I Don't Have the Words

Yesterday was a difficult day in the baseball world for the obvious reasons. Jose Fernandez's untimely death was terrible news to wake up to -- for me and everyone else. Losing someone with that much promise and that much joy at that young age unfair. It's cruel -- cruel to his family and friends, and most importantly, it is cruel to his unborn daughter. 

It is a reminder that we do not live in a just world. 

Thankfully and in a tasteful move, Topps refrained from issuing an "In Memoriam" card as part of its ToppsNow series. If I had to make an educated guess, I can think of a few reasons that they did not:

1.  Without having a cause for the accident, there could be the potential for a later embarrassment if the cause was anything illegal.

2. The concerns many people in the card world on Twitter had over the optics of profiteering off a man's death.

3. Related to number 2, a potential inability to determine what charity or fund any profits should be the beneficiary of any card sales.

4. Potential legal issues over the use of his image since he had passed away and it would be unclear whether the contracts in place would allow use without clearance from his family.

I'm not going to rank order these potential reasons. Not today. My cynicism has some boundaries.

Before I start getting too deep into a religious and philosophical wormhole from which I would never emerge intact, let me move on to something more frivolous: cards I've purchased recently off eBay.

I've severely limited my card buying lately for a number of reasons -- finances, interest in recent issues, and time for collecting, to name three. But, I did make a couple of recent purchases of more recent issues. 

First is this Rollie Fingers "Archives Snapshots" from the "Topps Photograph Vault." This card was one of the "online exclusive" cards issued 12 to a box. Each box comes with a guaranteed autograph and one black & white parallel, and they run $25 a box -- so, a little over $2 a card. 

It's pretty clear when this photo was taken, if you have a memory for pictures. Just take a look at the 1981 Topps Traded set card for Rollie:

With thanks to COMC for the image

Rollie is not quite as jolly on the photo used for the card, but it's quite clearly a photo taken during Rollie's first spring training at Sun City -- the long-since demolished complex where the Brewers held spring training through 1985.

I picked up Rollie's card for just about the price of an average card with shipping thrown in. But, that seller was a good man/woman and added in a bonus card for me:

Yes, I got a bonus card from the Bunt set. This is great for me because it finishes off the need for a Yount card. I still need a couple more from that set...and man, am I behind on getting my player collections updated!

In another purchase, I was looking for a copy of Ryan Braun's National Baseball Card Day card from this year to buy. Everyone was asking $0.99 for a starting price on auctions, and all the buy-it-nows were running at least $4 with shipping.  Then, I saw a sale where I'd get nine of them for a total cost of $4.

I didn't need nine of this card, but I did need two of them and getting 9 ended up far less expensive for me than getting two of them did.

Sometimes, buying in bulk is better.

Thanks for stopping by for this abbreviated version. I'll have an update on Ray Peters coming up this week along with a bit of a surprise out of the blue that came about recently for me.

In honor of Jose Fernandez, here's his at-bat music:

What Did I REALLY Have on My Walls as a Kid?

Earlier this week, I highlighted some posters I bought recently. I also mentioned the almost ridiculously sized "growth charts" that I almost certainly will never measure up to unless I have a sudden growth spurt at the age of 44. 

You might be surprised to learn, though, that I still have some of the posters that festooned my walls as a youth. They are not in the best of shape, unfortunately -- I suppose 30+ years of being folded up, put up and down on the walls, and otherwise moved around will do that to a piece of paper. 

Still, a couple of them are cool so I thought I'd share them.

To put you in the mood, let's go with some good music from the 1980s to add to the ambiance for these posters.

There we go. I started getting into Britpop in the 1980s. Well, musically, I started getting into everything in the 1980s -- heavy metal, Britpop, pop, dance, rap, classical, punk, jazz...literally everything. I had a debate partner who was way ahead of me in terms of being into all kinds of music. I hate to admit this, but I was always envious of how cool he was and how much he really didn't give a shit about what anyone thought about him. On top of everything else, he was very smart and very well-read. 

I found out later that he actually was a bit envious of me as well -- that I had such drive and ambition and focus about everything whereas he was always sort of floating and dabbling in practically everything. Human emotions and envy are strange, especially in our teens, in that we seem to pine for everything we don't have and focus on that instead of being grateful for all the things we do have.

As with many things in life, age and the passage of time have softened that envy. Sure, I can slip into envy when talking about baseball cards and how Topps issues 85 Yankees/Red Sox cards for every 1 Brewer card. It happens.

I don't remember when I got this poster. I think it actually was something that got handed out at an appearance at a Foot Locker or some other shoe store that Robin did. As you can see in this poster, Yount had a sponsorship deal with adidas for a while. It appears that this photo might have been taken during Game 4 of the 1982 World Series since that was a day game.

Game 5 was a day game as well, but it wasn't sunny that day. The lights may have made it appear brighter, but it was not sunny at all. I was there. Here's a video of that whole game. 

I love the intro mentioning the fact that the windchill for the game was 37 degrees. Of course, I don't remember that part at all.

Another band that 1980s Tony listened to a lot was Oingo Boingo. Danny Elfman fronted the band, but he became much more well-known for his writing scores for television and movies such as Chicago, Red Dragon, Good Will Hunting, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Men in Black. Also, he married to Bridget Fonda and his nephew Bodhi's wife Jenna Elfman is pretty well known too.

With hollywood royalty like that, we need baseball royalty. This poster was part of the Brewers-Pepsi Fan Club package in 1986 (I checked the schedule on the poster to make sure of that).

In looking back at that season, I'm actually amazed at how poor the Brewers' attendance was. Opening Day wasn't a sell-out -- about 3,000 short. The next game -- after a Wednesday cancellation -- drew just 5,823 people. Even a Saturday afternoon game on April 19 against the Yankees drew just 13,922. For the season, the team drew just 1,265,041 -- and that was better than both Minnesota and Seattle.

And finally:

I guess I have always appreciated music that was a little different than the usual pop music. Sure, this song hit the top 10 on the US Hot 100, peaking at #9, but it was definitely a weird song to hit the top of the charts. 1983 really was a simpler time in that respect, I suppose.

But if your house were burning, you'd want the firemen to show up, right?

Like the Yount poster sponsored by adidas, this poster of Rollie Fingers and Bruce Sutter was a Nike creation. I found a nice, new, perfect version of this on eBay this morning for the low, low price of just $139.95 and a mini version of it for $40. So, I really do wish I'd taken better care of this one.

This is especially true thanks to the scribble you might see next to Rollie:

Yup, the reason I have this is yet another of those "in-store" appearances at a shoe store by Rollie Fingers. This poster stayed on my wall as a kid for most of the 1980s before getting put away at some point. It stayed in storage, folded rather than rolled, for the better part of 25 years before I got it back when I got all the random stuff I saved as a kid shipped to me by my mom.

I'm thinking of framing this one and putting it back on the wall, but with so many other options, I'm thinking that I'll keep this one rolled up for now.

A Writer's Journey Trade

One of the first blogs I ever read when I was starting in the baseball card blog world was The Writer's Journey. I know a lot of folks in the blog world started by reading and following Night Owl, but for me TWJ was the one that got me thinking about blogging. I started reading even before I got my baseball cards shipped to me from my mom's house. His posts on baseball cards made me want to get back into collecting.

And yet, after reading, I was thoroughly intimidated. He was writing about everything that I wanted to write about -- books, music, baseball cards, and television -- but he was doing much better at writing about all of them than I could dream of doing. And he was covering things like toys and movies and photos in a way that I never would. 

JT is a real writer. I mean, he's actually a published author for a short story he wrote. 

And yet, this post is the first time that I've mentioned him or traded with him at all. It's sort of funny -- intimidation, that is. It can lead us to avoid talking to or corresponding with someone for years because we feel inadequate, or know we'll be inadequate. Then, when we finally talk to that person, we are disarmed by how wonderfully pleasant and friendly they are.

This is a long way to say that JT and I talked back and forth on Twitter a bit, and he agreed to send me some cards. I need to package up my response package yet -- with various things here, it will probably be this weekend -- but it was good to realize that JT is just another good person in the blogosphere.

Since he likes music a lot, I thought I'd post some music that I've heard here live in Atlanta (or even in Athens) in my life in small bars, clubs, lounges, or little theaters to thank him for the cards he sent.

This is Ultrababyfat live from the Star Bar in February 1999. I wish I had seen this show, but I had literally just moved to Atlanta on February 15 of 1999. I caught them at Star Bar about a year later. Star Bar is in the Little Five Points area in Atlanta, and it's a damn cool bar. In 2001, I went to "Bubbapalooza" there -- a three-day rockabilly festival on that little stage (and one outside). It's just an awesome dive bar with a great lineup of bands that may never ever make it anywhere and that's not what drives them. 

Seriously, though, this place is worth a visit if you like music and you make it to Atlanta. Just expect a very diverse crowd.



Eclectic and diverse is a good way to describe the package that JT sent my way. It definitely had focus in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but it also had a bunch of other things thrown in that were full of surprises. 

Not unlike local music, to be fair. You never know what a band is going to be like...like this next band:

The Unsatisfied was another band that a buddy and I saw at Star Bar. Now that I think about it, I think they were one of the bands who opened for Ultrababyfat. The band is from Chattanooga, and I think the lead singer of this band is sort of a cross between Jim Morrison, Steven Tyler, Adam Ant, and Iggy Pop. The guy is strangely magnetic to watch, even if the sound quality here isn't all that great.



Paul Molitor doesn't really have anything to do with any of that, other than the Adam Ant part. Maybe.

This next band, The Stimulants, I think was the first band I saw literally on the same night as Ultrababyfat and the Unsatisfied. Either I was hammered and thought everyone was great, or else that night just left an impression on me. Actually, I'm pretty sure I was at least somewhat drunk because I bought CDs from all three bands. I really liked UBF. The Stimulants were next best to me. The Unsatisfied? Eh...



"Eh" pretty much describes my reaction to the deluge of "Classic" cards that started in 1987 and ended in the early 1990s. I remember the early 1990s very well, and these pastel-ish purple cards stylewise were about 5 years out of date at least at that point. Add in the "91" written in what looks to be a McDonald's font (that red and yellow together screams fast food!), and you have a really ugly baseball card.

Still, the photography is still better than the over-treated Panini stuff that shows up on those Prizm cards.

Royal Fingerbowl was a band that came out of New Orleans in the early 2000s led by the now-legendary Alex McMurray. As a live band, it featured a singer, a stand-up bass, and a sousaphone. Seriously. A couple of us saw Royal Fingerbowl play at a long-gone dive called Echo Lounge in East Atlanta. It was our group of three people joined by approximately 8 to 10 other people. 

I totally had no idea why the crowd was so small after listening to them play. Despite the music being a bit dour at times -- or, as McMurray's bio says, "most of the time" -- it's actually excellent music in my opinion.

Speaking of "a bit dour," Prince Fielder's retirement is still a bit too close in time. The one bright spot here is that the "superstar celebration" actually ended up in my Ryan Braun collection since it already appears in my Fielder collection.

Kevn Kinney is the lead singer of southern rock band Drivin' N Cryin'. I happened across a show earlier this year on PBS where DNC was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame, and it was an incredible show to watch. I've loved Drivin' N Cryin' since my freshman year of college 26 years ago. 

I've seen Kinney play shows by himself in Athens, and I even happened to run into him hanging out in Athens in a nearly empty bar during spring break in 1996. I stayed in town during that break my first year of law school, and I went out for beers with a girl from my class to watch her beloved BU Terriers hockey team on TV. Kinney was just hanging by the door acting like the doorman, but he could hardly see my ID because of poor eyesight. It was funny and sad all at once.

But the guy is a legend.



Two of those guys are legends. Mark Loretta was a good player, and maybe someday Taylor Jungmann will be a Brewer legend. Maybe. 

I do love that Rollie Fingers card, though. It's like Night Owl said yesterday about Archives in that it's kind of cool to see a card with the same design as a year the guy was on the team but with a very different card. It's like a cool variation.

One more song from Kevn Kinney: "Baseball Cards and Bicycles"

JT, thank you very much for the cards and, a couple of years ago, the inspiration to blog.

I Come Here To Praise Dimebox Nick...

Indeed, this post is all about a package I received from Dimebox Nick recently. It's entirely a misappropriation from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar -- from that famous speech that Marc Antony (Act III, Scene II) makes:

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.

I'm short on words this morning, but I'm long on music. You see, everyone who's read Nick's blog (may he get the bug to blog again soon!) knows at least the following three facts about Nick:

1. He's a Cubs fan.

2. He loves digging through dime boxes, nickel boxes, penny boxes, or any other box of cards that provide good value for the amount spent.

3. He loves music -- particularly The Ramones and The Beatles. 

I was fortunate enough to see The Ramones in concert back in 1995 in Milwaukee at a festival on their last tour, and I've also heard Sir Paul McCartney in concert (he did a show at Piedmont Park in Atlanta several years ago, and I lived about three blocks from the stage...so I got the show free, if a bit muffled). 

I consider myself lucky on both counts.

So, to highlight the cards Nick sent my way, let's go to the music of The Ramones and The Beatles.  I won't drone on and on about each player or card, though -- I'll let the music speak (mostly) for itself.

1.  Jeff D'Amico

I can't be the only one who thinks that D'Amico looks entirely like a frat boy who needs a little, er, re-education here, can I?

2.  Matt Stairs

If anyone looks like they should step right out of a baseball card and into a wrestling ring, it's Matt Stairs. Also, I always liked the wrestler known as The Crusher because he was a Milwaukee native.

3.  Russell Branyan

Pretty obvious, don't y'all think?

4. John Jaha

Yeah, it refers to a different kind of baby, but it definitely was what came to mind immediately when I saw this refugee from one of Nick's mini-collections of little kids with dad on the card.

5.  Jonathan Lucroy

It does seem like only a matter of time before Jonathan Lucroy joins the exodus from Milwaukee of every single tradeable asset. Granted, he needs to show he's healthy and that last year's dire performance was a fluke, but it seems quite likely that while he's here today, he'll be gone tomorrow.

Now, switching over from The Ramones to The Beatles.

6.  B.J. Surhoff

Sir Paul in concert in his hometown at Liverpool F.C.'s famous Anfield Stadium. The song is perfect for the throwback jersey to the old-time Brewers. 

Also, for what it's worth, it does not appear that the Beatles had any particular footballing loyalties whatsoever. 

7.  Rollie Fingers

"Help!" seems an appropriate song for one of the first great closers in baseball history after the invention of the save. Lord knows that the 1982 World Series might have turned out differently -- perhaps -- if Rollie were healthy in the late season and available to close, rather than the Brewers having to trot Pete Ladd out there.

8.  Scott Fletcher

This absolutely awesome bootleg video of one of my personal favorite Beatles song -- pretty much because Pearl Jam regularly covers it, to be fair -- goes well with that Scott Fletcher card. It's not that I particularly like Scott Fletcher -- it's that I particularly love Brewers Police cards.

9.  Scooter Gennett

With a name like Scooter and the fact that he's still pretty young, this song seems to fit for Scooter Gennett. To be fair, though, I have no desire to dance with Scooter Gennett.

10.  Jimmy Nelson

As the first line of the song says, "Got a good reason for taking the easy way out." While the Opening Day brand isn't horrible, it just does feel like Topps says to itself, "well, Opening Day is a good reason to take the easy way out and reuse the same card design again."

11.  Warren Spahn

With his reputation of being rubber-armed and pitching very well into his 40s, is there another recent-vintage pitcher who could aptly be matched with being able to pitch 8 Days a Week?  Don't answer that question, because all your answers are wrong. It's only Warren. At least to me.

Nick, thank you so much for the great cards -- and I hope you're okay with me setting these cards to your favorite bands' songs!

And, to send you out, here's a little musical tribute to "Big Nick."

Cogitation and #SuperTrader Bob Walk the Plank

Yesterday, I mentioned that I had a post I was cogitating about prior to posting it. I had to reuse the word "cogitate" several times here because desire to engage in deep thought and reflection regarding the subject at hand caught P-Town Tom's eye as a new word. Ha!

At any rate, I was getting ready to talk about the Newsday article in which Derek Jeter collector and Topps employee/spokesperson Susan Lulgjuraj -- @yanxchick on Twitter -- is quoted noting that Topps tries to make products for everyone. By that, she means that the Opening Day product sells for 99 cents to try to entice kids to collect, and then Topps Dynasty retails at $400 a pack/per card for those people who are looking for lottery tickets and, instead, end up with an autograph/relic of Yasmany Tomas.

That's a real 1/1, and the eBay seller took less than $320 for the card from a $400 pack.

Then, as seems to happen with many things in our hobby, Night Owl said in 140 characters what I would have taken five paragraphs to conclude:

MORE your junk wax isn't worth anything anymore stories?? How bout story on delusional '80s collectors still existing despite these stories.

— NightOwlCards (@nightowlcards) March 5, 2016

So, instead, I'll post a card that came in the mail yesterday instead. I think three-fourths of the known world has received excellent baseball cards from Matt over at Bob Walk the Plank. I wasn't expecting anything from him, so I was surprised when I got an envelope.  It was one card, but it packed a punch.

What was it?

A 2015 Panini Cooperstown autograph of Rollie Fingers! And, indeed, on the back, it says "Milwaukee" above Rollie's name, so this indeed belongs in my collection. 

It goes well with a new page that I started working on yesterday. If you have ever been so bored or suffering from insomnia such that you started looking through my player collections, you may have noticed that for the players from the 1980s, I have a ton of in-person autographs of those players. Knowing that those are not the only autographs I have from that era, I decided to catalog all those in-person autographs. I got through the cards and the photos yesterday with only a few yearbooks and programs to go. That list is located here.

Okay, back to the envelope from yesterday. I feel like a little context helps see what a madman Matt really is:

Apparently, cards like this just appear on Matt's Morgantown desk like dust appears on mine.

Matt, thank you once again for the fantastic generosity!

Walking in Pittsburgh

Matt at Bob Walk the Plank needs little introduction.  Seriously, if you need an introduction to him, click on the link, read his blog, comment on a few posts, and offer to send him Pirates. He'll send you cards for your team collections/player collections happily and without reservation. At least that's been my experience with him.

The real problem with Matt, though, is that he has sent so many cards my way that I'm starting to run out of themes/ideas for posts to feature the cards he send my way. I'm in a loquacious mood today, though, so I came up with one to feature the fantastic five cards that came my way in his great Christmas giving spree.

Card #1: Mark Knudson Leaf 2013 "Memories Buy Back" 1 of 1

I appreciate 1 of 1 cards. I really do. It's just a shame that card companies stoop to manipulation of this type to create false scarcity. 

For what it's worth, I follow Mark Knudson on Twitter. He's a broadcaster with Mile High Sports and writes for AXS.com and, according to his Twitter bio, he "[doesn't] have a humble opinion." I've gotten into some conversations on Twitter with him about college football; he's very much an "East Coast bias" conspiracy theorist. At times, I agree with him, though -- for example, Christian McCaffrey should have been the Heisman Trophy winner this year.  

Anyway, a song to go with this card:

A shameful money grab by Leaf deserves a song called "Walkashame." 

Card #2: Greg Vaughn 2015 Topps Tier One

Matt sent a note with this envelope saying that he thought he had sent me this card already. He was right, but I don't mind.  It's a very nice card of a guy who was a bright light for the Brewers in the post-Yount days in the mid-1990s. 

My favorite memory of Vaughn actually comes from a game in Pittsburgh. I was there for a wedding of a college friend in early August of 1996.  We decided to go to a Pirates v. San Diego Padres game -- I suppose to say that we had been to Three Rivers -- shortly after Vaughn was traded to the Padres. Vaughn slammed a massive home run off Dan Miceli to lead off the fourth inning to help give Fernando Valenzuela the win (and set up Trevor Hoffman for the save).

So, to go with Vaughn and to celebrate that 20-years-ago home run trot:

Considering I only heard of this song thanks to RUN-DMC, that's the version I needed to use.

Card #3: Robin Yount 2008 Upper Deck Sweet Swatch Memorabilia

I love the loose thread in the middle of this swatch of fabric. With the gray color, I'm guessing this is from an away jersey from late in Yount's career...unlike the photo showing him in those wonderful blue away jerseys from the glory days. That uniform is probably my all-time favorite Brewer uniform home or away -- probably because, in the 1980s, we didn't get every game on TV...we only got away games.

This song is a recent favorite of mine; we'll see if it stands the test of time with me.

This song from Passion Pit is pretty catchy, and it always leads me to sing along with it. That's usually a good sign that I'll like the song for a while. On the other hand, I sang along with Billie Jean all the time in 1982...

Card #4: Yovani Gallardo 2008 SP Legendary Cuts Memorable Moments

So, this is the second 1 of 1 card in this envelope from Matt. I like this one more than the Knudson, certainly. It's a great addition to the Gallardo collection, but well...let's be honest. It's a little boring for a 1 of 1. No autograph, no swatch, no patch, no DNA-tested part of that scraggly goatee that Gallardo was sporting this year...just a single sentence about striking out 8 Kansas City Royals on June 24, 2007.

Let's wake up:

Pantera should wake y'all up. Usually, the piercing guitars played super loudly serves to wake me up pretty quickly. Other times, though, the repetitive guitar, bass, and drum lines in 1980s heavy metal -- especially Metallica -- will lull me to sleep. No lie. I've used Metallica's "Master of Puppets" on repeat as my fall-asleep music on overnight flights on at least a couple of occasions in my life already.

Card #5: Rollie Fingers 1999 Fleer/Sports Illustrated Autograph Collection

Rollie is a classic. I see his visage on a card, and it makes me smile. Those early 1980s teams were my "good old days" and always will be, and the trade after the 1980 season to get Fingers was truly a fan's life-changing event for me.  

Another classic?

Young Johnny Cash singing what would become a signature song for him -- so much so that his biopic was named for the song.

Matt, thank you very much for the Walk down memory lane and through these walking songs!