Brewers Autographs: A Follow Up

My post yesterday was okay. Not great in my mind, but okay. What was wrong with it?

A few things. You see, I put together my list looking both at statistics and through going with my gut or my heart. Sometimes, when you do that, it gets disjointed. What I mean is this: the advanced statistics like WAR put the four starters I had (Ted Higuera, Ben Sheets, Yovani Gallardo, and Mike Caldwell) higher than a guy who should have been on this list.

The guy that should have been on the list was Jim Slaton. Slaton is still the team's leader in career wins with 117. He's only one appearance behind Dan Plesac for career pitching appearances with the team. Plesac, though, was a reliever for all but 14 of his career 365 games with the team and only threw 524-1/3 innings. Slaton threw nearly four times as many innings -- 2025-1/3, which is still tops in team history. He is #4 in strikeouts, first in shutouts, and first in batters faced by exactly 2000 over Mike Caldwell.

He's also the only player with whom I have a photo as a kid:

My only defense is the disconnect of thinking of him as a starter, I suppose. From 1971 (as a 21-year-old rookie) through his trade to Detroit after the 1977 season and then his return as a free agent in 1979 and his shoulder injury three starts into the 1980 season, Slaton made 255 appearances as a Brewer. Of these, just 15 were relief appearances. Even in 1981, he made 21 starts in 24 appearances. But in 1982 and 1983 -- the seasons most ingrained in my brain -- Jim started only 7 times and actually had more saves (11) than starts. 

Still, I should have included him somehow -- not only for his place in Brewers history, but also because he was one of the most consistently nice guys and good signers on the team. And, also because he indulged me with an hour of his time in January of 2017 thanks to Ray Peters introducing me through telephone calls and the like to Jim. Slaton returned to Milwaukee after the 1978 season as a free agent because he loved the people and the club and the players on the team, so the least I could do is thank him for all of that.

So, Jim, thank you once again for being one of the good guys -- the patient one with obnoxious Wisconsin kids like me who dressed terribly and were loud and always wanted autographs and, maybe forgot to thank you every time. Thank you.

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The other thing I should have done but didn't was to look outside of my autographed baseball cards for autographs. In looking through old programs and yearbooks, I surprise myself with the number of random autographs I have found. 

I would often find the yearbook reasonably early in the year on the newstand at the local grocery store and talk my mom into springing for the $2.50 to buy the thing. Then, I'd take the yearbook to one game and end up with random autographs in it or on the cover. For example, Ted Simmons was drawn jumping into Rollie Fingers's arms on the cover of the 1982 Brewers Yearbook. 

If you look closely at Simmons's large hindquarters, you might see some handwriting:

Apparently, 10-year-old Tony thought it was a good idea to have Charlie Moore autograph Ted Simmons's drawing.

On the bottom right, you'll see former pitching coach Pat Dobson's autograph. Dobson was a Buffalo guy who played in the majors for the Tigers, Yankees, Padres, Orioles, Braves, and Indians and, most notably, was one of the four members of the 1971 Baltimore starting rotation to win 20 games (Mike Cuellar, Jim Palmer and Dobson all won 20, and Dave McNally won 21) on a team that was put together by then Orioles General Manager Harry Dalton. Dobson passed away in 2006 in San Diego from leukemia one day after being diagnosed with the disease.

Inside the yearbook, there are two player autographs and one broadcaster autograph. It is not a surprise to see that one of the player autographs is that man again:

The other two autographs are from Ned Yost and broadcaster and former first baseman Mike Hegan.

A similar story is told from other yearbooks and programs from that era. 

• My 1983 Official Yearbook is signed by Paul Molitor, Charlie Moore, and Pete Ladd. 

• Two 1982 World Series Programs: one is autographed by Charlie Moore and the other is signed by Paul Molitor, Pete Ladd, and Mark Brouhard.

• My 1982 ALCS program is signed by Pat Dobson, Jerry Augustine, Sal Bando, Tommy John, Mike Hegan, Bowie Kuhn, and Jim Slaton. 

• My 1981 Team Yearbook is signed by Paul Molitor, Jim Gantner, and Jim Slaton.

• Even my 1984 Yearbook is signed by manager Rene Lachemann. 

By 1984, I was focused on getting cards signed, so that ended my chasing with the yearbooks. I wish in many respects that I had focused on filling up the 1982 Yearbook with autographs on every player photo in the book. That would have been a very cool keepsake.

One more item from 1982 saddens me more than anything thanks to the deterioration of its condition. At a signing in 1982, I won a free Brewer-logo baseball. Jim Gantner was the first to sign it. Thereafter, I added tons of autographs to it, including: Ned Yost, Robin Yount, Marshall Edwards, Bud Selig, Buck Rodgers, Paul Molitor, Rollie Fingers, Don Sutton, Mark Brouhard, Bob Uecker, Dwayne Mosley (radio guy), Steve Shannon (TV guy), Mike Hegan, Sal Bando, Pete Ladd, Don Money, Mike Caldwell, Bob McClure, Bob Gibson (the white guy again), Charlie Moore, Roy Howell, and even Ted Simmons:

You can see, though, the problem. The autographs written in blue pen have nearly completely disappeared from the ball's surface. I mean, you have to squint to be able to see Bob Uecker's autograph across that MB logo. I will even admit to trying to trace over some of the autographs in sharpie in a vain attempt to resurrect those autographs. 

It was my pride and joy as a 10-year-old, but 36 years later, it's just something I wish I had done a little differently by using a sharpie with all the autographs. 

As a final postscript, I purchased a program from the 2002 All-Star Game on eBay several years ago because Robin Yount is on the cover. I don't recall seeing any mention of this in the sales description for the program, but inside, there were several autographs:

Thanks to the holograms and other exemplars in my collection, I know that the top autograph is Gorman Thomas. Under that is Dennis Martinez, Don Money, and Sweet Lou Johnson. Martinez was the only one who did not play for a Milwaukee team, as Johnson played in 61 games for the 1962 Milwaukee Braves. 

I then turned the page, and in the middle of an adidas advertisement, there was one more autograph:

Cubs and Rangers great and baseball Hall of Famer Fergie Jenkins!

So, if I go back to my original autograph post, how about giving me a starting rotation of Warren Spahn, Fergie Jenkins, Bert Blyleven, and Don Sutton and maybe Blue Jays great Dave Stieb as my fifth starter? 

I'd take that. 

Thanks for stopping by, and perhaps sometime soon I'll go through some cards that some of my trading friends have been nice enough to send my way.

Back from Nashville with Cards from #SuperTrader JayBarkerFan

Nashville is a city near and dear to my heart. I lived there for four years for college (minus summers, of course). I have said frequently to others that I love the city and, if I didn't live in Atlanta, I would look to live in Nashville.

I don't think that is true any more. 

It's nothing that Nashville "did," really. All cities change and evolve, and Southern cities in particular have experienced rapid growth and change. Atlanta has been experiencing that rapid growth since at least 1980, and Nashville especially started its ascent once the Titans moved in from Houston in the mid-1990s.

There's something else, too: I realized how much of a bubble I lived in while I was a student at Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt is not Nashville. It is in Nashville, but it is its own little world. Even so, even Vanderbilt has changed massively since my time there. The area around campus has been bought up, torn up, and built up again all over -- and it's totally different now. 

Thomas Wolfe's book title was You Can't Go Home Again. Sometimes, "home" is a state of mind, and the realization hits that you can't go back in time to a comfortable place because, often, that place no longer exists either.

I think that desire to go back "home" is something that draws a lot of us back to our baseball card collecting again. Growing up as kids, our cards were a happy place -- our fortress of solitude, our escape from bad stuff around us, our place to daydream and think we too could be big leaguers some day. 

Unlike my trip to Nashville, the good thing about card collecting is that we can all pick up wherever we left off and ignore current cards, if we choose. We can also choose to embrace the changes and dig in to the new fun aspects of collecting while ignoring as best we can those things that we dislike.

In many respects, the package of cards that I received recently from the legend himself, Jaybarkerfan, wraps all of that up in one neat envelope. 

For instance, there were cards that could only come from the 1980s and early 1990s -- home, you might say:



We get Dave Parker in two store-specific sets, Angel Miranda and Joe Kmak from a deck of cards, Ted Simmons from a set fashioned after credit cards, and Teddy Higuera from one of the multitude Fleer Box sets from the mid-to-late 1980s. Oddballs to me are like getting a hug from an old friend -- it's heartfelt, warm, not awkward at all, and it feels welcoming. 

As time passes, different cards take the place of these oddballs. Sometimes, they are oddballs of a different flavor -- such as minor league cards issued by Burger King:



JBF sent me a complete set of the 2001 Huntsville Stars team. For a long time, Huntsville was Milwaukee's Double-A farm team. Last year, after Huntsville refused to be held hostage by the team for a new stadium, the team relocated to Biloxi. It's telling about this team that I chose to highlight Mike Caldwell and Ed Romero -- two members of the 1982 Brewers -- here. The only hitter of note on the team was Bill Hall -- who only got 168 plate appearances. 

Pitching-wise, there wasn't much to look at either. Coppinger was 27 and made his final appearances in the majors later that year. Neugebauer made it to the majors later in 2001 at the age of 21 years old. In typical Brewers fashion for that time period, Neugebauer would suffer a rotator cuff injury in 2002 which led to surgery in February of 2003. The injury could lead to his release in September of 2004 and his retirement.

As a final note, my wife especially liked the list of Burger Kings participating in the promotion, as several of them are owned by the company at which her father is in upper management.

Collecting these days, though, is full of gimmicks. Some gimmicks are still kind of cool -- who doesn't like a certified autograph, after all? 





Patrick Ryan was a 19th round draft pick out of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida. That is an odd place for a pitcher to attend school, I'd say -- it's more known as a place to learn to fly as a college major than anything else.

Okay, back to cards. As I said, autographs are excellent. Cards that are jersey relics or bat relics?

They are okay, I suppose. Granted, getting a Molitor relic is very cool -- especially one with some color to it. 

One of the most common -- and overused -- gimmicks are parallels. Bowman is fairly famous for this, but Topps does it in other sets as well:



JBF opened up his Bowman Chrome prospects and Prince files and pulled out these beauties. As you may have heard, Prince Fielder actually was named after the late musician Prince because his mother was a big fan. 

It's not that I hate parallels for being parallels. I just think there are way too many parallels without any reason. 

Finally, JBF sent me a couple of cards that will always be like home. Going back to 1980s Milwaukee will always be home. That "home" includes the Milwaukee Bucks of the 1980s. Even though they never won a championship, I will always have a soft spot in my heart for Sidney Moncrief, Terry Cummings, Paul Pressey, Dave Cowens, Bob Lanier, and even Alton Lister. Whenever those teams were on TV back then, the man on color commentary was 1971 Bucks member Jon McGlocklin.  

Similarly, Athens, Georgia will always be home. I visit Athens enough -- and it's close enough to Atlanta -- that I am never surprised completely by changes there. And, JBF sent me something unique that I really appreciate:

Malcolm Mitchell was selected by the New England Patriots in the fourth round of the NFL Draft. Malcolm's almost better known for being a fantastic example for all of us generally -- even having written a children's book called The Magician's Hat:




JBF, thank you very much for the great cards and the printing plate from Malcolm Mitchell. All of them -- especially the plate -- are greatly appreciated!

Christmas with Angus

One of the newer bloggers around the blogworld this year is Angus of Dawg Day Cards. He introduced himself to me through commenting here. He then started sending me cards -- here's the first time -- and even aided me in the War with JBF by delivering the final blow which led to peace in our time between Hazel Green and Sandy Springs/Dunwoody.

Around our Thanksgiving Day, Angus started spreading Christmas cheer around by sending out Christmas cards filled with baseball cards. 

From the very beginning of the packages of cards that Angus has sent to me, he's been quick to feed my oddball fixations. The Christmas Present was no different. 

It started a little slowly, though.

I wondered to myself why Angus had sent this card, and then I saw the fine print on the card noting that Parker was listed as "Now With Brewers." I thought then, "wait, I don't recall Topps doing that on Parker's card for 1990."

So, while initially a bit of a question mark, it all became clear once I read the fine print on both sides of the card. You'd think a lawyer would know better than to ignore that small print, but there we are -- a new addition to the O-Pee-Chee collection.

The remainder of my Angus Christmas special were all larger than life Donruss cards:

Donruss Action All-Stars and the Donruss Champions sets are some of my favorite regular-issue oddballs from the 1980s. The postcard size make them perfect for autographs that aren't cramped, and that same size makes it easy to find plastic sheets to store them in.

With such a great package of Brewers greats in large form, it's a perfect time to post my favorite Christmas song again: The Pogues & Kirsty MacColl.

Angus, thanks as always for the great cards. I'll keep an eye out at my local shows for more Cleveland Browns relics and autographs as well. No offense, but the Browns continued failure at being a good NFL team keeps those relics and autographs quite affordable.

I Was An Owl Once

Pretty much everyone in the baseball card blog world knows Night Owl. He's been around a long time -- since 2008, in fact -- and is a prolific poster as well.  It must be all that quiet time he gets being a Night Owl that allows him to be that prolific. 

But it brings me to a confession of sorts: I was an Owl for a long time -- at least 13 years, in fact. My school mascot all the way through elementary, middle, and high school was and still is an Owl. The Slinger Owls.

We've never had anyone remotely famous attend Slinger High School, as far as either I or Wikipedia can tell. I mean, we've had a couple of NCAA Division I athletes, a few college professors here and there, and a few attorneys as well. But, no one truly famous.  

I lettered in high school baseball three years at Slinger, but I wasn't really good enough to do much after high school with it. Perhaps I could have gone to a small NAIA school and tried out, but even then I'm pretty sure that I was not all that good at the sport. I mean, I was good in the "better than people at my school" sense of the word, but not in the "better than other players my age" sense of the word. 

But at least someone now has come up with a great logo and a booster club now for the team:

So, my Owl-history aside, it's time to show off the cards that Night Owl sent my way.

I think that this 1982 Topps Ted Simmons sticker started the festivities off for this envelope coming my way:

While that alone would have been great to add to my collection -- I'm quite deficient in 1980s Topps Stickers because I insisted on putting them into an album all the time -- Night Owl didn't stop there.  

He hit two player collections with some parallel majesty:

The 2012 Gallardo refractor is followed up by a 2015 Stadium Club Gold Parallel of Jonathan Lucroy.  So, now all I need are the base cards for nearly all of the Stadium Club set.  Man, I need to get cracking on that.

Night Owl also sent a great variety of cards from other years that I needed.  First off, he sent me a tough-to-find 1972 high numbered card:

This is Mike Ferraro. I could have sworn that he managed a lot longer than parts of two seasons in the 1980s -- 1983 in Cleveland and 1986 in Kansas City.  He played one season of 124 games in Milwaukee in 1972 (and 5 games in Seattle in 1969) and 33 total games with the Yankees in 1966 and 1968 and was done as a player. He went into minor league management shortly after that, and then worked his way up to being a major league coach. In 1980, he waved Willie Randolph around third to try to score him in Game 2 of the ALCS. Randolph was out, and George Steinbrenner went ape$hit on him.  Steinbrenner cleaned house after the season ended, and manager Dick Howser led Ferraro out the door.  That 1986 season in Kansas City was the year Howser died. Ferraro took over, then was let go at the end of that season.

Night Owl then sent another great early 80s oddball:

The 1983 Fleer Stamp of Pete Vuckovich (I think it's '83, at least).  Fleer stamps were so exotic to me that I don't recall ever seeing them for sale in 1983.  I may have been too busy buying stickers and putting them in albums, though.

Leaping to the 1990s:

The Listach Leaf card from 1993 means that I am a Greg Vaughn away from a complete team set.  Someday soon, I'll have to highlight some complete team sets -- perhaps as a foil to falling back on "Meet the Brewers," though I will have to do one of those soon, I think. The Seitzer card is as 1994 as a card can get. It seriously looks like the Topps card designers borrowed from Pearl Jam's liner notes for Vitalogy...

...which also came out in 1994.

So, let's leave my enjoyed youth behind, as I slowly teeter toward my mid-40s, and go back to the cards again.

Night Owl sent me some great Upper Deck efforts from the Aughties too.  Those top cards -- 2007 Upper Deck Johnny Estrada and the 2008 Baseball Heroes Bill Hill -- are nice.  The Jeff Suppan O-Pee-Chee from 2009 with its black border would be much more beautiful if it weren't Jeff Suppan, of course (I covered my Jeff Suppan dislike here before and won't repeat it).  

But let's talk just for a sec about the 2008 Documentary set. What a great concept done incredibly poorly by Upper Deck. You know the set make up -- it's basically the same photos of the same players done over and over again ad nauseum without any reference as to whether the player on the card had anything to do with the game itself.  

Wouldn't this be a great set to revive today, though, in a limited release style? As in, release a set of 200 to 250 cards, for each major league team, perhaps in box set form or online only, that chronicles each game from the previous season with a player photo tied to the actual game action.  If the team got no-hit in the game, show the player who struck out to end the game, or the starter who didn't get any support.  Then, include photos for each player who made an appearance during the season (or, to simplify matters, the top 25 players) and the manager and coaching staffs.  I'd buy a Brewers set like that.  And who among us team collectors wouldn't buy our team's offering?

But I digress, because Night Owl sent me one final shiny card:

That's a Shaun Marcum refractor from 2012 Topps Chrome with a painted-on Brewers outfit. It reminds me of the paean to the airbrushers of the 1977 Topps set that Night Owl wrote recently.

Finally....

...off Duran Duran's weird "Thank You" album. Thanks, Night Owl, for the great cards and the randomness embodied in this blog post.