Thanks to Three Big Names in the Baseball Card World

In the interest of picking up the pace on my thanking people a bit, I thought I'd combine a few thanks into one post. It's bad that I have to do this, because the people here getting thanked deserve their own posts. But I also need to do it while I have some time and have the desire to write a bit.

Let's start with a guy whom I'd never heard of before this year. He's burst onto my scene -- though, pretty clearly, there were a ton a people who knew him already -- thanks to his location in Georgia. I'm talking, of course, about Joey a/k/a Dub Mentality on Twitter and on his blog of the same name. 

I forget what the occasion was for this package. Perhaps it was just, "Stop whining about Topps and take these cards." In any event, he sent some good stuff my way:

What a true olio of cards. There are two of your 2017 Brewers MVP Travis Shaw -- thanks, Red Sox! Glad you guys wanted to give Pablo Sandoval another chance! Have fun storming the castle! 

The two Stadium Club cards are cards of infinite sadness. Villar's season was a huge step backward after last season, and Nelson got hurt on the basepaths and damaged his labrum severely enough that he's likely to miss time next year. If Nelson had stayed healthy, perhaps this season would be winding down with the Brewers looking down on the Rockies, rather than the other way around.

Then, there are the Bowman Platinum. Of course there is Ryan Braun. Trent Clark spent his age 20 season in High-A Carolina, where one website named him the 8th best prospect in the league on the strength of a .224/.361/.349 line with 21 doubles, 6 triples, 8 HRs, and 37 SB (on 42 attempts). He'll be in Biloxi next year. The other guy is Brandon Woodruff. Woodruff has found himself in the Brewers starting rotation in September with middling results. He's likely to start next year in the rotation at the age of 25.

Finally, there is Corey Ray. Now, Ray was named as the 4th best prospect in the Carolina League, but that is based on athleticism rather than performance. The club has to hope that he shows enough next year that he can be a good trade chit for pitching/whatever need arises, because it's looking more and more like Ray will not outdo Domingo Santana, Brett Phillips, and Lewis Brinson going forward, and Trent Clark may have passed him too.

Many thanks, Joey -- here's some Deftones for you!

Next up, I have thanks going out to another Twitter friend, RobbyT a/k/a Boobie Maine. Robbie collects Detroit Tigers cards, and he used to blog about them several years ago. He blogged three times this year for the first time in four years. Robby is a bit down on his Tigers these days, and so he changed his avatar on Twitter to the Astros logo. This makes sense, after all, with half the Detroit team that can still walk and does not have herniated discs traded to Houston. 

At any rate, in response to my 1980s Baseball post on the Donruss Action All-Stars sets, Robby sent me complete sets of the Donruss Champions set, the 1984 Action All-Stars, and the 1986 Action All-Stars:

Brewers and Strawberry, baby. I have no idea why I decided to scan Darryl Strawberry instead of either Paul Molitor or Cecil Cooper (who are both in that set), but let's not ask too many questions right now. Maybe I'm just trying to get Peter's attention, even though it's not 1995 Fleer.

Since Robby likes 80s music, here's a little Funky Cold Medina to get him more chicks.

Thanks, Robby, for the great 1980s sets!

As an aside, I had a little fun this summer reliving 1989 by rapping this song with friends. I know the words, still, without any help. 

I miss Spuds MacKenzie, though.

Finally, I got a single card PWE from my good friend Wes a/k/a Jaybarkerfan a/k/a Willinghammer Rising. Wes has decided to go dark on his blog for a while -- a decision that sucks for the rest of us but one I totally understand, what with my seeming inability to blog more than a handful of times per month as of late.

Anyway, Wes is making plans to hit up the National next year, and hopefully I'll be there too. 

It's the first time in three years that I have the summer reasonably open, so it's a good opportunity. You can see the card that Wes sent my way behind the message, but it's in such great shape, you need to see it by itself:

Billy Bruton was always a favorite of my grandfather and my mom. Bruton was born in Panola, Alabama -- a now unincorporated town that sits barely in Alabama and about 20 miles from Scooba, Mississippi -- the home of Last Chance U's featured school the past two years, East Mississippi Community College. 

Bruton got his chance in baseball thanks to scouting from the Negro Leagues. He had joined the Army for 6 months and, rather than returning to Alabama, he moved to Delaware instead. There, he got to play softball and sandlot baseball. It was there that his life changed. 

Specifically, Negro League great Judy Johnson -- who was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1975 -- got the Philadelphia Stars to sign Bruton. Johnson heard of Bruton on the recommendation of Johnson's youngest daughter. Bruton caught the eye of both Johnsons -- making Judy's daughter Mrs. Bruton.

Bruton lied about his age to get signed by the Milwaukee Braves, shaving two years off his 23 years to claim being 21. The Braves decided 21 wasn't young enough, so they called him 19. Only on his retirement from baseball did Bruton disclose his real age.

After retiring from baseball after the 1964 season at the age of 38 and after spending his last four years in baseball in Detroit, Bruton became an executive with the Chrysler Corporation. He spent 23 years there, working mainly in Detroit and rising to become a special assistant to Chrysler president, Lee Iacocca. He retired in 1988, and moved back to Delaware to life in his father-in-law's former home (Judy passed away on June 15, 1989). Bruton worked with charities there for several years before he suffered a heart attack while driving and passed away on December 5, 1995.

Apropos for Bruton, here's a brief video of him hitting a walk-off single in Game 1 of the 1958 World Series. Everything seemed so sedate in the 1950s...

Wes, many thanks for this card and for all the cards you've sent me through the years.

2017 Topps is Coming, but I'm Still Cracking 2016 Bowman Draft

The checklist for 2017 Topps is out. Well, I take that back. The checklist is not out, but the list of cards in Series 1 is. There are two pretty strange inclusions in the Brewers list of players. First off, we have Chris Capuano. Capuano pitched okay last season for the team in 16 appearances -- a 1-1 record, a 4.12 ERA in 24 innings -- but that should not have merited inclusion in the 2017 Topps set as a Brewer. That's especially true because Capuano did not pitch after May 25.

The other strange inclusion is Will Middlebrooks. The now 28-year-old Middlebrooks is no longer a prospect and is now four years removed from looking like a competent major-league hitter (his 2012 rookie year in Boston is looking like a fluke). Middlebrooks appeared in 10 games and got 31 plate appearances for the Brewers last year and has already signed with the Rangers for 2017 -- yet he got a card. Just 24 Brewers had more plate appearances last year, including six starting pitchers.

Why do these two get cards? Is it because they appeared in the major leagues before with more "important" teams (Middlebrooks with the Red Sox, Capuano with the Mets, Dodgers, Red Sox, and Yankees)? Is it because Will Middlebrooks is married to Jenny Dell and she demanded he get a card?

I'd rather see Brent Suter -- the 27-year-old Harvard grad whom the Brewers selected in the 31st round of the 2012 draft -- get a card than either of these two. Suter appeared in 14 games and threw 21.2 innings, including 2 wins and a 3.0 K/BB ratio. The fact that he's a genuinely nice guy does not hurt either -- at least he has been in my interaction on Twitter with him. 

Anyway, all that is just to prove that Topps can't win with me. Include fringe players, and I complain as to which fringe players are included. Overlook my guys, and feel my wrath. Right? 

Topps/Bowman did not overlook the Brewers, though, in the recent 2016 Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects release. The Brewers were well-represented -- though, once again, there were some head-scratching inclusions. I signed up for the charity case break for this product through Crackin' Wax (I feel like I should call him "my old friend" by this point). I got all the Brewers, of course, and plenty of first-round pick Corey Ray out of Louisville. 

Let's see the chrome cards of these guys. 

Mario Feliciano was the Brewers second-round pick out of the Carlos Beltran Baseball Academy in Puerto Rico. He's a decent-sized catcher (6'1", 195 pounds) and just turned 18 years old on November 20. MLB Pipeline ranked him the 28th best prospect in the Brewers system as of the end of the season. 

Braden Webb was the Brewers third-round draft choice. He was an oddity -- a college freshman (at South Carolina) who was eligible to be drafted because he took two years off after high school and Tommy John Surgery. He was the Gamecocks Saturday pitcher, and he was named the National Pitcher of the Year by the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association. He did not make the Brewers top 30 prospects on MLB Pipeline. 

I guess perhaps because of his injury history and the fact that he pitched 102 innings at USCe, the Brewers did not have him pitch in games last year. So yes, we know that photo above is 100% a Photoshop job.

Ryan Cordell was the player to be named later in the Jonathan Lucroy deal with Texas. Cordell will be 25 on Opening Day this year, and he has spent the past two years at Double-A. He was the Rangers 6th best prospect; he's the Brewers 18th best prospect. He has a little pop and a little speed, but he'll need to get to Colorado Springs and show something quick. The Brewers have enough OF to stock a trout pond with them.

Corbin Burnes was the Brewers 4th round pick in 2016 out of St. Mary's College of California. He made it to the Low-A Wisconsin Timber Rattlers last year. He's got good stuff -- scouts say he has a low- to mid-90s fastball with an elite breaking ball and a good changeup. He struggled a little bit in Low-A with his control -- 5.0 BB/9 -- but he could move up reasonably quickly. He's rated as the Brewers 20th overall prospect.

Say hello to the guy that MLB Pipeline on Wednesday called the best LHP prospect in baseball, Josh Hader. The dude has crazy hair and a consistent 93-97 fastball, and in the past has been compared to Chris Sale. The Brewers got him in the Carlos Gomez trade to Houston. Thanks, Houston!

As of the end of last season, Hader was the Brewers third-best prospect. 

Trent Clark was the Brewers first round pick in the 2015 Draft, and received a $2.7 million bonus for it. He's made a couple of trips to the DL last year due to hamstring troubles, which limited his at-bats last year at the age of 19. He's a true center fielder, but he's projected to be able to hit enough to play a corner.  

MLB Pipeline rated him the Brewers sixth-best prospect at the end of 2016.

Marcos Diplan is a pitcher the Brewers got as part of the Yovani Gallardo trade with the Rangers. He's a Dominican who pushed all the way through full-season baseball at the age of 19 last year. He dominated the Midwest League in 70 innings -- 1.80 ERA and just 6.3 hits allowed per nine while walking 4.1/9 innings and striking out 11.4 per nine innings. He got hit a bit in the Florida State league after that, but he was 4 years younger than his competition there.

MLB Pipeline slots him in as the 12th best Brewers prospect.

Luis Ortiz is another Rangers refugee, having come over from Texas in the Lucroy trade. He's had some injuries -- a groin muscle pull last year, for instance. That injury question is the big question over his potential.

MLB Pipeline's write-up for Ortiz says that he has the stuff to profile as a possible number 2 starter if he can stay healthy. On that potential, he finished the year as the Brewers 4th best prospect.

Oh, Silly Billy Philly. Phil Bickford was listed as the 5th best prospect in the Brewers system at the end of last year. However, he will be cooling his jets on the sidelines for the first 50 games of the 2017 season for testing positive for a "drug of abuse" -- probably marijuana, which he tested positive for in June of 2015 as well, apparently. He was the focal point of the Will Smith trade with the Giants last year.

A little bit of the luster is off Brett Phillips's prospect sheen after last year. He only slashed .229/.332/.397 at Double-A Biloxi and struck out 154 times. Still, he will not turn 23 until May 30 this year, so I would anticipate that he makes the move to Triple-A Colorado Springs. He dropped from being the 2nd best prospect in the Brewers system to being number 7 at the end of the year. He fell behind Trent Clark and Josh Hader, and Corey Ray slotted in ahead of him.

Speaking of Corey Ray: the Brewers first-round draft pick in 2016 and the 5th pick overall out of the University of Louisville, MLB Pipeline rated him the Brewers 2nd best prospect. He had surgery for a torn meniscus in his knee after the season ended. 

He has a gun in the outfield, and he runs well enough to play center. He may not, though, have the instincts on balls in center (according to "some scouts").

All in all and as you can see, the Brewers were rightfully well-represented in the 2016 Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects set. If I had to nitpick a bit, I would wonder where the number 1 Brewers prospect -- Lewis Brinson -- is. I might also wonder where 46th overall pick Lucas Erceg is -- he could move up quickly in the system since he's practically the only third-base prospect in the system at 17th overall. 

Still, that is nitpicking. It was fun to get a huge stack of cards of multiple players from a case break from a new product for a change. Many thanks go out to "Topher" and his wife "Literal Quirk" for all the hard work they put in to make these breaks a success.

Wrestling with a Trade Box from Jaybarkerfan

In late November and early December, Josh Willingham Supercollector Jaybarkerfan 
opened up his sizeable trade vault for a tradeathon. People could claim up to five cards from the dozens that JBF posted. I saw one Warren Spahn card that struck my fancy and put a claim in on it.

JBF never leaves a trade package at just one card, though. Of course the envelope I got was packed to the top with incredible cards. Since JBF is a big wrestling fan, he'll agree when I say that these cards need their own entrance music.

I always loved the Macho Man's use of "Pomp and Circumstance" for his entry music. It made it much more enjoyable for me to play that song over and over and over again when we had to play it for graduation ceremonies at my high school. 

Speaking of a time long, long ago, let's start with a card that made the smile on my face grow larger and larger. My first year of law school in Athens was in 1995. It was Ray Goff's last year. That was Hines's sophomore year -- he stayed all four years at UGA.

Thanks to some injuries (Mike Bobo tore up his ACL, and Brian Smith got hurt for some games too) Hines ended up being our starting QB for several games. In a couple of other games, he was our starting RB. He was the slot receiver normally, though -- with WRs Juan Daniels and Brice Hunter getting most of the catches. Hines finished his career 82 passing yards shy of 1000 passing yards -- which would have been pretty cool to get since he gained 1,066 yards rushing and 1,965 yards receiving. 

I still don't know how that 1997 Georgia team did not do better than it did. That was Hines's senior year. Mike Bobo had a very good year. Robert Edwards did not do badly either (though he was hurt for the Tennessee game). And Champ Bailey was doing everything that Charles Woodson had done the year prior at Michigan, only better. Of course, the team leader in interceptions that season was none other than current Georgia head coach Kirby Smart -- who had 6. Those were, however, great days.

Okay, I have to move along more quickly than this if I am going to get this post done before midnight.

I've have a post in the past composed entirely of Ric Flair, so it should be no surprise to anyone that the 14-year-old Tony loved Ric Flair's ego, arrogance, and results. 

Going from a guy who might be the G.O.A.T. to a bunch of guys who may never even get a chance -- or who did get a chance and never did anything with it. The first six guys -- Carlos Corporan, Jose Mieses, Mike Kinkade, Dennis Sarfate, Ken Holmberg, and Nick Neugebauer -- never became stars of any kind. 

Corporan just signed on as a free agent with the Cubs after spending last year bounding from the Yankees to the Rays to the Marlins -- all in the minors or spring training. Holmberg and Mieses never made it to the majors. Neugebauer played for Milwaukee at the ages of 20 and 21 (14 total appearances) before his shoulder basically fell apart. Kinkade played 222 games in the majors -- none for Milwaukee -- and got 491 plate appearances as a utility guy (though he did bring Bill Pulsipher to Milwaukee in a trade). Finally, Sarfate appeared in 92 games for the Brewers, Astros, and mostly, for the 2008 Orioles.

The last four cards -- and yes, there were two Josh Hader autographs -- are all guys for whom there is still hope. Nathan Kirby was a first round compensation pick in 2015 out of UVA. He got into 5 games in the Midwest League in 2015, then did not pick in 2016 after Tommy John surgery. 

Hader, of course, is one of the Brewers top prospects who struggled some in his first exposure to the thin air in Colorado Springs. He may make his Brewers debut this coming year so long as things go okay for him. 

Trent Clark just turned 20 years old. He was the 15th pick overall in the first round of the 2015 draft for Milwaukee. He struggled last year with some injuries and the step up to the Midwest league. He'll repeat there this year in all likelihood.

The Ultimate Warrior was one of those guys in the 1980s who was a huge fan favorite. I tended to like the bad guys more than the fan favorites -- I was always something of a contrarian. He died in 2014 just after his induction into the WWE Hall of Fame. 

Again, being something of a contrarian, I rather like Ryan Braun. Would I have preferred that he do what he did in baseball without taking steroids? Absolutely. But has he put his mark on the Brewers organization and franchise history? Again, absolutely. It's tough to say what he would have done without steroids, but if this past season is any indication, he still would have been great.

So, for all y'all that hate Braun for being a steroid guy, feel free to get rid of your Braun cards by sending them to me. I'll take them.

Speaking of steroids, don't we have to think that Vince McMahon took steroids during his life? I mean looking at photos on Google, I think he had a bigger physique in the 1980s than I recalled, but dude got huge.

That said, his entrance music is pretty good. I never liked him generally -- whether being the good-guy announcer in the 1980s as the foil to Bobby Heenan or being the heel commissioner from the 1990s onward.

Going a bit old school here -- or as old school as reprinted chrome cards and Paul Molitor Blue Jay cards might allow. Speaking of guys getting bigger, I recall a story about Robin Yount after the 1979 season buying a Nautilus machine and putting on 20 pounds of muscle -- thereby turning himself from the stringbean kid we saw from 1974 to about 1979 into the man that he became when the clock struck 1980. 

That, or perhaps it was because when the 1980 season started, he was 24 years old and finally had become a man bodywise. I mean, his MVP season in 1982 was his age 26 season (he deserved it too...10.5 WAR that year, 1.8 WAR defensively putting him 7th overall, 9.8 WAR on offense was #1 as well). Think about that. It's too bad that half his career was wasted with teams that flailed around trying to figure out how to compete.

I had to put Bill Goldberg in here. He played defensive tackle for the University of Georgia (and he also shares my birthday). According to his appearance on Jim Ross's podcast back in 2014, Goldberg chose UGA because he was standing on a bar on his recruiting trip and someone handled him a big bottle of Wild Turkey. He had such an incredible time that he was sold on Athens.

I have also stood on a bar in Athens while drunk. Nobody handed me a bottle of Wild Turkey, but I did get a t-shirt for my troubles that, except for being white, looked like this one:

I wore it until it fell apart. I loved that shirt.

Let me be clear -- there were many more cards than this. But these player collection additions -- all of which were serial numbered -- were a great capper to yet another fantastic package from JBF. 

Thanks go out to Wes for a fantastic giveaway. Now, I need to find some Willinghams to send to you!