A Writer's Journey Trade

One of the first blogs I ever read when I was starting in the baseball card blog world was The Writer's Journey. I know a lot of folks in the blog world started by reading and following Night Owl, but for me TWJ was the one that got me thinking about blogging. I started reading even before I got my baseball cards shipped to me from my mom's house. His posts on baseball cards made me want to get back into collecting.

And yet, after reading, I was thoroughly intimidated. He was writing about everything that I wanted to write about -- books, music, baseball cards, and television -- but he was doing much better at writing about all of them than I could dream of doing. And he was covering things like toys and movies and photos in a way that I never would. 

JT is a real writer. I mean, he's actually a published author for a short story he wrote. 

And yet, this post is the first time that I've mentioned him or traded with him at all. It's sort of funny -- intimidation, that is. It can lead us to avoid talking to or corresponding with someone for years because we feel inadequate, or know we'll be inadequate. Then, when we finally talk to that person, we are disarmed by how wonderfully pleasant and friendly they are.

This is a long way to say that JT and I talked back and forth on Twitter a bit, and he agreed to send me some cards. I need to package up my response package yet -- with various things here, it will probably be this weekend -- but it was good to realize that JT is just another good person in the blogosphere.

Since he likes music a lot, I thought I'd post some music that I've heard here live in Atlanta (or even in Athens) in my life in small bars, clubs, lounges, or little theaters to thank him for the cards he sent.

This is Ultrababyfat live from the Star Bar in February 1999. I wish I had seen this show, but I had literally just moved to Atlanta on February 15 of 1999. I caught them at Star Bar about a year later. Star Bar is in the Little Five Points area in Atlanta, and it's a damn cool bar. In 2001, I went to "Bubbapalooza" there -- a three-day rockabilly festival on that little stage (and one outside). It's just an awesome dive bar with a great lineup of bands that may never ever make it anywhere and that's not what drives them. 

Seriously, though, this place is worth a visit if you like music and you make it to Atlanta. Just expect a very diverse crowd.



Eclectic and diverse is a good way to describe the package that JT sent my way. It definitely had focus in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but it also had a bunch of other things thrown in that were full of surprises. 

Not unlike local music, to be fair. You never know what a band is going to be like...like this next band:

The Unsatisfied was another band that a buddy and I saw at Star Bar. Now that I think about it, I think they were one of the bands who opened for Ultrababyfat. The band is from Chattanooga, and I think the lead singer of this band is sort of a cross between Jim Morrison, Steven Tyler, Adam Ant, and Iggy Pop. The guy is strangely magnetic to watch, even if the sound quality here isn't all that great.



Paul Molitor doesn't really have anything to do with any of that, other than the Adam Ant part. Maybe.

This next band, The Stimulants, I think was the first band I saw literally on the same night as Ultrababyfat and the Unsatisfied. Either I was hammered and thought everyone was great, or else that night just left an impression on me. Actually, I'm pretty sure I was at least somewhat drunk because I bought CDs from all three bands. I really liked UBF. The Stimulants were next best to me. The Unsatisfied? Eh...



"Eh" pretty much describes my reaction to the deluge of "Classic" cards that started in 1987 and ended in the early 1990s. I remember the early 1990s very well, and these pastel-ish purple cards stylewise were about 5 years out of date at least at that point. Add in the "91" written in what looks to be a McDonald's font (that red and yellow together screams fast food!), and you have a really ugly baseball card.

Still, the photography is still better than the over-treated Panini stuff that shows up on those Prizm cards.

Royal Fingerbowl was a band that came out of New Orleans in the early 2000s led by the now-legendary Alex McMurray. As a live band, it featured a singer, a stand-up bass, and a sousaphone. Seriously. A couple of us saw Royal Fingerbowl play at a long-gone dive called Echo Lounge in East Atlanta. It was our group of three people joined by approximately 8 to 10 other people. 

I totally had no idea why the crowd was so small after listening to them play. Despite the music being a bit dour at times -- or, as McMurray's bio says, "most of the time" -- it's actually excellent music in my opinion.

Speaking of "a bit dour," Prince Fielder's retirement is still a bit too close in time. The one bright spot here is that the "superstar celebration" actually ended up in my Ryan Braun collection since it already appears in my Fielder collection.

Kevn Kinney is the lead singer of southern rock band Drivin' N Cryin'. I happened across a show earlier this year on PBS where DNC was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame, and it was an incredible show to watch. I've loved Drivin' N Cryin' since my freshman year of college 26 years ago. 

I've seen Kinney play shows by himself in Athens, and I even happened to run into him hanging out in Athens in a nearly empty bar during spring break in 1996. I stayed in town during that break my first year of law school, and I went out for beers with a girl from my class to watch her beloved BU Terriers hockey team on TV. Kinney was just hanging by the door acting like the doorman, but he could hardly see my ID because of poor eyesight. It was funny and sad all at once.

But the guy is a legend.



Two of those guys are legends. Mark Loretta was a good player, and maybe someday Taylor Jungmann will be a Brewer legend. Maybe. 

I do love that Rollie Fingers card, though. It's like Night Owl said yesterday about Archives in that it's kind of cool to see a card with the same design as a year the guy was on the team but with a very different card. It's like a cool variation.

One more song from Kevn Kinney: "Baseball Cards and Bicycles"

JT, thank you very much for the cards and, a couple of years ago, the inspiration to blog.

Brewers From Brad's Blog

When people move houses, it is often one of the few times in their lives where they strongly consider whether some particular item, box, or piece of furniture is worth keeping. My wife and I moved into our house three years ago. Even though we were moving into a larger house, we still made choices on what to bring along and what to let the vultures that were our neighbors pick through.

Brad of Brad's Phillies Blog is moving this weekend. To aid in his move, he asked the blogworld to help him out by taking cards off his hands. Many of us -- all in the interest of helping a fellow blogger, of course, and not from any selfish desire to get more cards...of course -- signed on to help. I was the recipient of a fantastic load of cards mostly from my Achilles' heel of collecting: the late 1990s.  

There were other, more recent cards too, though. In fact, let's start with cards from this year:

I'm still playing catch-up with some of the run-of-the-mill sets from Topps from 2015. I picked up a case break and box break of Heritage, so I'm good there. And, I have most of the Topps flagship set covered other than short prints and needing one more copy of the Brewers Team card. Now, I'm starting to get closer on Ginter.

By the way, farewell to Adam Lind, who was traded today to the Seattle Mariners for three teenaged pitchers. Basically, the Brewers picked up Marco Estrada off waivers, flipped him to the Jays for Lind (where Estrada suddenly became a competent pitcher again), and now flipped Lind for three international-signing pitchers. I mean, it's not the Braves stealing ex-Vanderbilt Commodore Dansby Swanson, but it's a pretty good trade for a rebuilding Brewers team.

Now the Brewers need a first baseman. Rumor has it that they might sign their bench coach's son-in-law -- former Vanderbilt Commodore Pedro Alvarez. Damn, if that happens, I kinda hope Alvarez tears it up and forces the Brewers to re-sign him. I kinda want a Vandy guy to collect.

Okay, we need music:

That is "Twist" by a late '90s/early '00s Atlanta band called Ultrababyfat. The blond you see playing bass in that video is Britta Phillips. Her claim to fame is that she was the singing voice for Jem in the original cartoon series in the late 1980s in addition to later being in the bands Luna and Dean & Britta (with her husband Dean Wareham). 

The lead singer is Shonali Bhowmik. Shonali is both a fellow Vanderbilt graduate and a fellow law school grad. She went to Emory, and I went to Georgia (though I started at Georgia the year she graduated, and she probably graduated college before I started there too). And, she also hosted the NPR show "Ask Me Another" before current host Ophira Eisenberg.

...

Wow, that was a digression. I always wondered why Ultrababyfat never got bigger than they did -- which was being a really good local band. I saw them a couple of times here in town and loved their sound.

Anyway, I'd better show y'all some cards before you leave.

How about a couple of prospects? Or, perhaps non-prospects. Giacalone was a 16th round pick in 2012 out of Neosho County Community College. He hit very well in the Pioneer League in both 2012 and 2013, but struggled a bit in the Midwest League to start 2013. When you're a 16th round pick, you don't get second chances, and the team just discarded him. Now, he's 23 and just finished his second season in the independent Frontier League in Joliet, and he's trying to pitch.

Nicky Delmonico started with Baltimore in 2012. He came to the Brewers in 2013 in the trade that sent Francisco Rodriguez to Baltimore for a half season. Delmonico missed time in 2014 for some personal issues, then got spanked with a 50-game suspension for amphetamine use (Adderall, in fact).  The Brewers then cut him because, as then-farm director Reid Nichols said, "We couldn't contact him. He wouldn't return calls. We couldn't find him." Delmonico now has clearance to use the Adderall for his ADD, and he played in the White Sox organization last year.

Now, how about the 1990s?



How about THAT mid-1990s goodness? Everything from 1996 Circa to 1995 Score Gold Rush to 1994 Score to those Topps knockoffs of Kellogg's cards that Topps called "IIID". These are awesome and awful and cool and car crashes all at once. Just like the mid-1990s really were.

I mean, I had to put a song from Brad here, right? Everyone's heard of Brad, right? You know, the Stone Gossard/Jeff Ament side project? I saw them play in a basement club here in Atlanta on a Wednesday night in 2001 before about 50 people. It was a great show -- well worth it.

Brad, thank you very much for all the great cards and good luck with the move. One hint: make yourself and your wife empty all the boxes and get them out of the house and THEN figure out where stuff goes. Seriously -- it works!