Correcting the Record with an Old Photo

I'm very embarrassed to say that my post yesterday regarding Glenn Braggs contained an inaccuracy. I linked to the Glenn Braggs swing-and-a-miss on which he broke his bat over his own shoulder and said, incorrectly, that he struck out on the at bat. I didn't check myself against the Baseball Reference play-by-play, and there was the mistake. 

I still hadn't realized I'd made a mistake, though, until today. Late yesterday afternoon, I tweeted out the link to the post again, but this time including Glenn Braggs's Twitter handle in the Tweet. Imagine my surprise today when none other than Mr. Glenn Braggs himself corrected my mistake:

@OffHiatusBBC @pksteinberg Thanks for mention btw it was a fly out not a k! These things matter to hitters! Lol

— Glenn Braggs (@Gbraggs) May 9, 2016

Thankfully, as you can see, he was a good sport about it. Trust me when I say that I would not want to be on his wrong side.

Braggs actually holds another distinction: he was the first player to attend the University of Hawaii to make it to the major leagues. He actually had some pretty stiff competition for that distinction, as the second Rainbow Warrior to make it to the major leagues was one of Braggs's collegiate teammates. He's also one of my player collections: Chuck Crim. Perhaps surprisingly, the Brewers had four of the first eight Hawaii alumni to make the major leagues -- the other two being Joey Meyer and Scott Karl.

Apropos of thanking him, here's another Glenn Braggs item. This one is about 28 or 29 years old. When I was in high school, my mom had a job in a photo finishing factory -- one of those "overnight" photo developers. That meant, of course, that the second and third shifts were the busy time of the day for the place, and my mom worked third shift. 

Every once in awhile, she would come home with photos of baseball players. The place where she worked sponsored the Brewers "Photo Night" at the stadium, so that was often the time I'd most likely get some extra copies of photos. 

After the 1987 version of Photo Night, I got a bunch of 5x7s of various Brewers players. One of them was of Glenn Braggs, and I was lucky enough to get him to sign it:

I also got an unsigned 8x10 of him:

I worry about unleashing that photo on the Internet, though, because that look on his face could turn into a meme pretty easily...but if it does, I think someone should notify Mr. Braggs immediately.

Thanks to the wonders of Twitter, I was able to thank Glenn Braggs today personally for signing that autograph about 28 or 29 years ago...after he read a post I wrote and took the time to correct me on it.

Isn't technology a wonderful thing?

Thanks again to Mr. Glenn Braggs for being a good sport, and thank you all for reading. 

Where you been, boy?

So, I didn't mean for 10 days to pass between blog posts here and over two weeks to pass on my 1982 Topps Blog. My last ten days have been pretty filled up with activities, travel, and general organizational stuff, along with the Christmas holidays.

Then, today is my birthday (happy birthday to me!).

What all that means is this: I'll be back blogging early next week, probably. 

I am still months behind on getting packages sent out to people that should have received them long ago. I wish I could say for sure that I know that I will get stuff out in the mail in the next week. I hope to do that. But I can't guarantee it. I'm sorry to all of you to whom I owe cards.

In the meantime, I've been getting caught up organizing my early 1990s cards. There are so many different cards available from that timeframe that it is daunting even to create a checklist. But, I'm plowing through right now.

Also, what has been grabbing the main part of my attention is work stuff. I'm hopeful that I will be able to put all of that behind me in the next few months.

All that said, really, I should have posted before this. 

But, I'm still here and I'm still going to be posting here and collecting and all that. It's just a busy time.

Thanks again to all of you for reading, for sending me cards, and for making my first year back collecting baseball cards an enjoyable one!

$30 Habits

Before I jump headlong into this post, I wanted to thank all of you for the kind comments about my dog. It really does mean a lot to me to know that a lot of you cared enough to comment and read that post. I didn't have a lot of desire to write anything the past few days other than to talk about that, so thanks for your patience.

Thanks again.

Before the upheaval last week, I had scanned and planned a bunch of posts to try to catch up on all the great packages that have been arriving from bloggers across the country for me. It's been a great month in that respect, and I have a huge pile of envelopes that will be going out in the next few days to try to catch up on all the trades I've been working on over the past couple of months.

One package came in to me from Robért at $30 a Week Habit.  It's such a good package that it needs musical accompaniment:

Yeah, that's one of Pearl Jam's most repetitive songs with a bit of an anti-drug (probably) bent to it. Last year, Rob Neyer mentioned it as one of the songs that Fox probably would not use in its baseball coverage -- especially with respect to, as he put it, "a certain power-hitting shortstop who joined the Seattle club in the 1990s and became addicted to the fast life and the easy availability of certain (supposedly) performance-enhancing drugs?"

I was a huge Pearl Jam fan about 10 years ago or so -- I spent a bunch of money on collecting their bootlegs from their shows on their 2000 and 2003 tours -- and I still enjoy their music a great deal. That said, "Habit" is, to me, just an okay song.

That does not describe the package I got from Robért. It was excellent.  

It started with a big plastic screw-down holder:

Richie Sexson is a guy who might have been a PC for me if he'd lasted longer in America's Dairyland. A big home run hitter with prodigious power and a birthday two days after mine (though he is 3 years younger than me), the Brewers got him for Jason Bere, Steve Woodard, and Bob Wickman in 2000.  

Then, after the 2003 season, Doug Melvin traded him away to the Arizona Diamondbacks (with Shane Nance and Noochie Varner) for half a team -- Chris Capuano, Craig Counsell, Chad Moeller, Lyle Overbay, Jorge De La Rosa, and Junior Spivey. Sexson played 23 games in his one season in the desert before heading to the Pacific Northwest and hitting 105 homers in three-and-a-half seasons for the Mariners.

Sure looks like the Brewers won both of those trades to me.

I also got a shiny golden K-Rod, happily celebrating a save in 2011:

Now, don't get me wrong. Those two cards were awesome and made the package a very good one.

But the final two cards in the package were what made it an over-the-top ridiculously great package for me.  I mean, how do you top receiving two cards from the 1960s of the greatest third baseman not named Mike Schmidt to play major league baseball:

Mr. Ed Mathews, ladies & gentlemen. Mathews definitely was the player who made putting a strong-hitting and decent fielding player at third base part of the requirements for baseball teams. I mean, the only one close from Mathews's era would be Brooks Robinson -- and Mathews was a far better hitter than Brooks was (Mathews OBP/SLG: .376/.509; Robinson: .322/.401).

Before Mathews came along, the best third-baseman in the HOF was Home Run Baker. Baker now would be hard-pressed to make it to the Hall. He's been surpassed (using the JAWS methodology) by Graig Nettles, Edgar Martinez, Adrian Beltre, Scott Rolen, and Chipper Jones -- and that just the players who either are active, not yet eligible, or not yet elected to the Hall.

Yes, Mathews was better than Boggs, better than Brett, better than Santo, better than Robinson, and better than Molitor. More importantly, he was a pioneer of sorts in the way that Robin Yount and Cal Ripken were -- showing that you could play an important fielding position and still be a power hitter.

Robért, thank you very much for these cards. I've got my eyes peeled for some good Jays cards that you need!