Music from the Trading Spot

One of the trading world's really underrated guys is John from Johnny's Trading Spot. I say he's underrated because the guy literally drops fantastic packages on every one of his trading partners whenever he sends something. Johnny has sent me boxes of bobbleheads, massive and jammed Priority Mailers, and tons of awesome parallels that I have distinct difficulty finding in the wild at card shows or online.

John is right up there with Wes/JBF in my book -- both of them are incredibly generous fellow SEC fans who go above and beyond and seemingly ask for very little in return generally. John recently (within the past two months) sent me yet another excellent package. To thank John, I did a little research and found some of his favorite bands from his past. That means I read his blog, by the way.

Anyway, let's get to the music and the cards!

One of the first things I found on John's blog was a post where he showed off a TON of cards from a set all about Kiss from the late 1970s. I think it's a Donruss set based off a search on Trading Card Database. Every time I see a set like that, I think, "Man, I need to look more at non-sports cards and collect some." 

Then that feeling passes as I look at my mounting want lists for the Brewers. I have chipped away at those in terms of organization, though -- I'm all the way up to 2014 in terms of getting all the Topps parallels, inserts, and autographs into binders!

Speaking of parallels and inserts...here are four parallels that I needed. It's always interesting to get a Yuniesky Betancourt card. How he started in 152 games at shortstop for a 2011 team that won 96 games and won the NL Central is one of sabermetrics biggest questions. Betancourt "hit" for an OPS of .652 and tallied -0.5 WAR. And the Brewers paid him $4.3 million for that "production." Wow.

For whatever reason, it makes me chuckle to look at that team page on Baseball Reference and see the photos of the top 12 players from that team -- nearly everyone is shown on a team other than Milwaukee! The list goes Ryan Braun (MIL), Prince Fielder (TEX), Shaun Marcum (CLE), Corey Hart (PIT), Nyjer Morgan (CLE), Yovani Gallardo (SEA), Rickie Weeks Jr. (TAM), Randy Wolf (DET), John Axford (OAK) Carlos Gomez (TEX), Zack Greinke (ARI), and Jerry Hairston Jr. (BAL).

By the way, that Surhoff #1 pick is one of my favorite cards. I loved that subset in the 1985 Topps, and I was disappointed that it came out too early in 1985 for B.J. to be included. 

Now, when I saw John was a CDB fan, I knew damn well that he is a true Southerner despite his questionable choice of being a Florida Gator. Charlie Daniels comes from that late 1970s pop-country music time when country was really still country, but, as always, certain pop sensibilities had invaded. You have your Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelsons, of course, but folks like Eddie Rabbitt and Ronnie Milsap and Barbara Mandrell were their generation's versions of Luke Bryan, Tim McGraw, and Miranda Lambert. 

By the way, be sure to watch this video at least from the 3:30 mark on to see what happens when someone learns a new special kaleidoscope camera effect.

Let's get on the Upper Deck here. Two Prince Fielder inserts to go with a card from Carlos Lee to commemorate his short-lived Milwaukee stay and a Mat Gamel "Signature Star." Man, if Mat Gamel could have stayed healthy. All I got here, though, is that he went to the same Jacksonville High School as the daughter of two good friends of mine in Jacksonville (she's there as a senior now), and that his brother Ben is off to a pretty good start in Seattle this year.

I'm just not a huge fan of the song "Freebird," but I've listened to "Sweet Home Alabama" literally hundreds or thousands of times. I do hope that Neil Young will remember that a southern man don't need him around anyhow.

Of course, this is a big song for the University of Alabama, as you might expect. 

Man, I miss college football about this time of year.

Anyway...baseball cards....

Bowman seems to go well with the collegiate feel here for me. The whole "Bowman is about prospects" thing works in this regard. 

So, who is Cody Scarpetta and how did he end up on a Bowman Platinum card? Scarpetta was an 11th round draft pick in 2007 out of high school in Rockford, Illinois. His dad Dan was a third-round pick of the Brewers in 1982 who made it all the way to Triple-A before crashing out at the age of 25. Cody worked his way up the system all the way to Double-A Huntsville (Sweet Home Alabama) in 2011 and, in addition, made five appearances in the Arizona Fall League that year at the age of 22. He got shelled, and it was an indication that something was wrong -- as in, yup, Tommy John surgery. That really killed his career, though he continued to pitch in independent league baseball last year.

There are literally dozens of better songs from Steve Miller Band that I could have posted. But, I'm a child of the 1980s, and this song from 1982 is the one I most remember personally. Yes, "The Joker" is a thousand times better in my opinion, even if Billboard put this song at #70 on its list of Greatest Songs of all time. 

I bet my list would vary greatly from theirs.

Here's "the rest". Seth Lintz in the 2010 Pro Debut set as a blue parallel got into that set because he was a second round draft pick in 2008 out of high school. He barely made it to the Midwest League with the Brewers -- total of 14 appearances as a reliever in 2011 and 2012 with Wisconsin -- before he was cut loose. He made the independent league rounds some as well for a while, but it doesn't look like he has pitched since 2015.

Jed Bradley -- from Huntsville -- recently retired from baseball. He made it to the major leagues briefly last September with the Braves and appeared in 6 games in the same city where he went to college (he's a Tech kid). His card mate, Taylor Jungmann, was sent down to Double-A Biloxi earlier this year to be stretched out as a starter. Jungman and Bradley were both first round picks in 2011, but neither has really panned out. Jungmann's been passed not only Josh Hader, but also by Luis Ortiz and Brandon Woodruff and maybe even journeyman Paolo Espino.

My thanks go out to John as always for a great package of baseball cards. I would have played Molly Hatchet, but there's no damn way I'm putting any song called "Gator Country" on this blog!

Out of the Blue

Sometimes, some of the best packages of cards come from a completely unexpected -- or nearly unknown -- source.  Recently, I received an e-mail from Shane at Shoebox Legends. It was unexpected because Shane was forwarding an e-mail from a friend of his named Marc. Marc asked Shane to ask for my contact information because Marc wanted to send me cards as part of his own cleanup and organization process.  

Well, of course I won't say no to that.  Marc sent me a great bunch of cards, and it drove me further into an organizational process that started with the Great War with JBF and has culminated in me finally having my Topps Want Lists for base sets finally completed in a way that makes sense to me and will be easier to use at card shows for me as well.  I've split Topps into six total want lists -- Base cards from 1971-1993, 1994-2005, and 2006-2015 (and yes, I'll start a new list next year and, no, I don't have 2015 up yet) and then Topps parallels, inserts, and oddballs from each of the same time periods (1971-1993, 1994-2005, and 2006-2015).  I'm nowhere near done with the parallels pages, and those are my lowest priority at this point -- getting all the base card lists populated for each card issuer on my want list page is a much higher priority.

/end shameless plug for want list organization

As I said, though, Marc sent me some great cards.  Since I'm feeling in a "theme post mood" this morning, let's go musical again.  You might have guessed it from this post's title -- I'm going with songs/albums with "out of the blue" in them.

Let's start this off with something of a 1980s feel:

The The, "Out of the Blue (Into the Fire)"

I had some strange tastes in music as a high schooler. I spent a fair amount of time alone working on improving my debate files, looking for research in books, magazines, and newspapers -- the paper kind, in fact...back when we had to use those green books to find magazine articles by date and page and then go to the magazine archive and hope like hell that the library still had the magazine -- so, wait, where was I?  Oh yeah, weird music.  

To go along with the 80s feel, Marc finished off some holes in my 1980s card collections caused by player collections, autographs, and not buying the 1983 Topps Traded set:

So many mustaches.  So many wistful looks into the distance. And, more importantly, two completed team sets -- including a card of the man who remains the Brewers' All-Time leader in pitching victories, Jim Slaton.

Debbie Gibson, "Out of the Blue"

No, I never listened to Debbie Gibson. My wife tells me the story of how Debbie Gibson was her first concert, and I cringe. When this bubblegum song came out in 1987, I was listening to, well, The The, U2, The Smiths, and Oingo Boingo. But hey, Debbie -- later Deborah -- Gibson was pretty cute back then and still isn't bad looking now either, in a "I've had plenty of work done on my face" sort of way.

But, I needed this poppy song to go with a card that just feels, well, syrupy sweet and a bit overdone:

There's nothing inherently wrong with the Opening Day set. It's harmless enough. No one has super-strong feelings about it -- though there are some people who complain about everything who find fault with about everything in life.  I used to be like that too, but now I just figure that people should enjoy what they want and I can ignore it.  

Does that make sense? I hope so.

Julian Casablancas, "Out of the Blue"

Julian Casablancas is the lead singer of The Strokes, whose buzz in the hipster world 15 years ago was deafening. Casablancas's late father John started the world-famous Elite Model Management, whose clients have included or currently include such notables as Gisele Bundchen, Adriana Lima, Nina Agdal, Eva Herzigova, and Carol Alt.  If you want photos of these beautiful women, you'll just have to click the links.

What cards go with this link to beauty? Upper Deck, I think.

Simplicity is often the best way to succeed in life and in design in particular. When you have good photography -- or a beautiful subject, you don't need a bunch of gimmicks.  Okay, well, maybe a body-painting gimmick isn't a bad thing -- right, Ms. Agdal?

Neil Young & Crazy Horse: "My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)"

You can't go wrong with a classic. Neil Young's music influenced the grunge scene in Seattle in the early 1990s, and the guy is just a great songwriter -- one of the best.  I mean, you're talking about a guy who is a two-time inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame -- as a soloist and as a member of Buffalo Springfield.  Throw in his collaboration with Crosby, Stills & Nash, his work with Crazy Horse, and his 1995 album "Mirror Ball" -- where Pearl Jam served as his backup band -- and you have a true rock legend.  The song above was often quoted by Kurt Cobain as well -- "It's better to burn out than fade away" showed up in Cobain's suicide note.  And, Pearl Jam often covers "Rockin' in the Free World" (as in, they've played it 276 times in concert as far back as 1992 and as recently as last year).

So, from one legend to another:

I am not a big fan of the Baseball Heroes sets, whether in their original incarnation back in 1991 or the parallel-crazed 2008 reboot. It's a partial ripoff of the 1959 Topps set, but this ripoff leaves all the simplicity and good looks of that set behind for having far too much text on the front of the card and far too much dead space.

Buzzcocks: "Out of the Blue"

You have to scroll to about the 15:00 mark to hear the song. It's not exactly one of their hits, but I like the Buzzcocks so I included this song. This is another band that influenced the grunge scene a great deal -- and they are another band that Pearl Jam covers (they've played "Why Can't I Touch It?" five times live as a full song, but it often gets mixed into their medleys when they are soloing on "Wishlist" or "Daughter").

Now, talk about not exactly being "hits" but still pretty cool?

Fleer's offerings in the 2000s varied from the sublime (the retro-Ultra full-bleed photos) to the ridiculous (the other three cards pretty much qualify). 

Prides: "Out of the Blue"

This is a very Scottish band with rock and electronics mixed in. With this being the first time I've heard the song, it sounds like someone mixed The Proclaimers with Midnight Oil and a side of any one of a number of earnest sounding 1980s bands.  Weird.

Like this:

Razor (huh?) made signed letters with unlicensed super-small photos. Or, as sportscardradio.com put it, "They are just like the letters that would come off a jersey purchased at Foot Locker. Razor bought a bunch of letter patches and got them autographed by MLB prospects."

Lintz was a second round pick out of Marshall County High School in Lewisburg, Tennessee in 2008. As a pitcher selected out of high school, all the warnings applied about TINSTAAPP.  Lintz proved them true. He never pitched well anywhere in the Brewers system except in a 10-2/3 inning stint in the Midwest League in 2011 (2.53 ERA, 12 Ks vs. 5 BB).  By 2013, he was out of the Brewers organization and pitched badly in three different independent league stops (54-1/3 innings, 87 hits, 60 runs [49 earned] 28 BB, 45 Ks, 10 HBP and a 8.12 ERA).  He tried again last year over three teams in two leagues and got a little better -- just a 6.67 ERA in 27 innings (28 BBs, 21Ks).  Hopefully, Lintz is in college now working on a degree.

Marc, thank you for the e-mail out of the blue and for the great cards!