A Big Stack of Arbitrary Brewers

I've traded in the past with Brian from the Highly Subjective and Completely Arbitrary blog in the past. I was recently pleased and surprised to get a package in the mail from him that contained a ton of Brewers cards. I've been neglecting my Brewers cards lately, opting instead for actually watching the team's performance -- which has continued to impress -- and spending more time binge-watching shows on Hulu and Netflix.

But that's really just excuses being made. Nothing in current cards is grabbing me today. I'm burned out on hearing about the latest stratospheric price that Aaron Judge cards have reached. To top things off, I tried to go out a couple of weekends ago to buy some packs of cards. I could not even find a single pack of cards in my local Walmart. Hell, they may not even carry them any more. And the Target wasn't much better either -- all the cards they stocked were ones I have all the Brewers for already thanks to case breaks. 

I guess I'll just stick to my classic, tried and true way of getting cards on eBay, COMC, and Just Commons. 

Speaking of classics, maybe some classic rock will help me dig out of this funk.

When I think classic rock, I think the rock of the 1970s and 1960s and maybe some early 1980s. Anything later than that is part of my "normal" rock and therefore isn't "classic." And speaking of classics, does it get any more classic than The Who and "Baba O'Riley"? This song is still used at UGA to fire up the crowd just before kickoff. That's pretty classic to still be in the rotation at least as of 2016.



Let's go really classic here. This 1977 Bill Travers is actual a 1977 cloth sticker from the original set that was deemed so classic by Topps that it was resurrected for use with Archives in 2012. Travers was a 6th round pick of the Brewers out of Norwood High School in Norwood, Massachusetts. He worked his way up through the minors -- making it to Triple A by the age of 20 in 1973 and to the Majors in 1974 despite only 61 decent innings in Triple-A in 1974. He stayed in the majors from 1976 on, and 1976 was his best season -- 2.81 ERA, 15-16 record, 240 innings, 120 strikeouts versus 95 walks and over 1000 batters faced at the age of 23.

He really didn't make it very far after that. He got injured and went through two ulnar transfer operations (transferring a nerve in his elbow). He rebounded in 1979 and 1980 to win 26 games in 52 starts over 341-2/3 innings. He played out his option after the 1980 season at the age of 27. He went on to sign what was recognized immediately as one of the worst free agent contracts in the early free agency era: a 4-year, $1.5 million contract that was seen in the same regard as that Pablo Sandoval contract with the Red Sox. For their money, the California Angels received 52-1/3 innings of 6.36 ERA pitching (4.54 FIP) with 72 hits allowed and 11 games started over those four years. 

Bill Parsons was even more unique -- so unique that Steve Berthiaume wrote up a story about him on ESPN identifying his career as completely unique. Parsons is the only pitcher since 1883 to win at least 13 games and start at least 30 games in each of his first two seasons, only to win 5 or fewer games the rest of his career. He was the rookie pitcher of the year in the AL in 1971. 

His career went into the tank because of coaching. No kidding. As the ESPN story discusses, manager Del Crandall hired former Milwaukee Braves teammate Bob Shaw as the pitching coach. Shaw was an analyst, breaking down mechanics into endless detail. But he messed with Parsons and his delivery and screwed him up. Parsons was a "grip-it-and-rip-it" kind of pitcher with a fastball and a change up. Shaw made him work from a full windup and learn a curveball. All of this had disastrous results, and Parsons never found his mechanics again. By the age of 26, he was out of baseball.

Sure, The Doors might not be a "classic rock" rock band, but their music is excellent. I know it's cliché to play this song, but it's a damn good one. In fact, I tried for a long time not to like The Doors due to all the reverence that the generations older than me have for them. 

That worked until I listened to their music. The keyboard solos are excellent and well-played, the chords are melodically interesting, and the music overall provides an atmosphere. Anything that has that much going for it will get into my playlists.



These cards strive for an atmosphere. They strive to give a sense of modernity, excitement, and action. Maybe I've become that "get off my lawn guy" but these cards really fall short in that regard. I like them for being cards I need, but the new card designs leave me wanting more. 

I like variety. I like a mix of photos. I like a sense of place or of being or at least some sort of differentiation. And, I think that is the problem I've gotten myself into with modern cards. Everything is either an action shot or it's from Heritage and its affected attempts to copy card designs and photographic flaws from 50 years ago. It's like Topps has become its own cover band.

I'll be honest about this song: I did not have a proper appreciation for it before I played Guitar Hero on PlayStation. It's an ass-kicking guitar riff around which the whole song is built -- that roaring sound that comes from the rhythm guitar while the lead noodles around -- that really grabs me. It's guttural, raw, even dirty, and it makes you feel like you're on a riverboat in the dirty Mississippi River somewhere south of Memphis.

Or maybe that's just me.

Brian sent some awesome oddballs, including a nearly complete set of the 1984 Waunakee Police Department Brewers set (he kept the Molitor for his own PC of the St. Paul native) and this Pinnacle/Denny's card from 1996 of Kevin Seitzer. With my new Oddballs blog up and running and focusing on the 1980s, I see this Pinnacle card and think that I've made a mistake by limiting myself to the 1980s.

However, there are so many oddball issues in the 1980s that I probably should not have wandering eyes for the 1990s.

When it comes to classic rock of my youth, nothing quite embodies that term better than two things. I'll get to the other in a minute, but this one is the first one. Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water" -- and its opening guitar riff -- was the first song every aspiring metalhead in the 1980s seemed to learn. And the local rock station was more than happy to oblige those learning the song by playing it as if it were the new hot release. 

Don't get me wrong -- it's a great guitar riff -- but damn it got tiresome after about the 500th time that it got played in the high school weight room while someone screamed at me to "PUSH IT" when I was trying to max out my bench weight at something around 150 or 160 pounds (while I weighed 175). I haven't seen either of those weights -- either on bench or on the scale -- in quite some time.

In all, Brian probably sent me nearly 100 cards. These four cards were the some of the best. A Geoff Jenkins relic from the early 2000s? Yes, please! A Jeromy Burnitz Topps HD? Certainly. A Doug Jones "Minted in Cooperstown" parallel? I hardly ever see these!

The top card here, though, is that Prince Fielder. Topps's "Moment & Milestones" set maybe the one of the most diabolical sets ever issued -- along with Topps Tek. Moments & Milestones had a card number for each player -- let's say Fielder is 59 -- and then had a different card 59 for each of the 81 RBI that Fielder had in his rookie season. So, let's call this card "59-70." To top off the obnoxiousness, each card is serial numbered out of 150.
UGH.

The other guarantee from classic rock stations in the 1980s -- and maybe today for all I know -- is that at an appointed time, usually 9 PM, it's time to "Get the Led Out." Led Zeppelin is a great band and did a lot to push metal forward with Robert Plant's vocals and Jimmy Page's grinding guitar lines. But every damn night? Really?

"Black Dog" always got a lot of airplay during those 30 minutes where the DJ could line up three songs, hit the head, smoke a cigarette, and line up his evening after leaving the station at 10 PM.

Let's close with youngsters -- two that really didn't make it, and one that is still working on it. You know who Orlando Arcia is already, so let's look at the other two guys.

Erik Komatsu is still only 29 years old, but it has been 5 years since he appeared in the big leagues for the Cardinals and the Twins. The Brewers drafted him in 2008 in the 8th round, then traded him to the Nationals in a rental trade for Jerry Hairston. The Nationals left him unprotected in the Rule 5 draft, so the Cardinals signed him. They tried to waive him, so the Twins took a shot on him in May of 2012. A little over 3 weeks later, they returned him to the Nationals. The Nationals released him in 2014, and he signed as a free agent with the Angels for a month. They released him, so the Brewers picked him up for the rest of 2014. After the 2014 season, the Brewers let him go, so he played in the Atlantic League for Long Island in 2015 before hanging up the spikes. He's now a music producer in Orange County, California. 

Chad Green was the Brewers 1st round draft pick in 1996 (eighth overall) out of the University of Kentucky. He made it to Triple-A with the Brewers at the age of 25 in 2000, but his hitting was poor, to be charitable. He struck out three times for every walk he took, and his overall OBP in the minor leagues was .310 (.282 at Triple A). As of 2014, Green -- who was just 5'9" tall and relied on speed over power...indeed, this article says he beat Bo Jackson's 60-yard-dash time -- was living and working in Lexington, Kentucky, running a day care company called "Wee Care." 

Orlando Arcia has already seen more action in the majors than either of these other two gentlemen. Arcia has a real chance to be something special in the end -- if he avoids injuries and keeps hitting.

Thank you to Brian for the great cards -- and the classic rock that has picked up my spirits a bit!

Give a Hoot #SuperTraders!

So, today I was just about to post about an envelope I received from Canada's best blog about cards from the dollar store. Then, I saw that Night Owl did exactly that. As a result, I felt compelled to change up and see what other envelope I had available to blog about.

In a twist of irony only Canadian Alanis Morissette could find ironic, the only other cards I received recently came from...Night Owl. 

Isn't that ironic, don't you think? 

Recognizing that everyone is probably tired of hearing about how not ironic Alanis's lyrics really were and also recognizing that I need some music to pick myself up, let's go with songs and stories from and relating to the band that Rolling Stone called the "Best New Band of 1985." Of course, it's The Hooters.

1. "Who the F*ck are The Hooters?"

For those of you who don't know, the Hooters were/are a Philadelphia band who achieved some mainstream success in the 1980s. Notably, the Hooters opened the U.S. side of the Live Aid concert in Philadelphia in 1985. 

Main Live Aid organizer Bob Geldof famously responded to being required to put The Hooters on the bill by asking, "Who the f*ck are The Hooters?" At that point, Geldof could be forgiven for not knowing, seeing as their first major album did not come out until 1985.

Guess what? I've got a card for that.

Chris Demaria was drafted by the Pirates in the 17th round of the 2002 draft. The Kansas City Royals then picked Demaria up in the minor league portion of the Rule V draft in 2004, kept him for a year, and shipped him to the Milwaukee Brewers for the 2006 season. Weirdly, I have this card with Demaria in both this Royals uniform and in a painted-on Brewers uniform. I don't think I've seen that variation identified online, but it's not like anyone notices or cares other than Brewers and Royals collectors.

I don't think even Demaria noticed.

2. The Who "Behind Blue Eyes" 

In 1982, The Who went on the first of their ten farewell tours -- the current one is the tenth and possibly final one. The Hooters were the local band chosen to open for one of the farewell shows at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia on September 25, 1982. 

To go with this?

I bet Zack Greinke thinks he knows what it's like to be the bad man, behind blue eyes.

3.  Cyndi Lauper: "Time After Time"

Speaking of "and I blame you," one of the co-founders of The Hooters was Rob Hyman. Rob was brought in by Cyndi Lauper's producer, Rick Chertoff, to help write "one more song" for Lauper's debut album She's So Unusual. According to Wikipedia, Hyman and Lauper sat at a piano and started working on it by drawing on their own particular relationship issues. Hyman is the male backup singer on the song.

It ended up being one of the most critically acclaimed songs in Lauper's entire catalog and regularly rates in those "Greatest Love Songs" or "Best Ballads of All-Time" countdowns that VH1 used to issue with a vengeance to fill weekend time.

I have to admit -- I've never really liked this song. I don't know if it is Lauper, the syrupy ballad not appealing to the then 11-year-old me, or what. Well, it can't be that 11-year-old thing, though, because I still don't like it.

I also still have problems with Bud Selig. In addition to my much discussed antipathy toward the club's player recruitment policies in the early 1990s, Selig made himself a laughing stock by declaring the 2002 All-Star Game -- held at Miller Park in Milwaukee -- to be a 7-7 tie when the teams ran out of pitchers after 11 innings. 

Selig put the All-Star Game in Milwaukee as an ego-feeding piece, aggrandizing the openly rapacious sales tax imposed on a five-county area (including the county in which I grew up) in order to buy Milwaukee a new stadium to increase his franchise's value. After that game, the ridiculous "solution" of giving the winning league home-field advantage came into effect. As if that made a difference. 

And yet, there is now a "Bud Selig Experience" in Miller Park to pay tribute to the man. I get that he brought baseball back to Milwaukee. It's just that he spent so much time making sure that baseball in Milwaukee would always feature a terrible team that pisses me off.

4. The Hooters "All You Zombies"

This song is almost as much about biblical stories as it is anything else. It does rip on people being "zombies" and not paying attention to those who are trying to lead them away from bad things -- like Noah and Moses. This song may name check Moses more than any other song in history.

Apropos of nothing, here are four cards from the 1980s and 1990s. Let's talk about Don August. From everything I've heard and seen, he is a pretty decent dude who still participates in Brewer fantasy camps, as he mentioned on April 24 on Twitter. He was traded from the Houston Astros to the Brewers with Mark Knudsen in exchange for the skeletal remnants of Danny Darwin's career in August of 1986. August is a trivia answer as well -- he was the winning pitcher in the first game played at SkyDome (Rogers Centre) in Toronto back on June 5, 1989.

5. The Hooters "And We Danced"

The song I most remember from The Hooters is "And We Danced." It only reached number 21 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts, though it hit #3 on the Mainstream Rock chart. This article compares the song unfavorably to one of the universally most disliked pop songs of all time, "We Built This City." The article concludes that the video -- watch it yourself! -- "may be pop culture's worst musical moment ever."

Ever? Really? I mean, it's pretty cheesy, what with the breaking into a drive-in theater being featured in a mid-1980s song as if drive-ins still existed at that point. They did, but they were dying fast, of course.

UK music magazine NME calls the following song only the fifth-worst video ever. It's a song called "Call on Me" by Eric Prydz. 

I'm legitimately scared for my life after watching that video. Is it the simulated sex with a towel? Women working out in thongs? The legwarmers? The sketchy Italian guy just hanging out in the class with a dirtbag smile? The fact that one of the women actually walks up to sketchy dude and is interested?

Yes. Yes it is.

To go with this, well, nothing Night Owl sent deserves this. 

But, let's go with some Finest and a little bit of Oddball. Something needs to redeem this post. 

Only an oddball can. It's certainly not The Hooters.

Night Owl, thank you once again for sending these cards my way -- they are greatly appreciated...far more than The Hooters ever could be. 

$30 A Week? If I Could Keep to *that* Budget...

I love getting mail from Robért from $30 A Week Habit. Mailers from him often are small but pack quite the punch.

I mean, usually, it's enough of a punch to make LL Cool J jealous. This most recent one was no different.

I'm in a musical mood today too -- I think it was playing an 80s lyrics game on Sporcle during my 20 minute lunch break (it was a busy day...) that got me there. It got that horrible Aerosmith song "Angel" -- horrible because it's an earworm that reminds me of high school -- stuck in my head until I passed it along to my paralegal by telling her about it. For some reason, that worked.

To introduce each card, let's look at some songs that Robért has posted on his blog!

Payola$ -- Eyes of The Stranger

That's a very 80s sound coming off that vinyl. One of the coolest things I noted about that record is that it was produced by the legendary Mick Ronson. Mick was one of David Bowie's backing band members that became The Spiders from Mars, but he worked with Bowie on The Man Who Sold The World and The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, among other albums. Then, as a producer, he worked on and arranged John Cougar Mellancamp's first massive hit -- "Jack & Diane."

And, let's also not forget that Ronson also worked with the legendary Morrissey as a musician, songwriter, and record producer. 

Basically, music in the 1980s is nothing without Mick Ronson...

...just like the Brewers of the 1980s were nowhere without Paul Molitor. The worst season that Milwaukee had in the 1980s was 1984. The team finished 67-94, dead last and 36-1/2 games out of first place. Molitor missed most of 1984 thanks to Tommy John surgery. The team only won 71 games the next year, but that year was the year that Robin Yount missed forty games due to back surgery that forced his move to the outfield. The next time the team won fewer than 70 games? 1993, when Molitor left for Toronto.

By the way, a good trivia question is to name the first Tommy John survivor to make baseball's Hall of Fame. You're looking at him (and the only other one as of 2016 is John Smoltz).

Hall & Oates: "Out of Touch"

I don't remember that weird introduction, for some reason. I watched the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction for the band. In retrospect, it's easy to see them as "blue-eyed soul," but at the time, I just thought of them as, well, music. 

Parallels are sometimes like "blue-eyed soul." They purport to be something special -- different, even. In reality, they are just, well, cards.

Golden Earring: Radar Love

In the 1980s, Golden Earring had a pretty big hit with "Twilight Zone." I liked that song a lot. But, when I heard "Radar Love," it really hit me in a more visceral way. "Radar Love" seemed more original -- almost dangerous, at times, with its driving bass line and minimal guitars. Yes, there are plenty of guitars, but the song is really the bass line, along with the drums.

However, the lead singer's attire in this video is positively embarrassing for future generations to see. And, the crowd here looks bored to death. Some even look pissed off. What's all that about?

Because I barely pay attention these days to any checklists -- especially checklists for retail exclusives -- I sometimes miss out on things like parallels of retail exclusives. Like those "First Home Run" cards last year, for example -- I don't think I could tell you what the parallels were or who had them or whether I have any parallels or not. So, when I saw this card, I thought, "dang, I just got that card from The Card Chop!"

Then I looked at them side by side and realized that the one from Idaho is either a gold or bronze parallel (don't know which, to be honest) and this one is the silver version. So, there we go.

The Who: Won't Get Fooled Again

A few weeks ago, I saw that The Who's concert from Hyde Park from last summer was on some random TV station that appears on my cable listings.  The Who played -- okay, definitely Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend played. Townshend still windmilled a bit, and Daltrey swayed around some on stage. 

I suppose I'd like to see them in concert, if only to say that I have. The show was decent, but it was a little sad to see the now 70-year-old Pete Townshend giving little hops on stage as a sort of homage to his more acrobatic past.

A straight-forward homage to the past from Topps here. The great thing about baseball cards is that though they get older, the faces of the men on the front are almost always between the ages of 18 to 43. In other words, these are guys in their prime, for the most part, and our mind's eye remembers their prime as opposed to what happens as they age.

Though it might be fun to revive the Senior Baseball League and allow everyone to take as many drugs as they want.

Billy Joel: New York State of Mind

I have times when I really like Billy Joel, and other times when he just gets on my nerves. Getting a video of Joel with Tony Bennett playing "New York State of Mind" at Shea Stadium, though, is never a bad thing.

Just like getting a new Ryan Braun card is never a bad thing for me either.

And, finally:

Triumph: Magic Power

Robért mentioned this song in a text-only post in 2011. The blogosphere must have changed in the past five years; these days, the only way you get away with a text-only post is either when you are quitting as a blogger or when you are pimping someone's contest.

My best segue here is to say simply that it is always a triumph for me to get a card package from Robért. To get a nice blue swatch of Prince Fielder from Allen & Ginter is especially cool.

Thank you very much, Robért -- your generosity is greatly appreciated, and I'll be keeping my eyes peeled for 1959 cards for your set at my next card show that I attend!