PWEs and a Little Music

Thank you to all of you who read my post trying to honor the memory of Ray Peters. Your comments meant a lot to me. Ray was truly a special man who will be dearly missed.

In the meantime since my last post, I have been the honored recipient of two single-card plain white envelopes. The first arrived a couple of days ago from New Jersey and my Twitter friend Nick Vossbrink who also blogs at NJWV and, in addition, is one of the two new co-chairs of the SABR Baseball Cards Committee and Blog Editor. Nick is one of those people with whom I feel I could converse about any subject and learn something new. I like people like that.

Nick sent me an awesome thank you note featuring an Auguste Renoir painting of a ballerina that totally pump-faked me into thinking it was an Edgar Degas because whenever I see Impressionists and ballerinas that is a Pavlovian response.

See what I mean? But even now, thirty years later, I still hear the teacher I had in high school for training for the Academic Decathlon competition -- which is where my Impressionist knowledge comes from -- saying, "yeah, but look at the eyes. Those are Renoir eyes."

Anyway, Nick sent me a very cool 1980s oddball to add to my collection of a Giant turned Brewer, Rob Deer:

I'm pretty sure Deer is either about to swing and miss or crush the ball. That was what he did. For many Brewers fans, Deer's approach at the plate reminded them of an earlier Brewer hero, Gorman Thomas -- lots of homers, lots of strikeouts, a pretty good number of walks too, and low batting averages that didn't kill the team thanks to the OBP and the SLG.

To thank Nick further, here's a Baroque composition featuring attractive women looking cold on a beach with Tomaso Albinoni's Adagio in G Minor accompanying them.

Thanks Nick!

Next up, a PWE showed up yesterday from Mark Hoyle. Mark has either been buying a lot of potato chips from Utz lately, or else he ran into a deep, cheap vein of these cards at his local card shows. 

Whichever one of these it is, Mark was kind enough to share an Utz card with me:

If I were inclined to add any more player collections -- and trust me, I'm more likely to get rid of some than add some -- Lorenzo Cain would be in the running definitely. LoCain is such an upbeat guy, and he's also an incredible center fielder as well. It is unbelievable to me that Cain has yet to win a Gold Glove -- he deserved one last year, in my opinion, so I hope that issue gets addressed this year.

To thank Mark for the card, I think I'll give him faster horses, younger women, older whiskey, and more money -- from Tom T. Hall.

I grew up on country music in the 1970s, and I do recall this song. I probably would not have remembered this song, however, except for Twitter stalking Mark's timeline and seeing that he had interacted with the Great Wes Moore talking about the lyrics to this song specifically. 

Now that's what you call a friend -- someone to remind you of a Tom T. Hall song from 1976 that you haven't thought about in probably 40 years. 

Thanks, guys, for the great cards!

Pins and Needles

One of the upsides of being on Twitter is sometimes the conversations go down rabbit trails of strange and weird and cool collectibles just by someone bringing up a random topic. Now, I can't recall how it is that Greg a/k/a @grogg came to send me some great player pins from 1990, but All Hail to him for that!

That song is from a Manchester Band called PINS -- an all-female band formed 6 years ago. The songs I've listed to have a very mod 1960s feel. There's a lot of that feel in the way they dress as well. If you'd like to hear something different from them, check out "Aggrophobe", which features Iggy Pop doing mostly spoken-word verses while singing the chorus together. It's a lot different than a lot of the songs I've listed to lately, and it's a nice change.

But, it is weird too.

So, the pins. 1990 featured some of the most diverse oddballs one can imagine. There were the collector-issued "Broder-type" cards, such as the "Blue Sox Sports Sports Promotions Action Superstars." You had your random unlicensed stuff, like the "1990 All-American Baseball Team." Those were fairly normal cards compared to others, though. A company called "Ace" put out a set of 108 MVP pins, defining the term MVP rather loosely to include luminaries such as Bill Doran, Gary Gaetti, Tom Herr, and Dennis Rasmussen with real MVPs such as Robin Yount, Kevin Mitchell, and Dale Murphy.

From there, things went even weirder. Good Humor Ice Cream issued a set of 26 "bats" (one for each team) that were the sticks on which your ice cream was frozen. Of course, you had your usual cola-sponsored or cookie-sponsored or fast-food-sponsored sets. MSA was back at its disc-creating best. And don't forget about all the random player-specific sets that the Star Company put out, including the 1990 version of Aaron Judge: Kevin Maas.

All in all, having a set called "Baseball Buttons" that was fully licensed was nothing out of the ordinary for 1990. It appears that the set was broken down colorwise by having the NL players with a blue button and the AL players with a red button. I'm not entirely sure where Trading Card Database got its numbering system for the set, though, as I personally do not see any numbers on the buttons. 

It's a truly weird set in many respects. The Los Angeles Dodgers were just two years -- basically one season -- removed from winning the World Series, but only three Dodgers made the 120-button set. On the other hand, the Brewers had seven buttons in the set.

It's like the Baseball Button people were the Anti-Topps. The designs on these leave a lot to be desired. Why do Ted Higuera and Dan Plesac have their name and a copyright line included on their photos while the other players do not? 

The photographer who took the photos of Yount and Gantner must have been new to the business as well -- you never take a photo where the sun is behind a person's face if you are intending to feature the face in the photo. That's photography 101. At a minimum, you need additional lighting in that case to light up their face. If you don't you end up with a dark photo that makes it difficult to tell Jim Gantner and Robin Yount apart without a label.

Still, I'm not complaining about these. Like I said, this set is like the anti-Topps -- featuring far more Brewers than it even should. This package helped bring my Yount collection total to 1,052 items, including ninety-seven from 1990 alone.

Many thanks go out to Greg -- he's a great guy, a good follow on Twitter, and he has great movie recommendations too. 

"Daddy, How Big Will I Be When I Grow Up?"

I don't have kids. So, I don't hear the question that is the title of my post. Sometimes I think I'd like to have a child, but then I talk to my friends with teenagers, or tweens, or toddlers, and I am very glad that I don't have kids.

My wife and I have two nieces and two nephews, though. Whenever we see them, they always want to show us how much they've grown up since we last saw them. Sometimes it is obvious, and other times you really have to squint to see even an eighth of an inch of growth.

Back in the 1980s, the Milwaukee Brewers thought of this issue. For at least four years in the mid-to-late 1980s, the team partnered with various sponsors and had "Brewers Growth Chart Day." Kids aged 15 and under would get a rolled up poster as they entered the stadium of one or more of the Brewers with a growth chart in inches on it. 

Here's the catch: these growth charts are life-sized photos of the player shown.

As part of my poster purchase from my new buddy from North Carolina, I picked up four of these gargantuan posters.

Let's start with the man: Robin Yount.

I don't know if you can see it,  but along the right side of the poster is the growth chart -- from 1 inch at the bottom all the way up to 6'3" tall at the top. Humorously, Robin was listed as being only 6' tall exactly, so even he wouldn't measure up to...himself. 

Here's a better look at that:

For what it's worth, this chart has a 1984 copyright date on it.

By the way, Sentry is a still-in-operation grocery store in Wisconsin. WBCS was a country music station which changed call letters to WLZR and became a hard rock station called Lazer 103 in 1987. These days, it's still playing pretty much the same music as it did in the 1980s and calls itself 102.9 FM The Hog.

Not that you care that much about Milwaukee radio history...

The next big man, of course, would be Paul Molitor:

Molitor's growth chart moved up the sponsorship levels to a national brand of Wonder Bread. Paul always did seem so white bread to me as a kid -- before I knew he had a serious cocaine problem in the early 1980s (him and 3/4 of baseball) and before he changed wives as part of a post-playing life change and married a woman named Destini, with whom he had cheated on his wife Linda and had a child. Destini was at least the second woman with whom Molitor had a child outside of his marriage to Linda, as he was also paying child support to a Canadian woman named Joanna Andreou.

I guess Paul could keep using these growth charts for quite a while.

Molitor also is just 6' tall and, as was the case with Yount, he didn't measure up on his own chart either -- even if the good folks with the Brewers and Wonder Bread gave Mollie an extra couple of inches:

Another of the growth charts I got came from one of the years where the giveaway was sponsored by the The Dairy Council of Wisconsin. 

I believe this one would be either from 1988 or 1989, depending on whether the team used a current photo or one from the archives. The H/K Patch on the left sleeve to honor Harvey Kuenn was used during the 1988 season to honor Harvey in the year after he passed away.

A few snide remarks: Baseball Reference's height for Robin Yount at 6' tall either came from 1974 and Robin grew a couple of inches during his career -- which is certainly possible -- or Paul Molitor is more like 5'10" tall than 6' tall. It's pretty obvious that Yount is taller here. Now, that could be because they put two photos together too, but it looks like the shadows are right for them to be in the same room.

Next snide remark: Molitor holding cheese with the cheesy grin is the most appropriately Midwestern photo I've ever seen.

Final snide remark: that little logo for the "square" meal/diet looks like it includes steak, beer, a tomato, and bread. This would be a 100% accurate Wisconsin diet so long as that tomato is the sauce on a Tombstone Pizza.

Okay, last one:

Here's Rob Deer -- a guy legitimately listed at 6'3" tall and who appears to be shortened by this growth chart. Dude was a very large man. Being a late 80s power hitter, it's always open to question whether he was playing with "help". Of course, when you look at his strikeout totals, you know for certain that the only help he really needed was to go to the optometrist to check his eyesight.

So, all four of these growth charts are really cool items. But, you might be able to see my dilemma with these already: am I really going to put a life-sized, full-body photo of three different baseball players up? If so, do you know how much the frames for that will cost?

The real answer is that those questions don't matter. The real answer is, "My wife said absolutely not."

I'm having a difficult time arguing with her on that. The most important point about displaying them is that, well, I don't have the wall space to do so. These things are massive! 

So, I'll keep them in my closet for now, biding my time until a later day when I might have the wall space. 

Or, maybe I'll just put them up on the backsides of the doors that my wife never sees. 

Hiding is always an option.

Red, Red Foley

Can we all agree that this pub where the video is set is the world's worst pub in the history of mankind? It's too full of people, there's a random dude wandering around without a shirt, the bartender is slow because of being on crutches, you'll get your pocket picked, it's totally smoke-filled with everyone smoking like fiends, it's a world fully in black and white, and at the end of the night the only person you end up with is the random dude walking two dachshunds. 

That really doesn't have much to do with this blogpost other than the whole "red" thing. I was doing some searches on eBay recently for things that I've had stuck in my head lately -- in particular, Red Foley stickers. For whatever reason and despite seeing these available for sale from time to time, Red Foley stickers have evaded me. I probably should have bought these with my random Amazon credit instead of those stamps, but I didn't.

Anyway, I found a buy-it-now of a seller on eBay who must have loaded up on a bunch of Red Foley books from 1987, 1988, 1991, 1992, and 1993 because the seller has a ton of "mega lots" of Red Foley Stickers for a total of $8 with shipping. Mega lot? $8? Count me in.

So, what did I get?

Lots of Younts:

And, other than that weird one at the top with the big green circle impinging on the photo of Yount, I've got at least four of each of these. It is interesting to see the two stickers both numbered 103 -- from 1992 and 1993 -- appear to have been photos taken from the same at-bat. 

Another interesting sidelight that I just picked up on is the fact that it appears that Yount must have had a shoe deal with Pony. That's a brand that I had totally forgotten about before seeing these stickers. Also, I don't ever remember seeing this ad for the shoes:

I didn't see Robin in there, though.

The good thing about buying lots like this that I often get multiples of players that I collect as PCs. With my oh-so-strict rules I've created for myself (which I break regularly if I choose), I try to get one card/sticker for my PC and then another for my team collection. As I have gotten into this more, though, I've started establishing more lines -- things like, "for cards serial numbered under 100, I only will list PCs on my want list rather than trying to build team sets for each" and, "I don't care if super old stuff isn't serial numbered...if the oddball is tough to find, having one copy of it is enough."

The downside to this lot buying is getting tons of doubles, of course. Also, for whatever reason, none of the different years contained any Paul Molitor stickers. I'm guessing that the seller parted those out in a separate sale.

Anyway, here are the rest of the 1987s:

Next, 1988, featuring "generic sticker with generic font yelling team name in manner that one need not worry about licensing!":

Here's 1991, even though the Deer Sticker features a photo taken at least a couple of years earlier:

1992's book included Gary Sheffield in his high-top Nike spikes (obligatory E-5 not included):

And, finally, 1993 only had one other than Robin:

Buying lots on eBay can be frustrating at times, in large part because most lots end up comprised of 80 copies of one card followed by just one or two of others that should have been equally available and, then, the lot ends up missing some key cards or players. At the same time, though, when a lot like this comes up -- of something I had exactly zero previously -- I'll take all the extras in order to get a cheap kickstart on completing the team sets and PCs.

And can't we all use a good kickstart on our collections like that?

#SuperTrader Package from Mark Hoyle

Mark Hoyle doesn't blog, but Mark is as legendary as any blogger around for his spreading vintage cards and packages around the blog world. No one was surprised when JBF included Mark in the #SuperTrader group earlier this year.

Mark has become more active lately on Twitter, showing off his various purchases of cards and items of Jimmie Foxx, Ted Williams, and even an old Red Sox scorecard from a game between Bob Feller and Sox hurler Lefty Grove. Seeing items like those make me wish sometimes that the Milwaukee teams that I collect were around before 1953. 

I mean, I suppose I could collect whatever I can find from the 1901 Milwaukee Brewers -- which moved to St. Louis and eventually became the Baltimore Orioles. I doubt there is that much ephemera from that team other than, perhaps, newspaper accounts of their games.

Similarly, I could try to find cards from minor league teams or Negro League teams that were based in Milwaukee -- everyone from the Milwaukee Creams of the Single-A Western League, or the Milwaukee Brewers of the American Association (which followed the American Association from Single-A in 1902 up to Triple-A in 1952) or even the Milwaukee Chicks of the AAGPBL.

It's really a long baseball history, but it is mainly a minor league history before 1953 -- one I don't know much about.

But, as y'all know, I digress.

Mark packaged up some Brewers that I had and a couple that I did not in a recent envelope. Here's a sampling:

A 1990 Panini Sticker of the old MB logo is a great place to start. There is a true groundswell amongst Brewers fans to go back to this logo rather than the Miller-beer-influenced M that the team uses now.

I mean, the current one is not bad, but the other one is more recognizable, more inventive, and just cooler. It's not a total corporate logo, either. You can tell the MB was the result of a fan contest, and the current one was the result of a soulless Madison Avenue bull session.

Because of my love for the "MB" ball-in-glove logo, I'm only going to highlight those cards that have that logo on it that Mark sent. Plus, I rarely talk about junk wax Brewers here because, well, I have most of those cards already.

Rickey Keeton lasted a grand total of 22 games over two seasons with the Brewers -- 1980 and 1981. Keeton's main claim to fame for the 1982 team was that he was not a member of it. In fact, he was traded immediately after the 1981 season to the Houston Astros in exchange for Pete Ladd. Ladd then became the incredibly unlikely closer during September and October for Milwaukee in Rollie Fingers's absence. 

As best I can tell, he went back to Cincinnati (where he grew up). Of course, my information is from a super-dodgy website, so I'm not sure that's true. But it's all I have.

Yes, the first overall pick in the 1985 draft. Sure, he was the ACC Athlete of the Year in 1985 and, no doubt, he was a good player. Why is it, though, that it always seemed like the Brewers never got the best of him? Surhoff played 1102 games in Milwaukee (.274/.323/.380 slash line), then went to Baltimore for a total of 1001 games (.291/.341/.451) and Atlanta for 210 games (.277/.332/.402). 

The 1211 games outside Milwaukee saw him improving as a player into his mid-30s and, at the age of 34, having his best hitting season with 28 HRs, 107 RBIs, and a .308/.347/.492 slash line. I hate to ask the question, but it kind of has to be asked in that context: was it steroids or just improvement, bad pitching, and a better offensive context generally? Tough to say for sure.

Juan Castillo was a scrub. Always was, always will be. He was done in the majors after 3 appearances at the age of 27 in 1989. He played in the Mexican League, though, at least through 1998 and the age of 36.

Amazingly, he played 116 games (372 plate appearances) with a .224/.302/.312 slash line (OPS+ of 62) for a good 1987 Brewers team. Seriously, imagine if this guy hadn't been the second baseman playing the most and, instead, a major league hitter was there instead. 

It probably wouldn't have been enough to make up the 7-game gap between the Brewers and the first-place Tigers, but it would be an interesting simulation to run.

Jaime Navarro left the Brewers coming out of the strike in 1994-1995. He went to the Cubs, where he pitched well, and then to the White Sox, where he did not pitch well. Still, he was probably the Brewers best pitcher for at least parts of the early 1990s.

As an aside, I'm always fascinated by baseball families.  Jaime is a member of one, as his father Julio Navarro was also a pitcher -- with the Angels and Tigers in the 1960s and the Braves in 1970. 

Rob Deer is Joc Pederson's spirit animal. Like Deer, Pederson is one of the three-true-outcomes guys -- either he walks, strikes out, or hits home runs. Like Deer, Pederson will have to learn to make sufficient contact to remain employed as a major leaguer.

Deer loved being a Brewer. He said so himself in an interview 10 years ago, and he loved the fans. Brewers fans will always love Deer for his Easter Sunday home run in 1987 against the Texas Rangers that tied the game 4-4. Dale Sveum then stepped up and won the team its 12th straight game to start the season.

Man, those were some good times. When I see that video, I think not only of that team, but also of my late Uncle Ed. His bald head was reflecting the sunlight along the railing next to the bullpen in right field where Sveum hit that home run.

Finally, let's end with a bit of a whimper. Greg Brock split his career nearly evenly between the Milwaukee Brewers and the Los Angeles Dodgers -- 496 games with LA, 517 with the Brewers. He came to Milwaukee in exchange for pitchers Tim Crews and Tim Leary at the winter meetings in 1986. He was far better with Milwaukee, and 1987 was his best year -- .299/.371/.438. 

Brock's problem in both places was that he was following a team legend. In LA, he could never be Steve Garvey. In Milwaukee, he could never be Cecil Cooper. Everyone tried to wishcast a season like his 1982 season in Albuquerque (44 HR, 138 RBI, 21 2B, 8 3B, 118 R, and .310 AVG in 135 games), failing to realize how altitude and dry air inflates numbers. For that crazy 1982 season, he was inducted into the Albuquerque Baseball Hall of Fame alongside Sid Bream, Kevin Kennedy, and Carlos Salazar in 2012. It appears that he still lives in Loveland, Colorado, on a lake there -- and he even signs some autographs TTM.

Mark -- thank you for the great cards and yet another fun walk down memory lane. When your team is as bad as the Brewers are probably going to be this year, memories are all the sweeter -- and may be all I have!

Cynical Buddha's Alaska: The (Missing) Television Series

Over the past decade, it seems as if there have been more camera crews and production companies in Alaska than there are residents in the state. It seems to have started with "Deadliest Catch" becoming a hugely popular show; we landlubbers in the lower 48 were fascinated to see the crazy conditions on the "Vast Bering Sea" (said in Mike Rowe's deep voice, of course) and to see the stories of the guys who literally risked their lives for a payday and for our crab dinners.

After that show grew exponentially in popularity, the cameras descended. Today, when I used Google to start a search with the words "tv shows about," Alaska is the second response -- after witches and before college, lawyers, and families. And don't get me started about how bad most lawyer shows are in terms of authenticity.  I can only imagine was Alaskans think about all the shows set there. 

Actually, it's not hard to imagine. Alaska has apparently handed out over $40 million in state subsidies for TV and movie shows to shoot in the state, as this LA Times Op-Ed mentions. That article points out the obvious -- reality TV is not very real at all:

Here in Alaska, TV crews have been everywhere the last few years, clutching scripts for "unscripted" shows and handing out confidentiality agreements, asking us to play along.

All of this lead-in is to highlight a massive package of cards that Cynical Buddha -- the proprietor of six different websites (13 Tenets of Cynicalbuddhism, Collector's Crack, Long Way from Lambeau, Miles from Miller, The Robin Yount Collector, and The Rollie Fingers Collector) -- sent my way. I feel like someone at these production companies should have picked up on tracking CB and his blogging long ago...

At any rate, how about a weird theme list of Alaska-based TV shows mixed with Brewers from the Buddha?  After all, as that Op-Ed mentions, 29 "unscripted" programs applied for the film subsidy in 2014, so we have plenty of options to choose from.

1.  The Alaskan Bush People

Reality TV is generally less real than fans of shows would want us to believe. The show "Alaskan Bush People" was or is even less real. This was billed as a show about "a newly discovered family who was born and raised wild . . . [and has] lived this way for decades." In reality, two of the members of the show's cast pleaded guilty on November 19 to filing false claims for funds on their Alaskan Permanent Fund Division applications (the money the state gives to full-time residents for every year they remain in Alaska).

I'm shocked that they are a fraud.  Shocked.

The only card that could go with these fraudsters is this 1982 Donruss Randy Lerch card on which he is inaccurately identified as being a member of the Braves.  While there are a few players who suited up for the Brew Crew that could have been called frauds, this error card is a welcome addition to my collection.

The Alaskan Bush People, though, can stay in their little hovels.

2.  Flying Wild Alaska

From a fraud to one of the more likeable families to appear on television, we have the Tweto family and their airline Era Alaska.  Discovery Channel kept them around for thirty-one episodes, perhaps on the strength of the two attractive-for-Discovery sisters, Ayla and Ariel Tweto.

From unlikely sex symbols to an unlikely fan favorite -- Rob Deer:

Deer was never a star, but he did help fill that power-hitting-and-don't-give-a-damn hole in the outfield left by Gorman Thomas. Milwaukee and Wisconsin loves their blue-collar heroes -- see, e.g., John Kuhn.

It's always good to add an O-Pee-Chee card to my collection. I'd do a Lambeau Leap for that.

3.  Bering Sea Gold, Bering Sea Gold: Under the Ice & Gold Rush

All of these shows air on Discovery, which is just an amazing surprise. Discovery should be renamed the "Swamps and Alaska Channel" (especially with MythBusters winding up). Alaska's gold is more difficult to mine thanks to the local conditions, and this is especially true on the Bering Sea. 

I'm guessing that Thom Beers -- the executive producer for the Bering Sea shows and for Deadliest Catch -- probably got the idea for his two gold shows by sitting in a bar in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, and wondering what other boats were in the docks there other than fishing boats. When he got his answer, he got his new show idea.

Apropos of nothing other than being on the show, here's Eroica captain Emily Riedel on a polar plunge:

Gold? Did someone say gold?

CB sent me several Robin Younts that I needed for my collections -- whether for the team collection or for my Robin Yount collection. That includes the Leaf Black Gold checklist at the top of this almost-pyramid of Yount cards.  The card just below the checklist is from this year's update set as an insert. Otherwise, we have three Upper Deck/SP cards and a Leaf Century card.  I needed all of these other than this bottom card for my Yount collection.

4.  Buying Alaska

This show on Destination America follows a familiar formula for real estate TV shows -- such as House Hunters and House Hunters International on HGTV or Buying Hawaii or Buying the Bayou or Buying the Beach or Property Brothers or...well, you get the picture. The featured buyer always brings a friend or spouse or girlfriend along to help choose which house of three that the buyer should purchase. 

These shows are pretty much entirely fake as well. When my wife and I purchased our house, we used my wife's college roommate as our agent. Jenny is a great agent here in Atlanta, and she and others in her brokerage have been approached in the past to see if they would be willing to have one of their clients as the featured buyer. The setup is this: the buyer already has purchased a home, and the agent "shows" the buyer two other properties that oftentimes are not even for sale. Especially on House Hunters, a tip off was that the one the people had purchased was empty when the buyers looked at it while the others had furniture.  Yup, not "reality."

Here's Jenny now:

Cards to go with this?  Let's go hunting internationally:

These great David Nilsson cards are now ones I do not have to hunt for myself. Unlike those house hunting shows, you won't see me looking for two other versions of each of these cards in the dime boxes either.

Okay...last one:

5.  Alaska: The Last Frontier

This show has been on Discovery for five seasons already. This show follows the Kilcher family's adventures near Homer, Alaska. The Kilchers are related to musician Jewel (whose full name is Jewel Kilcher, as some of you may know). Also, two members of the family have been charged with using a helicopter to hunt black bear in 2014; it is illegal to use a helicopter to hunt in Alaska.

To go with this...here's a scan dump! 

That is a lot of great Brewer goodness there. To be fair, I could have gone on and on -- after all, there are dozens of Alaska reality shows -- but college football has started for the day and my Dawgs are playing already!

My thanks go out to Cynical Buddha for sorting through his duplicates and hooking me up with literally dozens of cards that I needed.