That New Cardboard Smell

Atlanta weather in the winter is about as bipolar as it gets. Now, in the summer, it's very consistent -- between 85 and 95, a bit humid, sometimes some thunderstorms. But in the winter, well, it's all over the place. In December alone, it was 75 degrees on Christmas Day but then, on New Year's Eve, it was a high of 45 degrees. Today, it might not even break 32.

All of this has conspired to give me one heck of a cold. I could only wish that I could smell the cardboard of the cards that Tim from I Love the Smell of Cardboard in the Morning. Tim sent me a packed mailer before Christmas, and it's taken me this long just to get it all scanned and sorted.  Let's break them down by player.

Ryan Braun

It's sort of funny that the Topps Ticket to Stardom set from 2009 called Braun a "Seasoned Veteran" considering that, in 2009, Braun had a grand total of 264 appearances in the major leagues. Of course, in those first two seasons, he hit 71 HRs, won the Rookie of the Year award, was named an All-Star, won a Silver Slugger Award, and led the NL in Slugging as a Rookie with a .634 SLG. 

Since then, of course, he's had his ups and downs but seems to have rebounded to the point where teams are considering trading for him -- I've heard everyone from the Dodgers, the Giants and the Phillies to the Orioles and Blue Jays being possible landing spots. 

While everyone in the national media seems to believe that Braun being traded is a fait accompli, there is a significant portion of the Brewers fanbase that believes that Braun has shown that he could still be a part of the next winning Brewers team. Now, that could be homerism, certainly. The team could be worse this year than last. We'll see.

Prince Fielder

Big Prince. Fielder had to retire after his second spinal fusion surgery. What was going on for him was that he had a herniated disk which led to pressure on his spinal cord. That pressure led to weakness in his left arm, causing him to be unable to swing a bat properly. Prince is lucky. As Kevin Mitchell detailed in his appearance on The Hall of Very Good Podcast, he was suffering from the same issue without it being diagnosed -- leading to him dropping down to 145 pounds and being paralyzed for a while. Seriously.

Prince is still owed about $104 million by the Tigers and Rangers through the 2020 season so money is not an issue. Aren't the guaranteed contracts in baseball great? I mean that seriously. The contracts are great for the players. Contrast that with the NFL, where far less money and far fewer years are ever guaranteed in what is a far more difficult, far less certain, far more violent sport in which to play. 

Ben Sheets

That Prime Patches Quad Relic Autograph 😍  😻  🙌  🙅

I just noticed that I can now add emojis to my blog. My life is now complete. 🎷 ⚾ ⚾ ⚾

Yovani Gallardo

Yovani just was traded to the Mariners by the Orioles. Mariners GM Jerry Dipoto was quoted as saying that, "after examining the free agent and trade market, Yovani is the best fit for our club as we move forward this offseason." Was their analysis of the free agent market limited to the California Penal League?

Seriously, Gallardo had a bad, bad season last year in Baltimore, and it should not have been a surprised. His strikeout rate has declined every year since 2013 at the same time that the league's strikeout rate has increased. Gallardo also hit the DL last year for shoulder problems. It does beg the question of what analysis that Dipoto and his staff did. Wishcasting?

Carlos Gomez

Lots of Golden Gomez here, with the highlight being the 1983 wannabe Gomez from 2015 Topps Archives being a parallel serial numbered to 50.  

Talk about a guy with a good agent and all the promise in the world: Gomez was absolutely terrible in Houston -- a terribleness that it always appeared he had in him, seeing as his idea of patience at the plate is to wait to start eating until after his dinner companions take their first bite. He got released by Houston, which slashing at .221/.277/.342 over the course of 126 games pretty much deserves. He gets signed by Texas and his 33 games there convince the Rangers to sign him for one year at a raise of $2.5 million a year -- to $11.5 million.

It is very telling that his most similar comparable player for his career (and #3 through age 30) is Corey Patterson. Patterson struggled to identify pitches he could hit, he did not walk much, he had good speed on the bases and was a good defensive player. Patterson also crashed out of the major leagues after the 2011 season at the age of 31 (though he spent 2012 essentially serving as Gomez's backup by being the starting CF for the Nashville Sounds in the Brewers organization). 

It should be an interesting year for Gomez.

For the rest of this post, I'm going to show off a few parallels and inserts that Tim sent:

Look at all the pretty colors! That Wes Helms Gold Refractor is actually a damn good looking card in hand, as is the sepia refractor for Aramis Ramirez. 

On the other hand, that "bubbles" thing going on for Nick Ramirez...not so much. Speaking of Nick Ramirez, it appears that his career is stalling out in Double-A. He's spent three seasons there, and he has not exactly lit the world on fire -- .229/.323/.402 in nearly 1400 Double-A at bats is an established level of play. I have my doubts that anything will come of his career at this point, but we will see. I mean, he turns 28 this year on August 1. 

There is one last card that I do need to show off:

I still like Luc, and this card being numbered out of ten floored me. I'd forgotten about that parallel for A&G in 2015 -- probably lost amidst the mist of parallels that Topps has put out generally. It happens.

Many thanks to Tim for the great cards -- and I hope that he enjoyed my Secret Santa envelope to him.

"It was the game . . . the sounds, the smells."

Sometimes copyright lawyers are too good at their jobs.  Or, rather, some copyright holders are extremely sensitive to even the fair use of clips from their movies or songs.  I mean, that's the only way I can explain why I was not able to find a way to embed the "In Love with Baseball" scene from Field of Dreams.  

I wanted to embed that scene for the great back and forth between Ray Kinsella and Shoeless Joe Jackson:

• Character
  Quote

• Ray Kinsella

  Right, you're a low-ball hitter.

• Shoeless Joe Jackson

  Man, I did love this game.

  I'd have played for food money.

  It was the game, the sounds, the smells.

  Did you ever hold a ball or a glove to your face?

• Ray Kinsella

  Yeah.

• Shoeless Joe Jackson

  I used to love traveling on the trains from town to town.

  The hotels, brass spittoons in the lobbies brass beds in the rooms.

  It was the crowd rising to their feet when the ball was hit deep.

  I'd play for nothing.

• Ray Kinsella

  It's my family.

• Shoeless Joe Jackson

  What's with the lights?

• Ray Kinsella

  All the stadiums have them now.

  Even Wrigley Field.

• Shoeless Joe Jackson

  It's harder to see the ball.

• Ray Kinsella

  The owners found that more people can attend night games.

• Shoeless Joe Jackson

  Owners.

Why did I want to embed that scene?  Because that scene was what I thought about when I first heard the name of the excellent and still pretty new (barely six months old) blog "I Love the Smell of Cardboard in the Morning."  A few weeks back, after finally running into one another's blogs, Tim and I agreed to send cards to each other.  

I actually received this package from Tim about two weeks ago, but I haven't been able to get around to posting it due to the monsters invading from the west and due to some other time commitments this past week.  But, with the Memorial Day weekend, it's time to post the fruits of this excellent trade.

The cards Tim sent to me were heavy on parallels and inserts that I needed for my various collections, but they also included a couple of base cards that have eluded me to this point. Let's start with the Oddball that came to me from Tim, and it is a "card" for my Ben Sheets collection:

This is a Cracker Jack "card" from 2003 from a set that, probably unsurprisingly, I had never heard of or seen before.  The thing about oddballs is that very few card dealers want to keep stuff like this around on the off chance that someone might come looking for it.  Only at the super large shows would something like this pop up.  But, thankfully, I didn't have to go looking at a show for it.

One other Sheets got folded into this envelope (not literally folded...anyway):

A 2002 Topps Stadium Club of Sheets went into the Sheets PC which, as of this writing, stands at 99 cards -- though I am pretty sure that that number will change when I get caught up on my sorting.

Tim also stepped up to the plate and added to my Robin Yount collection which, to be fair, is either really easy since new cards are coming out all the time, or is really difficult because that collection stands at 695 items right now.  #695 was this Polar Bear back 2002 Topps T-206 mini:

Another collection that Tim added to is another one that is more difficult to which to send new cards, but the reason for that difficulty is the fact that there just are not that many new Cecil Cooper cards being made these days.  This one is just a junk wax card that I did not have:

I mentioned in a previous post that I had not bought or even received any Bowman from this year except for the Jonathan Lucroy retail parallel serial numbered to 5 that I got very inexpensively off eBay.  That has led to a torrent of 2015 Bowman coming my way -- so many that, once again, I'm still trying to catch up on cataloging them.  Tim sent me this Carlos Gomez from Bowman:

Usually, I'd really like this card for being a good photo. The problem is that Topps seems to use only photos in which Gomez is running the bases for every base card except Heritage. I won't bore you with all of them, but we got similar photos in 2013 Topps, 2014 Topps, and both photo variations in Gypsy Queen from this year as just an example...

Okay, I'll hop off my soap box now and show you the Prince Fielder cards I got from Tim:

Sure, I know and you know that the Triple Play sticker from 2013 is Fielder after he left for Detroit.  But come on -- with that drawing of Fielder, could you really swear that the sticker isn't him on the Brewers? Blue is blue is blue, and Heck with it -- it's going in the Fielder collection as a Prince with no Team.

Now, Ryan Braun.

The Brewers have been basically a .500 team since the horrendous start to the season.  If you'd asked me at the start of the year how I thought the Brewers would finish, I'd have said .500.  What's keyed them coming back to respectability has been Ryan Braun starting to hit like he should hit.  After the teams first 20 games, Braun was hitting .226/.273/.274.  Since then? The team is .500 and Braun is .306/.396/.718 with 10 HR and 30 RBI.  If Jonathan Lucroy were not out injured, maybe the team would be a game or two better yet.

Right, Luc?  Even if you weren't hitting .133/.216/.178 before you got injured (yeah, 6 for 45).

Jean Segura -- also injured -- has had something of a bounceback season to date. He may be the future second baseman in Milwaukee if Orlando Arcia keep up his development. Segura is still young -- just 25 -- so he has time himself to develop.  I hope he does.

Finally, here are the guys who aren't with the Brewers any more who made it my way from Tim:

 

Hart is playing less than expected in Pittsburgh -- mainly because the Pirates haven't faced many lefties this year and Hart is the right-handed side of the ostensible first base platoon with former Vanderbilt Commodore Pedro Alvarez.

Gallardo is doing about what you would expect in Texas.  His strikeouts are down, his ERA is up, and his hits allowed are up as well -- a lot of which can be chalked up to the difference between facing 8 hitters and a pitcher versus facing 9 hitters in every lineup.  He's currently tied for the AL lead in losses with 6.

Weeks is playing sparingly and badly in Seattle right now -- .176/.282/.279 in 78 plate appearances as an outfield reserve and DH.  Yes, Rickie, if you had agreed to play other positions in Milwaukee, you might have been able to finish your career with one team.  Now, you might just be finished.

Many thanks again go out to Tim and the wonderful smell of baseball -- and baseball cards.