Rocked by the Suburbs

It's human nature to wonder from time to time what people think about you. Sure, psychologically speaking, you'll find more self-help websites preaching to you that you shouldn't care, but we all do it from time to time.

I'm lucky in the blogworld, though, that my reputation and personality is pretty clear: I'm the oddball guy. I love oddballs. Oddballs and the Brewers. I can say honestly that it has nearly always been in my nature to seek out things that are a bit different and to glom on to those things that I like while dispatching those I don't like. 

In card collecting, what that's meant is that I have a healthy appreciation for cards not issued by Topps, Donruss, Fleer, Upper Deck, Score, or Pacific as part of their regular sets. If a card came from police officers, as a giveaway at a stadium, in a regular-issue book/magazine, from a cereal box, with potato chips, dog food, or a fast-food meal, I will probably like it just a little bit more than if it's just another of the four inserts per pack or some stickergraph.  

That's my nature.

Thankfully, all y'all seem to know that about me.

For instance, I received a PWE this week from Tony Burbs of Wrigley Roster Jenga. 

Yeah, not all that original to go to Ben Folds, but it's a great song. I mean, I can relate to being male, middle class, and white, and the lyrics give me a built in theme post musically! So let's rock the suburbs and go through the great cards -- and oddballs -- that Tony sent to me.

1.  Rockin' the suburbs just like Michael Jackson did

Let's be clear: this song is irony, and it is intended to make light of things that are definitely first world problems. Being clever is a skill, and it seems a number of reviewers weren't clever enough to figure out that Ben Folds was, indeed, employing irony when writing this song (real irony, not 10,000 spoons when you need a knife irony).

So, Michael Jackson rocking the suburbs? Sure -- back in the early 80s, what self-respecting 10-year-old didn't try to moonwalk?

Not that I could, but everyone who tried dancing ever in the early and mid-1980s had to try to throw a moonwalk into their repertoire. Michael Jackson in 1983 was a 100% badass. 

What cards did Tony send me that go with this?



Police cards from the late 1990s from Prairie du Chien -- in the western part of the state on the Mississippi RIver -- of course. I've never been to Prairie du Chien, so I've never had the pleasure of visiting PDC's third-best place to go: Valley Fish & Cheese.

By 1997, the Brewers or their baseball card sponsors had given up on the preachy, long-winded advice from the early 1980s to pithier, terser statements more easily remembered by a five-year-old.

For instance, here's the 1982 back of Robin Yount's card extolling the virtues of the buddy system when swimming.

By the time 1997 rolled around, kids apparently couldn't be arsed to read five sentences or draw parallels between turning double plays and swimming in pairs. Instead, we get the truncated version of the same advice on the back of Eddy Diaz's card:

It seems off that a card from a guy from Venezuela would feature advice about ice skating in pairs. Then again, by this point, the card makers had given up on the charade of having a player giving advice, and, instead, have an anthropomorphic ball with odd, soulless eyes and matchstick arms and legs advising kids not to swim or ice skate alone. 

And Brewers fans wonder why the team sucked in the late 1990s? Clearly, everyone had given up and said, "aw, to hell with it. No one will notice anyway."

2.  Rockin' the Suburbs just like Quiet Riot Did

Damn, Ben Folds nailed it with this song. An angry band to allow us white, middle-class kids (and those of us like myself who grew up as far less well off than middle class but lived in middle class worlds) to express our anger by singing along with a song.

It's a weird video with the padded cells and all with the late Kevin DuBrow behind the metal mask. Just remember to Bang Your Head!

Cards? Oh yeah, I almost forgot. We're talking about cards here.  Let's see...let's go with the four remaining weirder cards.

 

Darren Ford was drafted out of high school in the 18th round of the 2004 draft by the Brewers. He liked playing for the West Virginia Power, racking up a .299/.372/.424 line in 820 plate appearances there with 12 homers and 100 stolen bases in 176 games. Ford eventually was traded to the Giants with another minor leaguer for Ray Durham in 2008, and he made it to the majors for 16 total plate appearances (33 games) in 2010 and 2011. He is 30 now and he signed up to continue as organizational depth for the Giants on January 13, 2016.

Otherwise, we've got a 1990 Robin Yount Watertown Police Department card. I've been to Watertown in my life; when I was a little kid, my mom dated a guy who lived there. Strange place.

Then, we've got the King of Clubs, Cal Eldred. I'm not sure I'd want to be on the king of clubs playing card if I were a pitcher, but I'm guessing Cal didn't have much input into that decision.  

Finally, it's the weird one. The unnamed player -- clearly Robin Yount -- on a card with a half-empty beer stein as the team's logo with a fake interview on the back about how the team he's on is "flat and faceless, with no identity, no personality, and no pizazz." The "Confex Baseball Enquirer" tried hard to be funny, and that's probably why it is really not all that funny at all.

3.  Rockin' the Suburbs just like Jon Bon Jovi did

Jon Bon Jovi is okay. 





I liked Deadliest Catch for a while. What can I say.

I mean, Bon Jovi's songs are catchy -- whether solo or with the band that bears his revised last name -- but they are a lot like cotton candy...lots of sugar, sweet for a while, but in the end full of air and unsatisfying.  At least to me. Your mileage may vary. 

But, with that in mind, I'm grouping the last cards I scanned from the PWE together because, while they are cool and all, they are just "normal" cards from the big guys.



Don't misunderstand -- I like these cards. For the most part, our only option these days comes from Topps, and they put out some pretty good cards. Upper Deck may return to baseball some day, and that would be cool too because they had some nice designs in their time as well.

That said, 9 times out of 10, I'll take the weird.




And that, folks, is number 10.  To make the song better, I recommend playing the video at double speed and watching the badass dance moves that dude throws down.

Tony, thank you very much for the great PWE!

Card Show Goodies: Cheap and Shiny? Yes, Please!

Last week Sunday, in preparation for a week of dealing with family coming to town, I treated myself to a trip to a card show. It's one of the normal monthly shows here promoted by Frank Moiger, but I went to the East Cobb version instead of the North Fulton version.  None of that means much of anything to you, probably, but it meant a little different group of vendors for me.  

I focused on cheap for me this time around. I did pay a little more for some on-card prospect autographs...but, you know, that happens sometimes.  In fact, let's see those autographs:

Yes, another Damien Magnifico -- just days after my first one.  This one is a die-cut Magnifico, serial numbered to 100.  All of these were $3 a piece or 4 for $10.  I got a few other cards from the same guy out of some quarter boxes too; these cards included, incredibly enough, these:

I think I grabbed nearly every Brewer in the box -- mainly because I needed them, of course. But to find purple refractors, Museum Collection, a 2005 Fleer National Pastime card of Robin Yount serial numbered to 650, and even the base and gold parallels of Ryan Braun's Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects rookie card (and the 2010 Bowman Refractor) for a quarter each was just an awesome find for me.  

And now, even more shininess...

Le Disko by the band Shiny Toy Guns gets to introduce the shiny Prizms and refractors that were sold at 6 for $1 (and obviously, I cherry picked from this selection for five of the prettiest:

I'm not a huge Panini Prizm fan, if only because Prizm has so many damn parallels to track. Also, the base silver cards are, frankly, ugly. I'd prefer that Prizm make the red or the green their base cards and shelve those stupid silver ones.  I have yet to see a base Prizm card that I looked at and said, "That's a cool card." On the other hand, the Gallardo, Aoki, and Weeks cards above are cool cards due to the shiny colors.  

The 2010 Gallardo refractor and the 2014 Segura Orange Refractor are your typical Topps Chrome cards, I suppose.  I'm not a huge fan of the orange refractor mainly because I just don't like the color orange and it does not look good for the Brewers either.  Maybe for the Mets or Marlins, but not for Milwaukee.

Okay, last group of cards.  

We'll go "vintage" REM for these.

Yes, it's all about the vintage.  These 6 cards cost me a total of $30. Obviously the Mathews 1962 is the top of that chart, and the Spahn win leaders was next. It's always good to see the seller who has these cards, as he is a longtime promoter and seller in the Atlanta market. He has a great network to find good cards, and these are ones I'm glad he found.

Two more new packages came in the mail yesterday for me, so this week should be a good one for blogging if I can find the time. Thanks for reading.

Trading with Trader Cracks

As a team collector with many, many player collections, one of my biggest frustrations is trying to put together accurate checklists.  For major releases in years past for Topps, I used to rely almost entirely on sight -- my memory is generally pretty good about recognizing cards of the past that I don't have.  

For the post-1981 major releases and oddballs released before about 1995, a combination of Trading Card Database and the 2011 Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards usually gets me the information I need.  I think the publisher has stopped trying to update this book for recent cards and continues only to publish the Standard Catalog of Vintage Baseball Cards for cards before 1981.  

For cards from 1995 through 2000 -- which is as far as I have gotten so far -- it's been more of a combination of Trading Card Database mixed in with BaseballCardPedia.com.  I have found that the early years of parallels and inserts on TradingCardDB tend to be very hit-or-miss, with everything classified as inserts and little information regarding which cards in the inserts or which parallels were more limited in the numbers of cards printed or which were serial numbered. That's where BaseballCardPedia comes in.

But, when I first got back into the hobby and started trying to figure out what was what in the 2014 Topps blasters I bought, the first website I went to was Cardboard Connection.  For more recent releases, I have found that their layout on parallels and inserts -- especially now that they have added team names with player names on their release checklists -- is the most user friendly for my uses.  I'm also a bit biased in their favor because, in November of last year, Cardboard Connection included a link to my post called "The Ghosts of First Rounds Past" when I highlighted what players the Brewers might have selected instead of either Rickie Weeks in 2003 or Ben Sheets in 1999.

The guy responsible for much of the heavy lifting at Cardboard Connection (and the guy responsible for posting that link in November) is Ryan Cracknell. By that, I mean he posted 7 different stories on April 10 alone.  Ryan also tweets fairly regularly (most of you follow him, I'm sure, but if not, you should) and he also has two different blogs -- one here on Blogspot highlighting his set-building needs and one with its own domain of TraderCracks.com.
A couple of weeks ago, I noticed that he had a ton of 2013 Topps Series 2 needs. After my case break last year, I have about 6 of every card from that set in hand (hey, if you need something from that set, please email me!).  So, I reached out to Ryan on Twitter and asked him to e-mail me his address.  I sent him the cards, and he was kind enough to send cards back.  

Now, Ryan is from Nanaimo, British Columbia (it says so on his Twitter profile).  I've never been to Nanaimo, but I have been to Vancouver.  I know -- they aren't even close to one another and, indeed, the only ways to get between the two appears to be taking a ferry. So, my apologies to Ryan upfront for going with the big city people know rather than his city, but I wanted an excuse to post my own travel ratings for Vancouver -- with pictures and cards!

Prettiest sights in Vancouver:

If you go to Vancouver, please, go to Stanley Park. The sheer size of this park is incredible -- 400 hectares. When people think of rainforests, they immediately think tropical.  But, Stanley Park and Vancouver prove that a temperate rainforest can be just a spellbinding sight to see. Just imagine what that "stump" must have looked like as a tree...

To me, this "Robbed in Center" insert from 2015 Topps is an appropriate start and match for this gorgeous tree.  The majesty of the home run being stolen -- and Gomez's incredible ability to do it almost regularly -- mesh well with the trees of Stanley Park.

Added Culture in the Park: The Totem Poles

These totem poles are replicas of the originals, which are located in the climate-controlled comfort of a museum.  They are impressive and cool, but they are just a replica...

...which reminds me of the multiple parallels that Topps put out last year.  This is a gold parallel of Ryan Braun, serial numbered to 2014, of course.  It's just a replica of the real base card.

The Strange and Difficult to Explain

I'm not quite sure what would differentiate Afro-Canadian food.  Is it Ethiopian style but using salmon a bunch? Is it a weird melange of Egyptian, Moroccan, South African, and Gambian food with poutine on the side?

It's like trying to figure out what "game used memorabilia" has been inserted in this Tyler Thornburg auto/relic from Bowman Platinum.  It looks like some weird undershirt or something.

Throwbacks in History

John "Gassy Jack" Deighton was from Hull, England, and an entire portion of Vancouver along the north coast of downtown is called "Gastown" because of him.  According to Wikipedia and according to local lore, he got his nickname because of his storytelling and because he never stopped talking.  

Considering he appears to be standing on a makeshift beer keg, I'm thinking the nickname came from another gas. But, in the name of being talkative and on a throwback-style card...

...we have Carlos Gomez, who genuinely enjoys playing the game of baseball and, at times, has trouble closing his mouth.

Serenity 

Right in the middle of Vancouver is the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden, which in 2011 was named by National Geographic as the best city garden in the world.  It was the first Chinese "scholars" garden built outside of China, and it is, of course, located in Vancouver's Chinatown.  It is a small garden, but I spent at least a good hour just chilling out in the gardens.

With superlatives like that and the historic first tied to the garden, I think putting up the two cards that Ryan sent to me of the first player enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame as a Milwaukee Brewer is appropriate.

Hop on a Water Taxi

In my Peoria post, I mentioned how I am a sucker when it comes to getting on boats or ferries. In Vancouver, I took a water taxi to the Granville Island Market.  

I'm also always going to take the opportunity to get parallels and inserts and Brewers autographs.  Despite complaints from time to time about the number of parallels, I still collect these.

Just Stunning 

Probably my favorite sunset view in all of my travels is this one, from the balcony of my hotel room in Vancouver.  The brilliant shades of yellow, red, and orange, the foothills of the mountains, and the water -- and the fact that I took this photo at about 9:30 PM -- all combined to make a favorite.

And, of the cards Ryan sent, this Jean Segura was my favorite.  The reasonably small serial number, the blue on-card autograph, and the fact that this photo is different from most of the other Segura photos Topps has used make this the best of the lot.

Thank you, Ryan, for the excellent cards that you sent, and thank you for the hard work you do with Cardboard Connection.  Both are greatly appreciated.