Rip It Up

By now, you have probably seen the Holiday rip cards from Gavin over at Baseball Card Breakdown. 

It's the first time since I got back into collecting a few years ago that I was legitimately happy to see a 1989 Fleer card show up. Of course, like nearly everyone, I did the right thing when I got this card. I had to Rip It Up.

While Little Richard didn't write the song, his version was released first. So, I'm giving him credit for that -- meaning everyone after that was a cover. A quick YouTube search shows, well, it's absolutely crazy how many covers there are of this song. It's so crazy that I'm going to treat you to a few of them. 

But I'm going to make you wait on what is inside until the end.

1.  Bill Haley & His Comets

Bill Haley released his version shortly after Little Richard did, so it's a close question as to whether this counts as a cover. 

To start this off, I am going to highlight the protection that Gavin sent for these cards. He always sends interesting things, and this one was no different:

It's been over two years now since I had a dog around. With the two cats we have getting along famously and fabulously, we just don't want to introduce a third party into the situation to throw all that off. But I miss my Cinnie girl.

We subscribed to the BarkBox for a few years for her. She loved some of the treats, turned up her nose at other treats, and generally was a good sport about the whole deal. Even if that meant having a Christmas bow on her head.

Okay, let's get back to happier things -- baseball cards, of course.

2. Paul McCartney

The Beatles covered this song as part of a medley with "Shake, Rattle and Roll" and "Blue Suede Shoes," a track that was released on their Anthology 3 album. This version is Sir Paul covering the song live in concert.

Yeah, this card is pretty interesting. Is there a "Groveling Gavin" version of it somewhere? Perhaps this one is it:

I tried chewing tobacco when I was about 7 or 8 years old -- maybe younger. I think that is the perfect age to try it because you have no idea what to do and you think it's like gum or something and swallow it and become violently ill. And it takes like crap at that age too.

Or maybe that's just me.

3.  Buddy Holly

Perhaps this song was one of those songs that artists in the 1950s just had to play. You know -- like how every cover band has to play "Twist and Shout"? Because Buddy Holly isn't the only singer from this era to cover it. There will be more. 

Hey, I have a great analogy now! Every band and artist in the 1950s had to play "Rip It Up" just like Topps/Bowman must have at least 10 different parallels for every one of its sets! That's it! 

Don't get me wrong here -- as a player collector, I do enjoy getting these parallels for those collections. But as the numbers of parallels stack up in each set, I start thinking, "Maybe I shouldn't try to put together full sets for my Brewers collection of these."

Then I laugh, have a drink, and forget I ever said that to myself. I'm easily amused, especially when I'm in a pure Faulknerian stream-of-consciousness mode.

4.  Elvis Presley

See, I told you there were more from that era who played it. I mean, Elvis never met a song he didn't try to take and make his own. Or, rather, Elvis never wrote any of his own songs -- even the fawning "Elvis History Blog" says that he was not a singer-songwriter. So, it should come as no surprise that he or Colonel Tom Parker would hear a song with a good beat and say, "Elvis, you gotta sing this song." And he would.

Apropos of a southerner of whom a lot was asked, here's Ben Sheets. A serial numbered to 899 Ben Sheets from 2006 SP Authentic at that. That's pretty good in my book.

5.  Stray Cats

Considering the band's sensibilities -- and Brian Setzer's later dabbling in Big Band/Swing music when it got popular again in the 1990s -- it should hardly be surprising that the Stray Cats would cover this song. I don't know when or where this cover came from -- I'd guess the early 1980s somewhere. But the Cats do shred on it.

Astin was the Brewers third round pick in 2013 out of the University of Arkansas (Woo Pig Sooie and all that). The Brewers sent Astin along with Kevin Shackelford to the Cincinnati Reds in late 2014 in exchange for the large human being that is Jonathan Broxton. Broxton chipped in 47 innings at a 5.55 ERA clip (though with a FIP of 3.47) before the Brewers sent him to St. Louis in exchange for Malik Collymore (an Ontario native who "hit" .167/.227/.208 in 208 plate appearances in the Florida State League in 2016 at the age of 21). 

Astin and especially Shackelford have a chance to make the Reds this year, what with the Reds still being in flux and all. Astin will start in Triple-A this season, and Shackelford pitched creditably in Louisville in 2016 out of the bullpen.

6. The Chipmunks

If the Chipmunks did a song, you know it was probably overplayed. Funny thing, though -- at this point in my life and despite growing up with The Chipmunks being on TV regularly, I think the only song I really remember by them is The Christmas Song.

Gavin was responsible for putting the first Donruss Optic card in my hands this year. At least I think he was. I have probably about 2500 cards stacked up on my desk now waiting to get sorted out and cataloged thanks to the crazy generosity from the blogosphere this year, so I may have gotten other Optic cards from other places first but just haven't featured them yet.

I look at this card and think, "Damn it MLB, give Panini rights to use your logos just on the Donruss sets. Limit their parallels. Limit their inserts. Give them a trial run, and see if they do a decent job and not screw it up -- just please give us a little bit of competition for Topps."

Then I remember that MLB really doesn't care about collectors except for getting their licensing fee blood out of Topps. Oh yeah. Forgot that.

7. David Thibault

Wait. This guy is just a French-Canadian Elvis impersonator. No, really. The guy nails Elvis's voice on some French-Canadian morning show at this link. I'm waiting for the brunette with the really straight hair and bangs to start screaming like it's the Ed Sullivan Show.

But really, I can't end with this guy. Him covering this song is like a double cover, since his whole life is covering Elvis. 

8. Los Lobos

This cover was done as a part of Los Lobos providing the soundtrack for the movie La Bamba in 1987. Lou Diamond Phillips "sings" the song in the movie, but the Los Lobos version did not come out until their career retrospective El Cancionero Mas y Mas in 2000 was released.

Here's the carnage after the ripping of the rip card took place. Sorry if anyone wanted that special collector's 15/25 version of the double Gwynn for their collection -- maybe you can talk someone else into being nicer to their card than I was to this one.

9.  Hanson

No shit. The little girls shrieking in the crowd probably thought that Hanson were the first to sing this song even though they say they are covering Little Richard at the very beginning of the song. 

See, once something like this happens to a song, it's a sign that the song really should be discarded. If the phrase "jump the shark" hadn't become so trite, it would describe what happened to this song to a T. Except that even then, it wouldn't really capture it. 

Not to be too harsh, but listening to this version would make Little Richard roll over in James Brown's grave. Little Richard is still alive, by the way.

Thankfully, the contents of the rip card were far better than this crapola:

I tried to fix my poor scanning job on this. Here's the straighter version:

 

I love the unique Robin Yount collectibles that Gavin has added to my collection in the past, and this artistic magnet is just awesome.

Thank you so much, Gavin, for letting me Rip It Up.

Cards from the Juice Box

Hey, I heard you missed me.  I'm back!

My week away from home -- sleeping in hotel rooms, meeting new (often very strange) people and seeing old friends -- ended on Friday night. It was only four nights away, to be exact, but I successfully picked up a cold/sore throat and slept perhaps 9 hours from Wednesday through Friday. So, it was a great feeling to get to sleep in my own bed, to see my wife and our two cats, and to get back to the friendly confines of my office/baseball card room.

Even before I left, I had received my first-ever package from a gentleman named Trevor. Trevor has started a blog called "Juice Box Baseball."  I received several comments on my blog from Trevor, so we exchanged e-mails about cards and want lists and the like.  A few days later and Voila! Baseball cards arrive in my mailbox.

Trevor is a Houston Astros collector. Hopefully he will post more soon.  In the meantime, though, here are the highlights from the great envelope of cards that he sent my way for my player collections and/or team collection, punctuated by some juicy music.

Jose Valentin

Yes, there are many readily available cards from the 1990s and early 2000s that I need for my collections, such as these two Topps base set cards of Jose Valentin. I still need both of these one more time for my team collection.  

So what juicy song goes with these two cards?

How about a song from 34 years ago called "Queen of Hearts" by New Jersey native Juice Newton? It's a funny thing about country music -- most of the popular songs from that genre really aren't all that "country" at all. Think about it: if you were alive in 1981, you couldn't avoid this song no matter what radio station you listened to -- country or pop -- as it hit Number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, Number 14 on the Country chart, and Number 2 on the Adult Contemporary chart.  Heck, even Alvin & The Chipmunks covered it.

So, the next time you hear someone complain about how Luke Bryan or Taylor Swift really isn't country, know that Barbara Mandrell and Johnny Cash were saying the same thing 35 years ago about Juice Newton.  And what that has to do with Jose Valentin is the square root of bupkis.  

B.J. Surhoff

Surhoff's 1995 Donruss card lists him as a catcher and third baseman. It was the time when everyone in the majors wanted a Tony Phillips thanks to Sparky Anderson's use of Phillips all over the diamond to give other players a day off.  Surhoff was always an incredibly earnest player as well.  As this story from The Washington Times said in 1999, everything Surhoff felts was "writ large across his mug."

To go with that...hmmm....

I'd never heard of or heard this song or this band before today, but it fits here.  The song is called "Juice" and the band -- called Headless Chickens -- was big in New Zealand in the late 1980s and early 1990s.  Sort of like Surhoff in Milwaukee.  Take a listen and tell me that this song isn't incredibly earnest with emotional heartstrings being tugged the entire way. Or, it may just be obnoxious, throwaway tripe that got released in every country around that time.

Actually, it's not bad at all, really, so I'm going with the first part of that choice.

Rob Deer

A 1989 Topps Big card of the big three-true-outcomes slugger Rob Deer graced this package as well. I remember buying Topps Big in those cellophane wrappers back in 1989 or 1988. As was the case for the 1989 Bowman set, Topps Big are tough to store in sheets for us binder guys and gals -- they fit, sort of, in the 9-pocket varietals, but they are such a tight fit that you are really jamming them into the pockets. 

Did someone say jamming?

Let's go to Jimmy Kimmel jamming with Oran "Juice" Jones last November on Kimmel's 47th birthday. "The Rain" was Juice's biggest hit, reaching number 9 in the US, number 3 in Germany, number 4 in the UK, and number 6 in both Ireland and Belgium.  Watching this performance from 2014, I feel like Juice may be the world's coolest one-hit wonder ever. Dude is a bad ass.

Prince Fielder

Because Trevor sent me four Fielders for my player collection, we get two songs here.

This Prince Fielder 2007 Topps Turkey Red had me Googling the card to double check the date on it without picking up the card (a crazy thing since the card is right in a stack in front of me as I type this).  

But, that search led me to Dick Perez's website where he sells some of his original art -- such as this absolutely awesome Eddie Mathews acrylic (for $2,000...wish I'd found this site when I was single and had much more disposable income!).  If you like Dick Perez's art, you should poke around there. He has it sorted by team and then by player, and he has some photos with stories about his career.  His early work in particular was fantastic.

Sort of like...

Ahhhhh...rollin' down the street, smokin' indo, sippin' on gin and juice. Laid back....

Snoop's debut album had a creativity and fun about it that couldn't be replicated later in his life for all the obvious reasons. 

Okay, on to the final two cards.

The orange refractor from 2011 Topps pairs well with one of Fielder's final cards as a Brewer player (rather than those after-the-fact cards that Topps puts out from time to time). In retrospect, Fielder leaving Milwaukee started the window closing on the Doug Melvin Brewers's opportunities to contend. Fielder left a big hole behind both in the lineup -- the lefty power bat needed to balance out the rest of the team's right-handedness -- and on the field.  

Corey Hart was a good fit there for a while, but his injuries took him away from being the first baseman.  Then, the Brewers messed around with people like Travis Ishikawa, Mat Gamel, Taylor Green, Brooks Conrad, Cesar Izturis, Yuniesky Betancourt (seriously...WTF is that?), Juan Francisco, Sean Halton, Alex Gonzalez (another shortstop? Huh?), Mark Reynolds, and Lyle Overbay playing first base in 2012 through 2014. That failure to address first base with a real hitter before 2015 and Adam Lind was one of the biggest failures in Doug Melvin's tenure.  That, and signing Jeff Suppan to a four-year contract for $42 million.  The Suppan contract will always be a stain on Melvin's record.

So, what do I have to close this out?

Three 6 Mafia, of course.  Of course.  Jordan Michael Houston -- a/k/a Juicy J -- is one of the founders of Three 6 Mafia out of Memphis.  Sadly, one of the co-founders of Three 6 Mafia -- Koopsta Knicca -- died this past week at the age of just 40 years old from a brain aneurysm. 

Trevor, thanks for the cards that you sent to me.  I've got a package all set to go out to you this week. And for everyone else, Trevor needs a fair amount of late 1980s junk wax -- so check out his want lists!