Boy Bands, Part II?

Sort of.

Weird Al's parody of the Backstreet Boys' "I Want It That Way" is far too accurate, even down to the reference of sniping the auction with 2 seconds left on the auction. Yeah, we've all done it to some extent or another, I think. 

That's my way, though, to bring up more eBay wins I've racked up. For some reason, I'm finding myself going down a Weird Al vortex this post.

But first, here's a bizarro eBay win!

I'm showing the back and not the front because it justified me spending $1.25 on the card. It's my first 1990 Fleer Canadian card, so it justified the cost. 

"Y-Yo Yo Yoda!"

Much like the use of Force can make people do things and think things that they may not otherwise do....

I find myself bidding almost indiscriminately at times on Milwaukee Brewers Police cards. This time around, I purchased two different sets from the Milwaukee Police Department that I did not have -- the 1998 and 1999 sets. The cooler thing is that, as I found out when the cards arrived, I had purchased them from an industry legend -- Bob Lemke.

Those are the 1998 cards, and, as you can see behind Jenkins & Nilsson, the cards celebrate the fact that Bud Selig ramrodded through the change from the American League to the National League to satisfy his own childhood fantasies.

The 1999 cards have backgrounds that celebrate the closing of Milwaukee County Stadium, which was supposed to happen in 1999 but had to be delayed.

So, speaking of strange/weird/odd, let's talk a bit about Steve Falteisek. Falteisek is almost exactly one month younger than I am. Falteisek was born in New York, but was a good enough baseball player to get a scholarship to attend the University of South Alabama. He was drafted by the Montreal Expos in the 10th round in 1992 and signed almost immediately. 

As is clear from his minor league record, he was never a strikeout pitcher -- and therein was his downfall. He made 10 appearances for the 1999 Brewers at the age of 27, allowing 18 hits, 3 HR, 3 BB, and 10 earned runs in 12 innings. The Brewers released him at the beginning of September in 1999, and from there he bounced in and out of major league organizations until 2003, when he called it a career. I think I found his Facebook page; it says he works for American Airlines, and it looks like he has a lovely wife and two adorable children.

There is so much right about this song. I swear that there are so many people in this world that should listen over, and over, and over, and over to that song...or hire the cunning linguist (ha!) that Weird Al mentions.

It's tough being a grammar fascist -- as I tend to be -- and then I reread my own posts and see stupid typos and errors. Ugh. How embarrassing.

It's not as embarrassing, though, as spelling Hall of Famer Warren Spahn's name as "Spaun" -- meaning that none of Spahn's fans doing a search for "Spahn" will not find your auction -- and then putting down that Spahn played for the Milwaukee Brewers...meaning none of the Milwaukee Braves collectors find your auction either. 

I'm thankful for people who don't spell check or realize their mistake, though, because I benefited. Neither of these printing plates from the 2014 Panini Cooperstown set cost me more than $12.

I cannot think of anything more appropriate for a blog about Milwaukee baseball cards than a polka song. And this one, well, it's just plain awesome!

So what awesome win do I have to go with that?

Everyone's favorite Brewer, Ryan Braun, had this Meaningful Material card in the 2016 Museum Collection Set. This nice three color patch part is serial numbered 4 of 35, and it cost me exactly $10 with shipping. That might be about $5 more than I should have paid for it, but I put my bid at exactly $6.01 to match the $3.99 shipping and, lo and behold, I have another Braun.

Finally, it's a song about everyone's favorite celebrity gossip website TMZ. I hate TMZ for its part in the A.J. Green Jerseygate suspension. TMZ reported that A.J. attended an agent's party at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami over Memorial Day in 2010. It was a complete fabrication. A.J. was never in Miami, but it led the NCAA to ask him about the trip. He said, basically, I wasn't there -- just look at my bank records. No one at UGA (*cough* Mark Richt) counseled A.J. about why this was a bad defense. What happens then? The NCAA finds a $1000 payment for a jersey that A.J. sold. 

F**k the NCAA. F**king hypocrites.

Anyway, I need something to get me in a far better mood, and that song just brings up bad memories. 

Let's try this parody:




Much better!

Just like this final eBay win. 

So, now I have three of the four printing plates for Jonathan Lucroy's 2016 Topps card. I bought the yellow and the black plates back in February when the Flagship first came out. All I need to find now is the cyan plate.

Three out of four printing plates is a pretty cool thing to have. But, four out of four would be even better. Hopefully, I'll find it on eBay...soon.

Thanks for stopping by.

#SuperTrader Highly Subjective and Completely Awesome

I'm a little behind on sending out cards to the #SuperTraders group. I will be trying to address that later this week; as I mentioned on Bob Walk the Plank, I went with a bit of quantity that hopefully a few people will like/need.

But, I don't want to take away from the great PWE from #SuperTrader Brian at Highly Subjective and Completely Arbitrary. It's such a refined group of cards, though, so it deserves a refined approach here.

American composer and musical genius/legend Aaron Copland is an American orchestral legend. This movement of the "Statements for Orchestra" called "Subjective" is a very moody and emotive piece that feels unresolved with the use of minor keys and expressive strings.

So, let's talk moody and unresolved. The Brewers traded Lorenzo Cain as part of their "all-in" deal in after the 2010 season, giving up Alcides Escobar, Cain, Jake Odorizzi, and Jeremy Jeffress (who has since returned) in exchange for Greinke and Yuniesky Betancourt. Betancourt is a bête noire among Brewers fans -- mainly because we had to deal with watching him play first base for more than 1/3 of the season in 2013 thanks to injuries to Mat Gamel and Corey Hart. 

Some people wish we could have that Greinke trade in 2010 back, but it was the right deal at the time, and trading Zach in 2012 (for Johnny Hellweg, Ariel Pena, and Jean Segura). Now that Hellweg has signed a minor league deal with the Padres and Segura is a Diamondback right next to Greinke, maybe folks will get over it. Plus, Pena may yet be a useful pitcher.

Bianchi was a utility infielder in 2013, thus earning him a card in that set. He spent last year in the Boston organization, and is a free agent currently. His last name means "white hair" in Italian. For what that's worth.

Let's stick with refined and American but not subjective...

I'd argue that either Copland or Gershwin could be considered America's first major contribution to the world's orchestral music. Gershwin's music to me seemed to have more of a popular bent in its time, combining the hot music of the time -- jazz -- into his compositions seamlessly. In this song, his music is along the lines of a tone poem in evoking a feeling of being in Paris -- with car horns honking, quiet interludes along the Seine, and the rush-rush of the big city.

Not that these evoke feelings of Paris, but the horizontal cards here tend to evoke more of a feeling of being at the park than the way-too-closely-cropped photos that dominate recent cards. As the Braun card says, it's all about perspective.

Richard Rodgers -- of the famous duos of Rodgers & Hart and Rodgers & Hammerstein -- wrote some of the most enduring songs in Broadway's storied history. "Blue Moon" (co-opted by Manchester City), "You'll Never Walk Alone" (co-opted by Liverpool), and "The Lady is a Tramp" (as far as I know, no English football team has adopted this as their song) are some of his best known songs. 

Of course, leading off the musical Oklahoma! is this classic. It is the perfect optimism needed to lead off a show like Oklahoma! 



Speaking of optimism...yes, it's prospect time. The Brewers farm system has gone in two years from being a desolate desert of dying dreams to being jam-packed with top-level prospects and guys with a ton of potential upside. Harrison is an athlete who turned down a football scholarship to Nebraska to play minor league baseball. He is still very raw and has a ways to go to be a contributor -- but people love his upside. 

Taylor was a 21-year-old in Double-A last year in Biloxi. He didn't hit poorly, but he did not show a lot of pop and got passed up in the prospect lists by the massive influx of new talent coming in from trades. He, too, needs to show more this year -- especially in terms of OBP.

Also, yes, I like musicals.

Finally, any discussion of great American composers has to include one of the greatest ever from the only truly American music form -- jazz. Duke Ellington elevated jazz -- adding in orchestral flair to his arrangements that many jazz performers of the 1920s lacked. In many respects, Ellington took jazz from being a pop music based around jam sessions and fast playing improvisation to having a bit more structure. Of course Ellington's band could jam and improv with anyone in the day, but they also were tight and played like no other band of the time.

His work in jazz earned him a special posthumous Pulitzer Prize for music in 1999.

The most special card in the package from Brian is this awesome yellow printing plate from 2016 Topps. I have to admit -- I'm a sucker for a printing plate. I just love them. I am not willing to pay exorbitant prices for them but I am always super excited when I get one in a trade or find one I like for, say, around or under $15 to $20.  

Brian, thank you very much for the awesome envelope. My #SuperTrader announcement on what I have special to send out will come tomorrow, hopefully (assuming that my purchase arrives!).

JBF Monster #6 (The Finale): Taking a Ride on the Peace Train

As you may know, the war between Off Hiatus and Jaybarkerfan has raged on for nearly six weeks.  It started with a solitary package from Hazel Green on May 4, when the parishioners at the Hazel Green Roll Tide Church stepped away from their usual 2:30 PM (Central) worship time to invade Atlanta's postal system and fill my house with serial-numbered and parallel insanity.  In the wake of that package, many in the blogosphere warned me to tread lightly -- some even offered to prepare my eulogy -- when I declared that I would win the first round after my return fire went into the mail. 

But I survived that and, indeed, JBF agreed that I took the initial round on the judge's cards.

And yet, I felt uneasy.  Monster after Monster invaded Atlanta, bringing slasher pic figurines, about 35 Jesse Orosco 1992 Topps cards, Gigli, and about 20 printing plates.  I kept my cool, though, and did my research.  I hit JBF right in the Mincher, nailed him with All-Star goodies, and plastered him with oversized mascots and Expos media guides. 

In the end -- and after a Canadian invasion featuring an action figure of Canada's First Prime Minister (with huge thanks to reader Angus!) -- JBF and I agreed to an armistice, and JBF called our war a draw.  

I totally agreed with that as well.  But, I wasn't so sure when Monster #6 -- all four boxes of it -- arrived.

I went for the smallest one first because it was the lightest.  I found out quickly that "light" should not be confused with "lesser items."

Wait, what is that black box?  It has a "ReggieJackson.com" hologram on the outside...and this label:

Seriously? An autographed Warren Spahn baseball?

Yes, seriously.  With a certificate of authenticity from Reggie Jackson:

Then there was the white box.  This was the biggest disappointment through all of the war:  

CC Sabathia did not make it in one piece.  Indeed, CC looks more like the Edvard Munch "Scream" mask from the movie "Scream":

But, with just a couple of small casualties, this was just a US Mail screw up.  They did okay otherwise here.  

I mean, think of all the boxes that have been sent back and forth in this war. Speaking of which, let's look at what was inside the second box: 

I guess the second box was really the first box.  

It contained two magazines/programs of note...

...along with the massive stack and container of cards to unpack and sort.  I distinctly remember having a copy of that program with Harvey Kuenn on the front from 1983. But, I'm pretty sure that my copy had the cover come off of it.  Now, it's replaced.

As for that Beloit Brewers program, I have never seen so many advertisements for local taverns in my life. Well, at least since I left Wisconsin.

More on those cards in the box later...

The third box, when opened, looked like this:

Inside those boxes:

Packs and packs of cards, and each box with a relic cards.  More sorting to do!

Then, the final box:

Those three long, 800-count boxes were filled to the brim as well:

What about that weird, thin looking thing? Well, you know the old cliche, "the check's in the mail?"  It was:

A signed check for Jim Gantner to sign autographs at a sports store for $195.  Geez, for that, maybe we should pool our funds and get some of the local luminaries here in Atlanta like Jay Howell and Steve Bedrosian together for a signing party.

But I digress.  

As you could see, there were tons of cards to sort out.  Because I'm an anti-clutter person -- a rare quality in the collecting world, I'd argue -- I had to sort them out immediately.  As in yesterday.  Here's what my desk looked like when I sorted the cards out into stacks by year:

From the size of the stacks, I think that 1991 barely edged out 1988 for having the most cards in those boxes, with 1989 and 1990 valiantly trying to keep up.  

That was sort #1.  Sort #2 was to sort through the cards for PC guys:

Now, there's no way that I either would scan what had to be over 5000 cards in these boxes and show you all of them.  I'll show the the very high-level highlights, though, such as Six printing plates.

Jersey swatches all around -- Braun, Fielder, Burnitz, Bill Hall, Junior Spivey (whom I forgot played for Milwaukee), Cecil Cooper!, Sheets, and Podsednik.

Autographs too -- including new addition to the rotation Taylor Jungmann, who shutdown the Pirates in his first major league start before having the misfortunate yesterday of facing off against Max Scherzer in peak form.

JBF even sent a few Milwaukee Braves cards of my PC guys to me -- Spahnie & Mathews in particular -- along with a 1974 Topps card of the Hammer featuring his early Topps cards.

Great oddball!

And the capper for the whole monster had to be this Christmas card.  Yes, serial numbered 12 of 25, that is, and it's an autographed swatch of a boyhood hero:

Molly! Since it's sealed, I haven't cracked this one open.

As I said on your blog, Wes, your generosity is incredible and I am glad that I was a recipient of so many awesome cards. I am also glad that I was able to hold my own -- with Angus's help of course.  

Hopefully, you'll be able to get over here some time this summer for a Braves game -- whether of the Atlanta or the Triple-A Gwinnett kind -- and even a card show so that you can meet some of the folks who helped me to stock those envelopes filled with Cardinals relics, autographs, and no-name quarterbacks.  This was a ton of fun, and I greatly enjoyed it. 

As you put it, it has been an honor to cross swords with someone who goes as all out for his trading partners as you do.  

Oh, and I can't let this post have the title it has without a musical interlude from Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam: