Happy New Year with Shoebox Legends

Over the past year, I've started keeping a new binder. The label on the binder is called "Random Cards I Like," and I started it because I did not have a good place to put cards that weren't Brewers. So, stuff like the Malcolm Mitchell printing plate that Wes/JBF sent me went in there, as did the T206 and the John Norwood Bowman parallel that Kenny/Zippy Zappy sent. 

I was not expecting that I would add tons of cards to this binder, but a recent package that I received has led me to reevaluate that position. Shane from Shoebox Legends sent me a PWE that, at first, looked like any other PWE. It had some protective cards, and behind those were, of course, Brewers.

Let's see those first:



This is already an incredibly fantastic PWE. I have no grievances with a PWE that features a 1994 Pinnacle Museum Collection card -- especially of the late Darryl Hamilton. Being an optimist, I see any PWE with a 1995 Bazooka card of Dave Nilsson as half full. Then, including the 2007 Bowman Heritage Carlos Corporan in that PWE -- sometimes I wonder how much you guys read these wantlists/wishlists on my website, but this card showing up shows me Shane probably did.

But it seems very unlikely that a high-number short-print from Topps Heritage of anyone -- not just Ryan Braun -- would find its way to me. That just makes me smile.

If Shane had stopped to take a breath here, he would have been nearly marked for immortality. 

Can anyone other than Shane figure out where this is going?

You all know I love music. I've probably mentioned once or twice that I have a few real favorites. One of those real favorites is Pearl Jam, who have put out songs called "Grievance," "1/2 Full," "Wishlist," "Smile," "Breath," and "Immortality." Yes, it is a contrived way to write a post, but sometimes you have to go with it because it makes sense.

Eddie Vedder is a big baseball fan -- very much a Cubs fan, of course, with his Chicago upbringing. This past summer, they played two shows at Fenway Park and followed it up two weeks later with two shows at Wrigley Field. In conjunction with these two shows, Pearl Jam put out some baseball cards. Shane apparently got a pack or two and shared these with me:



Hawaiian Boom Gaspar joined Pearl Jam as an unofficial member in 2002. Even though he has played on tour with the band and recorded with the band continually since that time, he still is not listed as an official member for whatever legal reasons that may be involved. Of course, after 15 years, he's "basically" a member. I remember when he really was added -- on Riot Act -- and one of the songs that really features him is "Love Boat Captain," which dealt with the Roskilde tragedy:

This is a song that has really grown on me. When it was new, I wasn't really keen on it. But, the lyrics really make the song. Once I learned the lyrics and heard the message, it really grabbed me. Fifteen years later, it grabs me more.

Matt Cameron has been Pearl Jam's drummer since 1998 after Jack Irons (originally of the Red Hot Chili Peppers) left the band due to what Irons's Wikipedia biography called Irons's dissatisfaction with touring. Cameron had worked with Pearl Jam before in the band Temple of the Dog thanks to his work as Soundgarden's drummer. Every so often, Pearl Jam will play the song -- sometimes joined by Chris Cornell as happened in September of 2011 at Alpine Valley in East Troy, Wisconsin:

Damn Chris Cornell can still wail.

Vedder had to love the opportunity to hit the cages in both Chicago and Boston. If you know the history of Pearl Jam, you probably know that Vedder was living in San Diego working part-time at a gas station when he got a demo tape from his basketball buddy Jack Irons -- there's Jack again. Vedder laid down the vocal tracks to what has been called in the PJ lore as the Momma-Son trilogy: "Alive," "Once," and "Footsteps."

Both "Alive" and "Once" made PJ's debut album, Ten. "Footsteps," however, ended up as a B-side and eventually made its way onto the Lost Dogs album.

A far more detailed story on this whole backstory is available at Two Feet Thick, a Pearl Jam fansite. Pearl Jam has some of the most loyal fans around -- people who buy everything in site and go to all the shows. The band rewards its fan club members in the Ten Club with preferred seating in the front rows of each venue along with Christmas bonus vinyl and early availability of bootlegs from the soundboard recordings. That website is quite the deep dive, but it is not uncommon in the Pearl Jam world.

 

Mike McCready helped Pearl Jam to form thanks to his friendship with Stone Gossard. McCready was in a Seattle band called Shadow which broke up in 1988. He got disenchanted with being in a band and went to community college for a while before seeing a Stevie Ray Vaughan concert and getting back into playing guitar.

The story behind "Reach Down" is that it was written as part of the Temple of the Dog sessions that McCready, Gossard, and Ament (and later Vedder) took part in with Chris Cornell and Matt Cameron. McCready was playing a solo for this song in the studio -- and it was epic. Over four minutes long, and McCready lost his headphone monitor midway through the solo...so he had no idea what the backing track sounded like while playing. 



Without Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament, there would be no Pearl Jam, of course. And if Andrew Wood, the lead singer of Gossard's and Ament's previous band Mother Love Bone, had not overdosed on heroin, there would also be no Pearl Jam.

The song that Pearl Jam plays to serve tribute to Andrew Wood and Mother Love Bone is Chloe Dancers/Crown of Thorns. I got to see the band play this song with their regular producer, Brendan O'Brien, at a show here in Atlanta at Lakewood Amphitheater in 2003. O'Brien lives here in Atlanta, and as a result (and as Eddie Vedder noted in the 2001 show here at Philips Arena), the band is very familiar with my town. 

These cards are just awesome. The huge smile on my face as I opened this envelope was evident to my wife -- she actually asked what it was that I was looking at that put such a big smile on my face. After trying to convince her that it was because she was in my office -- it was a valiant effort -- I showed her these cards. She knows I'm a huge Pearl Jam fanboy, or at least used to be. 

I've thought about trying to collect the full sets of these cards. It looks like it may be a bit expensive, though doable. There are full sets available from one seller for both Chicago and Boston on eBay -- the cost to get both would be about $350 though. I think I'll stick with just the great cards that Shane sent.

Happy New Year to y'all, and here's to a better year than 2016 for everyone -- even if 2016 was your best year ever.

A PWE from the Shoebox Legend

The Brewers finished their work on the pre-waiver deadline by sending Gerardo Parra to the Orioles for pitcher Zach Davies, a guy who was drafted out of high school by the Orioles in 2011 and suddenly developed into a real prospect.  He's slight of build -- 6' tall but just 160 pounds -- but he's a 22-year-old who has had good success in Triple-A already this year as a starter.  In their other trade of the day, the team sent Jonathan Broxton to the Cardinals -- meaning that he'll probably turn into the reincarnation of Bruce Sutter thanks to the power of the dark side of the Force -- in exchange for Malik Collymore, a raw athlete built like a linebacker who is still in Rookie ball.

After all that trading, it feels almost cathartic as a Brewers fan to get back to card collecting and hoping that next year will be a little bit better.  A great pick-me-up can in the mail this week from Shane of Shoebox Legends.  He and I have sent cards back and forth several times now, and I was really happy to see a PWE from him in my mailbox this week.

What did Shane send my way? 8 great cards.  Let's count them down:

#8: 2009 Upper Deck Todd Coffey

Coffee spent parts of three seasons in Milwaukee. His BB/K ratio always seemed to indicate that he should have better results than he did, but he was plagued by giving up too many home runs. He's still at it, though -- pitching in relief for Los Diablos Rojos del Mexico (a/k/a the Mexico City Red Devils).

#7: 2014 Panini Prizm Jimmy Nelson

Maybe this card should be #8, since everyone knows my aversion to the no-logo cards and because Nelson looks like he's a member of the airbrushed away Yankees with that gray and blue-turned-to-black that Panini went with here.  He pitched well two nights ago only to watch the bullpen blow the game. I hope Jimmy gets used to being on a bad team for a couple of years.

#6: 2004 Fleer Platinum Name Plates Richie Sexson

It's tough to rate a 4-color patch piece serial numbered to 420 this low. But this card is a mess. A piece of a uniform of a guy traded after the 2003 season, shown with the Brewers in a really unattractive photo but listed on the Diamondbacks thanks to the trade. Why is this a mess? The photo is cropped poorly. The D-backs name looks like no font that should ever show its face outside of a disco album from 1978.  And, well, if it's a Brewers uniform that's cut up, then just don't worry about the trade and just list him as a Brewer.  Ugh.

#5: 1986 Sportflics Teddy Higuera

It's not that there's anything wrong with this card. It's just not as nice as the other cards Shane sent.

#4: 2015 Bowman (Chrome) Prospect Parallel Tyler Wagner

Please pardon the cat hair that makes its debut on Tyler Wagner's first Bowman card. After all the trades that the Brewers made, I fully expect Bowman Chrome or Bowman Draft Picks and Prospects will have about 8 or 10 Brewers farmhands in it.

Ha. Who am I kidding? We'll see the Yankees' 50th best prospect in those two sets before we'll see 10 Brewers.

#3: 2011 Topps Lineage Mini Relic Yovani Gallardo

I'm torn on ranking this card as highly as I have in large part because I already have it in my Gallardo player collection and, then, partly because it's just a piece of white fabric that causes this to be a relic.

#2: 2015 Stadium Club Wily Peralta Gold Foil Parallel

So, this is the first 2015 Stadium Club card I have in my collection, and it's a gold parallel. If Peralta were a player collection for me, it might have ranked #1 overall. It's a good photo, cropped well. My only complaint is not having a background behind Peralta to look at. But that's a minor problem.

I'm hoping that when I go to my local card show tomorrow, I'll be able to pick up the Series 2 Brewers, the Stadium Club Brewers, and whatever other recent releases there have been. With all the turbulence in my work life this year, it's been tough to keep up.

#1: 2015 Stadium Club Contact Sheet Insert Carlos Gomez

A Carlos Gomez Stadium Club insert seems an appropriate way to bring this post to a close. It's a new addition to my Gomez player collection, which is greatly appreciated, just as Gomez's joy in playing the game of baseball was greatly appreciated over his 5-1/2 years in Milwaukee.

Shane, thank you very much for the great cards and the midweek lift that your PWE brought me!

Legends of the Shoebox

One of the best card-collector blogs around is Shoebox Legends. I can say that is true factually, as he finished second to Night Owl in the "best blog" voting last year. I can also say that is true for me as well, because Shane does a great job (far better than I do) of sending out PWEs to his fellow bloggers.

I was a recent recipient of one of these PWEs, and I'd like to share the cards that Shane sent my way. I will in a minute, but a word of explanation and information first.

You guys who read my blog know that many times I'll turn to arcane Google searches to provide me with themes in my (often forced) attempts to make Milwaukee Brewers cards interesting to someone other than Thorzul, the Cynical Buddha, and me. For whatever reason, when I think of Shane's blog, my brain converts his blog's name into "Shoebox Heroes" thanks to some misfiring synapses making me think of the old Foreigner song "Jukebox Hero." 

Thus, in my effort to come up with a theme, I searched for "Shoebox Heroes" today. What I found were not random links to strange things that would be fodder for a blog post. Well, not everything, at least.

Instead, the first website that popped up was Operation Shoebox: Reaching Out to Our Heroes at Home and Worldwide. Operation Shoebox is an organization founded by the mother of five soldiers (and two sons-in-law who also were soldiers) in 2003 in Florida to provide care packages to troops around the world. Reading some of the testimonials from the soldiers who received packages is incredibly powerful. With Independence Day over the weekend, it just struck me how little many of us -- okay, how little I -- think about the troops overseas on holidays that celebrate our freedoms. Feel free to check out that charity, and if you feel moved to do so, think about a donation.

Thanks for indulging me there for a moment.

Shane sent me some great cards jammed into that PWE; here are a few of them.

First, a couple of puzzlers.  Trivia cards, in fact.

Yellow and Blue...yellow and blue make green, said Ziploc.  And they were right:

Coming along with the green-toxic-emerald parallel was a Gypsy Queen Segura as well:

When I first encountered Gypsy Queen, I wasn't a huge fan. It's all brown and muted and drab looking.  But, it's started to grow on me some.  On the other hand, I am agnostic with regard to Topps Heritage. Frankly, that depends on the old set design being used.  The recent years have been sort of, "eh, whatever."  

That said, I really just don't get what is so New Age about putting guys on an undefined new design each year, jamming it into Heritage, and calling them "New Age Performers."

There are days when I am sorting cards out when I wonder aloud to myself why card companies ever thought putting two "full-size" photos on the same side of a card ever made sense.  I mean, does this Flair card really look all that good?

To me, it looks like a bad Saturday Night Live skit of some sort with Jack Handey giving deep thoughts in the background.

At least it's not just a different-colored parallel....right Scooter?

That photo is almost like Scooter saw the future and saw he'd stink up the field to high heaven at the plate in April and May, thereby necessitating a visit to the Candyland that is Colorado Springs to get his bat back together.

Finally, topping out this envelope from Shane were two Bowman cards. When Bowman returned in 1989 in that weird too-tall design -- much to the chagrin of people with nine-pocket plastic sheets everywhere -- I really didn't like it. As the set has developed over time into a prospect-heavy set and as I have started accumulating past efforts, I am starting to side with Zippy Zappy when he says that Topps should stop putting major leaguers in any Bowman products and just go all out with prospects.

Why? 

Well, without it, the world would never have met First Round Bust Chad Green from the University of Kentucky.

Green was the Brewers 1st round pick -- 8th overall -- in 1996 out of Kentucky.  They picked Green, then the Marlins picked Mark Kotsay and the Athletics picked Eric Chavez with the next two picks. Later selections in that round? R.A. Dickey, Jason Marquis, and Jake Westbrook went later in round one, Jimmy Rollins was selected in round 2, Brad Penny was selected in Round 5 and Casey Blake went in round 7.  Yeah, we're not talking about sure-fire Hall of Famers here, but at least all of those guys made it to the Major leagues.  Not Green though.

But, hopefully, this next guy will not be a flame out.

Orlando Arcia was named the 31st best prospect in baseball by Baseball Prospectus yesterday, and hopefully he will stay in Double-A for the rest of this year for developmental purposes.  He is the guy who might allow the Brewers to deal Jean Segura or Scooter Gennett (probably Segura...no one will make a trade for a guy named Scooter, will they?)...if Orlando can keep developing.  He's just 20, he's at Double-A, and without any significant hiccups, he'll make his debut as the starting shortstop next year some time or perhaps in 2017.

Shane, thanks for the great cards!

Couldn't leave without that!

He's a Shoebox Legend

About a month ago, I was spending time reading some of the blogs in my blogroll. As an aside, I tend to read most of the blog posts I see posted. Sometimes I miss a few from being wrapped up in whatever I'm doing one night, but I try to read them all. But I don't always comment. I should, but I don't. 

That day about a month ago, though, I saw a post on Shoebox Legends about how Shane almost had his 1982 Topps set complete but for a couple of cards. I told Shane that I probably could help him.

I will, too. I'm way behind on packages getting sent out, but I will.

Shane was kind enough to send me a ton of Brewers in a padded envelope long before I could get him anything. 

At first, though, I was confused because the buffer cards Shane sent to me were Stadium Club Hockey cards. I even recognized one of the players' names -- Mike Modano, the Dallas Stars great. Having received the package on a Saturday meant that I had been in full tailgate mode for the Georgia football game, so I fired off an e-mail to Shane to make sure that he had sent me the correct package.

That was before I had gotten past the hockey players.  

Now, Shane sent me a bunch of cards. Many of them are duplicates of cards I have, which is not a bad thing to me since I'm always looking for condition upgrades.  I'm not going to post everything, but safe to say that there were at least 40 Brewers in the package.  But, here are the highlights of what was lying beneath the hockey sticks.

 There were several Ryan Braun cards in the package. I am guessing that Upper Deck made that card before Braun changed his position from 3B to LF, because otherwise that card doesn't make all that much sense.

Not that cards always have to make sense.

It's Rickie Weeks appreciation week here at Off Hiatus. Unless he re-signs with the Brewers, in which case we'll do it all over again next year.  

This was one of four of those Target parallels from 2013 that Shane included:

That Aoki card always makes me smile. He is so happy to be scoring that run and being shown homeplate. I hope that the Royals go a long way in the playoffs, though it will be tough to overcome both the Angels and Ned Yost.

A lot of the cards that Shane sent to me were condition upgrades. But there were also a few other surprises:

That Carlos Villanueva -- whose facial hair at times has channeled Rollie Fingers -- is a card I needed, as is that Narveson parallel and the Richie Sexson card in the lower left hand corner.  I probably need the Sheffield too, though I'd never admit it. 

Kinkade never played for the Brewers. He was traded to the New York Mets in 1998 for Bill Pulsipher. Kinkade was the proverbial journeyman -- going from the Mets to the Orioles (with Melvin Mora and Leslie Brea for Mike Bordick), to the Dodgers to the Hanshin Tigers in Japan to the Indians to the Marlins to the Cubs to the Yankees to the Mariners before he retired from Triple-A Tacoma at the age of 35 in 2008.   

Shane also threw in some unopened packs for me to rip into.  

I wasn't expecting O-Pee-Chee hockey minis. Opening a pack and seeing these guys brought back some great memories of Sega Hockey in college. I liked playing as the Sabres because Alexander Mogilny was ridiculously fast, and Pat Lafontaine never had a concussion. Christian Ruuttu was one of the backup centers on that team. 

Of course, with Hall of Famers Mark Messier, Mario Lemieux, Mark Howe, Paul Coffey and Doug Gilmour all in these two little packs of 5 cards, those were two great packs.

Apropos of the Hockey Hall of Fame, here's a photo I took when I was in Toronto in 2008:

In honor of his announcing that he is "99.9% sure" that he is retiring, it's former Brewer and then Blue Jay Lyle Oooooooooverbay at the plate. I went to Toronto for our Memorial Day weekend, which there is called "the weekend after the 3-day weekend for Victoria Day".  I stayed at the hotel at Rogers Centre, and I watched the Blue Jays and Royals square off. On Friday night, I watched from the hotel bar. On Saturday, it was from the seat from which I took this picture and after, in the morning, I visited the Hockey Hall of Fame.  On Sunday, I watched from the Hard Rock Cafe there. All in all, it was a good weekend.

Okay, back to the cards.

The final fun part of the package from the Shoebox Legend was an unopened pack of 1993 Pinnacle!

It came with 27 cards in it, but I scanned only 18 of them, including one Brewer, Jim Gantner:

I like Pinnacle's attempt at predicting the future with the "Team 2001" insert of Chuck Knoblauch. Also, that Larkin Legends card is pretty interesting -- it says Gary Sheffield idolized Barry Larkin.  I guess that was before Sheffield started idolizing himself.

Shane, I thank you greatly for the memories of college and of my trip to Toronto, the Pinnacle pack, and all the great Brewers!