response to that.  But, in the interest of trying to find something weirder than that, I put "beep beep beep" into Google.  It then suggested, "beep beep beep beep mexican song".  No lie, this is what came up:

Apparently, that song got included in Grand Theft Auto V by Rockstar, leading the gaming boards to make El Sonidito a big hit.  And with me typing El Sonidito so much, Google Chrome is now offering to translate this page for me into English.

Thanks, Google!

All of that is just to introduce a big box of Brewers that just appeared on my doorstep late last week from Johnny's Trading Spot.

And those are just the stacks of cards.  It took me part of Sunday -- at which point I found problems in my spreadsheets and started over -- and into yesterday to finally get everything sorted.

Let's see some of the cards that John sent my way.

Now, I didn't need this 1987 Fleer Jim Gantner. But, geez, Gumby, you went from looking like a mean SOB who flick his Marlboro Reds at kids who dared come too close to your 1978 Datsun 280Z...this one, probably:

...into the guy on that 1991 Bowman -- that's just four years, for God's sake -- who looks like the next step is to buy this blue car from the old man in the driver's seat for $450 on a $50 a month payment plan:

It's sad, really.

Before I leave Gantner, though, I have to admit that as a kid I always liked Gantner as a person but not as a player. He seemed like an automatic out at the plate when he came up with runners on base, but man, the guy loved playing for the Brewers and he made tons of time for every kid seeking autographs.

Anyway...thought I'd say something nice about him after ragging on his fashion sense and apparent installation of contact lenses later in his career in an effort to fool fans and the front office that he really was younger than he really was.

Johnny sent me some pretty cool cards other than Gantner. I mean, look at those stacks -- there has to be some cool stuff in them!

Like this Big Ben McDonald Topps Finest from 1996. I know a lot of people buy cards for investment purposes, but how did anyone keep from ripping that film off guys like Ben McDonald's card? I mean, the guy's shoulder was put together with baling wire and bubble gum by the time this card was made -- did people really think that he'd suddenly regenerate a real arm, push his ERA below 4, and suddenly turn into a 20 game winner for 10 years in a row to push himself to 250 career wins?

Yes, that's more like it.  Actually, John sent me two of these, so the one with the film still on it will go into my duplicates box and the peeled card will be displayed proudly in my Topps 1994-2009 binder (base sets only in that binder, of course).

Now, I have to admit. John sent me so many cards that I needed for my collection -- over 100 of the cards he sent were ones that are waiting currently to be sorted into the PC binders or the manufacturer collection binders I've slowly-but-surely been putting together -- that I'm almost overwhelmed to try to select cards to highlight.  So, let me go to the oddballs, because I love oddballs:

Cecil Cooper.  The man was pure style. Smooth in the field. That pause in the middle of his last practice swing that he always made -- and which that Donruss Champions card captures perfectly -- was one of the more frequently imitated batting stances in Wisconsin in the 1980s.

I started messing around with switch hitting just so I could hit left handed and swing the bat in my warm up like him.

Or, like this guy:

Oglivie always looked incredibly agitated and impatient at the plate.  This clip doesn't do it justice, but it's such a great video I want to share it...even if the game ended badly:

Such great memories of a year now 33 years in my rearview mirror. I hope I will see another Brewers' trip to the World Series in my lifetime.

Okay, one more video that has to be shared before I get to the grand finale of John's box.  It's this great video of Pete Vuckovich and the home plate umpire before Vuke's start at home in the World Series:

Now that we're all buttoned up, on to the coolest items John sent:

Bobbleheads! On the left is the Lyle Overbay commemorative bobblehead from 2005 celebrating his team record for 53 doubles in a season.  Jonathan Lucroy broke that record last year by racking up 54 doubles.

The other one looks like John Axford, but it's 10 years before the Ax got to Milwaukee and instead is a commemorative bobblehead for the Bud-Selig-tie-game-All-Star Game in Milwaukee. I swear, sometimes I think Bud could suck the fun out of a trip to Vegas. Anyway, maybe Axford saw this bobblehead around Miller Park and thought, "Damn, that bobblehead looks dope! Imma do that!"

Or not.

Funny thing, though -- these two guys are overshadowed GREATLY by the final bobblehead and ticket stub that came my way:

Yes! The Robin Yount Bobblehead from the 25th Anniversary celebration from 2007!  He may be smaller than the Ax-wanna-be or Overbay, but I much prefer Robin.  All day, every day.

Even if he is only second in team history for home runs now.

John, thank you very much for all the great cards and especially for the bobbleheads.  Admittedly, when I got back into collecting, I never expected to have a bunch of bobbleheads around. Now, though, I'm glad I do!

Mailday Post: Hot Corner Cards

Just before the Fourth of July, I got an unexpected PWE in the mail from Pat from Hot Corner Cards.  I thought about songs that mention corners and the obvious choice is clearly the correct one here:

I listened to Creedence Clearwater Revival as much as the next kid who grew up in the 1980s.  Then, I got to college and had a friend and later roommate who played Chronicle, a greatest hits compilation by CCR so much that I ended up buying it myself and listening to it regularly.  So, I figured out that I really liked the CCR song "Lodi" a lot more than "Down on the Corner," but "Lodi" doesn't fit here.  So "Down on the Corner" it is.

Pat sent me an interesting three-card melange in that envelope.  First, I got a Cy Young Award condition upgrade:

Vuckovich won the Cy Young Award probably at the height of the BBWAA's infatuation with wins over performance.  I mean, Vuke is a Brewer and all, so I'm biased toward him, but his stats are those of a pitcher who got excellent run support and a lot of luck -- 102 walks, 105 strikeouts, 234 hits allowed -- a 1.502 WHIP!  He won the Cy with a Wins Above Replacement of just 2.8; very clearly, the best pitching season that year was authored by Dave Stieb, whose 17-14 record masked a 288-1/3 inning season with 19 complete games and 5 shutouts. 

But they can't take that Award away from Vuke now.

Speaking of a guy whom some want to take an award away from, the second card I got from Pat is a Bowman Chrome (rookie?  I don't know these days) of none other than the Biogenesis Most Valuable Player, Ryan Braun:

I mean, y'all know my stance on Braun.  He's a convicted PED-user, but he is my PED-user, so I welcomed the Hittin' Hebrew's USA uniform right into my Braun binder.  

Finally, Pat sent a brand-spankin' new purple mini parallel from this year's Bowman set, serial numbered 20 of 99 -- a card, by the way, that I'm told by Night Owl (once I get the olives out of my ears) will fit wonderfully into the new UltraPro mini-plastic sheets:

Devin Williams came into the year listed as the Brewers third-leading prospect by Bowman.  Now, that was certainly done on the weight of his high draft-pick status -- 2nd round pick last year -- and his physical talents and not necessarily on results.  Certainly, he was an 18-year-old kid in the Arizona Rookie League last year, but he walked a ton of guys per nine innings last year -- 22 in 34-2/3 innings. This year, he is in Helena in the Pioneer League, and, well, it's not going that well for him. He has cut his walks -- a good thing -- but his homers allowed has normalized more, which means more runs allowed and more hits allowed too.  

It just goes to show that old adage from Baseball Prospectus, et al., is true -- There Is No Such Thing As A Pitching Prospect -- TINSTAAPP. I'm hopeful that Williams will continue to develop, find better command of his pitches, and that he'll help the Brewers sometime in 2018 -- when Williams will be 23 years old.  He is still a long way away.

But this card is one that will not go any further.  

Pat, thanks again for the cards!