Autographs and No Hitters

I had to drive about two total hours today to take a deposition for work. It gave me time to think about whether I wanted to post today. I decided I did because depositions often suck. Today's pretty much did.

Depositions are sometimes fun, sometimes painful, and oftentimes frustrating. I sit in a conference room with a court reporter, another lawyer, and a witness -- in the simplest cases, that is...in more complicated cases, there may be 5 or 6 other lawyers in attendance in person or by phone and there may be a videographer present as well -- and I literally ask questions to the witness about events that took place one, two, or more years ago and expect the witness to have perfect recollection about seemingly inconsequential events that now have consequence. 

In the most frustrating cases, you end up with a witness who is long on generalities, short on specifics, but swears constantly that their generalities covered everything in the case perfectly. Then you ask them, "did you send an email about this" and their answer is "oh no, we did everything verbally."

No one does everything verbally anymore except witnesses who really didn't do what they said they did and are trying to claim they were perfect and your guys were the cheats, liars, scammers, and phonies.

It's a great system, let me tell you.

That said, last night about 12:45, the power flipped off in my house randomly for about 15 minutes. It woke me up, of course -- we have fans going in our room for white noise and to cool us off, and it gets deathly quiet without them. My nature is that I do not snooze or hit the snooze bar -- ever. Once I'm up, I'm up. That's a problem when I've only slept 3 hours, like last night. 

But, that inability to fall back asleep meant that I was awake at about 2:15 AM Eastern when Mike Fiers was trying to close out his second no-hitter of his career. I actually got to see the final out thanks to some guy on Twitter live streaming the TV feed using his camera on his phone, which was cool. 

It got me thinking today -- how many guys who have thrown no-hitters do I have autographs from? The answer was, "More than I thought."

There's the guy that started the discussion. Mike Fiers is one of only 35 pitchers to throw multiple no-hitters in his career, and he is one of only seven pitchers to throw no-hitters on more than one team -- Jim Bunning, Ted Breitenstein (1890s pitcher who threw a no-no in his first major league start), Randy Johnson, Hideo Nomo, Cy Young, and Nolan Ryan are the others.

Speaking of Nolan Ryan:

I'm pretty sure this is authentic. It was the result of an autograph request through the mail in the mid-1980s. While Nolan Ryan never threw a no-hitter against Milwaukee, he did win his 300th game against Milwaukee at Milwaukee County Stadium.

Speaking of the Brewers:

The one, the only is still Juan Nieves. Nieves threw his no-hitter in the middle of the 1987 Brewers 13-game season-opening win streak on April 15, 1987. He blanked the Baltimore Orioles 7-0 thanks to two great plays in the outfield -- one by Robin Yount and the other by the immortal Jim Paciorek -- and thanks to scattering 7 walks...

Two more Brewers ties. The first one is pretty weak, but hey -- I've got an autograph from the guy:

Carlos Villanueva never threw a no-hitter in the majors, but he was a part of a minor-league no-hitter as a Nashville Sound in 2006 in the Brewers system. I know -- kinda weak.

The next one is not weak, but he didn't throw his no-hitter as part of the Brewers:

Len Barker threw the first perfect game in the American League against a team using a designated hitter. He threw his perfecto on May 15, 1981 against the Toronto Blue Jays. Barker was never known for having good control, so his no-no may have been one of the most unlikely perfect games in baseball history.

Speaking of the Toronto Blue Jays:

Stieb returned the favor to the Cleveland Indians on September 2, 1990, throwing the first no-hitter in Toronto Blue Jays history. Stieb famously lost three other no-hitters previously by giving up hits with two outs in the ninth inning.

Many of us thought Dave Stieb had a chance for the Hall of Fame while he was pitching. He was good for a long time -- but not long enough.

Unlike the next no-hit hurler:

Hall of Famer Bert Blyleven threw a no-hitter on September 22, 1977 as a member of the Texas Rangers. He threw the no-hitter against the California Angels in his final start as a member of the Rangers. He was traded in the off-season to the Pirates in a four-team trade.

Blyleven was inducted into the Hall of Fame as a Minnesota Twin. This next guy never threw a no-hitter as a Twin, but he did combine on a no-hitter in spring training.

I got Viola's autograph in-person at a Brewers/Twins game in 1986 or 1987. Viola, Hrbek, Brunansky, Kirby -- all of them were incredibly nice guys even to Brewers fans.

Three more left, and all of these guys threw their no-hitters in the National League.

Fernando Valenzuela threw a no-hitter on June 29, 1990. Earlier that same day, his former Dodgers teammate Dave Stewart had thrown a no-hitter against the Toronto Blue Jays. Having watched that, he turned to his teammates and supposedly said, "That's great, now maybe we'll see another no-hitter." And Fernando went out and blanked the St. Louis Cardinals, scattering three walks and an error.

Perhaps the autograph most dear to me in recent vintage is this Charlie Lea card. I got this from Charlie about a year before he died. More importantly, I got the card because I was working at the time with his son Brian, who himself pitched some but who is an academic and legal stud who clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas on the U.S. Supreme Court. Brian passed along that his dad loved that I remembered him for this very card -- the huge wad of chewing tobacco in his mouth featuring, of course -- so Charlie sent me an autographed one and one of his 1981 Fleer cards.

And finally, a story about no-hitters and autographs would not be complete without this ball. It's a late-in-life autograph of the great Warren Spahn that my good friend Wes f/k/a Jaybarkerfan sent me a couple of years ago as part of our monster trading war. Those were fun days, what with seven priority mail boxes packed full of Brewers and Milwaukee Braves showing up in the space of less than a month.

So, what about you -- do you have any autographs from guys who threw no-hitters?

Bubblegum from JBF

I need to learn how to write up posts more effectively. I get behind, a couple of days or even weeks pass, and I find myself feeling terrible for being terribly behind. I was almost caught up a month ago when the winnings from a Jaybarkerfan a/k/a Willinghammer Rising World Series of Trading package showed up. 

I claimed one card that Wes posted -- I'd like to think that it was posted with me in mind: 

That's a 2014 Topps High Tek Autographs Disco Diffractor serial numbered to 50. I jumped all over that card as fast as I could. 

Wes being Wes, he couldn't just send that single card. No sir. Instead, a bubble mailer arrived filled with great cards for my collection and even an oddball set.

This 1986 Topps Baseball Champion Superstars set was produced specifically for Woolworth's. Wes made sure that this set was 100% complete. In fact, here's the first thing I pulled out of it.

I did not make any effort to chew that 31-year-old gum. No thanks. I remember being in high school in 1988 or 1989 and I spent some money I had made at my summer job on getting an unopened box of 1984 Topps. I actually chewed some of that then 4-to-5-year-old gum, and it was pretty terrible. I can't imagine what gum older than Clayton Kershaw would taste like, nor would I want to.

That said, the gum did give me an idea for a little music accompaniment. Of course: bubblegum pop music straight out of the late 1960s.

Let's start with the Lemon Pipers and their song "Green Tambourine." This song was a massive hit -- reaching number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in early 1968 and being certified gold. It's a song about busking, at its core -- the singer asks people to drop money in his hat and he'll play his green tambourine in return. 

Sounds like a bad deal to me, since the sound of a tambourine by itself is as musically interesting as the sound of a triangle. 

The band itself never achieved as great of success as they did with this song. Reading their Wikipedia entry makes it easy to understand why: this song was written for them by their label and caused them to get forced into the bubblegum genre contrary to what they wanted to do -- which was more 60s-oriented blues, hard rock, and folk rock akin to Byrds and The Who. 

I usually make the card scans bigger than this, but this turned out so well on its own in the shape of a Christmas tree that I just had to leave it.

Let's talk about George Iskenderian. George (so I don't have to type his last name over again) grew up in Englewood Cliffs, NJ, and attended Don Bosco Prep. His first stop from there was to attend the University of South Carolina, where he spent his freshman year before he decided he had had enough of the Palmetto State and left. 

He told people publicly that he wanted to be closer to New Jersey, but he transferred instead to Indian River Community College in Fort Pierce, Florida. In fairness, that is closer to South Jersey (a/k/a South Florida) than South Carolina is. He got his wish to get closer to home after that and attended the University of Miami for his final year of college before the Brewers drafted him in the 7th round in 2015 and signed him.

He hit well in 2015 at Rookie Level Helena. He made his full-season debut in 2016 at Brevard County, but struggled with injuries some and played only 90 games. This year, he started at Biloxi poorly -- 3-for-38 with 2 BB and 16 Ks. He hit the DL, came off it, and then "was moved to Helena" in mid-May. Thing is, though, that he has not played since that time and his MILB.com biography lists his current status as "Suspended # days." I have not been able to find the reason for the suspension anywhere -- even the usually comprehensive Brewerfan.net message boards. 

But, if I read between the lines through his Instagram account, he may simply have quit and gone back to school.

Van wilder is headed to the beach #lastride

A post shared by George Iskenderian (@giskenderian7) on Jul 12, 2017 at 12:28pm PDT

 If so, good luck to him. 

Now, back to the music and the cards.

Here's a song I used to listen to regularly on a 45 RPM single as an 8-year-old -- "Yummy Yummy Yummy" by Ohio Express. Reading about Ohio Express and its history is pretty interesting. 

Basically, the group name was used by two producers -- Jerry Kasenetz and Jeffrey Katz -- to market music recorded by a whole host of different artists. In fact, this song was recorded by studio musicians in New York. If I were to try to provide a story of its history here, it would eat this entry. I mean, the Wikipedia entry for the band's career starts with this sentence: The question of who is the "real" Ohio Express is difficult to answer. 

So, take a read of that article rather than having me rewrite it here. 

Wes likes to send me great Georgia cards fairly regularly. This package featured the best basketball player ever to attend UGA -- Dominique Wilkins, whose leaving North Carolina and attending UGA became the subject of one of those "SEC Storied" shows on ESPN. 

The other two cards highlight the most disappointing season in UGA football history to me -- the 2007 season. It had everything: two typical Mark Richt losses -- one painful one against South Carolina (which I attended, final score of 16-12) and one "the team didn't show up" game against Tennessee (35-14 loss), which I watched at a local sports bar for about the first half of the first quarter and decided it would be rather better to forget the game and started drinking double Jack Daniels & Diet Cokes. That had the desired effect, as I have no recollection of anything of that game. 

It had the fruitless scoreboard watching, hoping that that Tennessee team would get upended by either Vanderbilt (Vandy blew a 24-9 lead, giving up 16 unanswered 4th quarter points) or Kentucky (Tennessee blew a 17-point lead but, Lazarus-like, was able to block a 35-yard field goal that would have beaten them in the second overtime and then stuff a 2-point conversion in the fourth overtime to win).

On the positive side, 2007 had the "dancing on Urban Meyer" game against Florida.  the blackout against Auburn, the Britney Spears win in overtime against Alabama, and the absolute annihilation of Hawaii in the Sugar Bowl. Yet, it's what could have been that season in those losses and the start of seeing the cracks in Mark Richt's coaching that really marked that season. 

This song was written for the animated series called "The Archie Show" about Archie, Jughead, Reggie, Betty, Veronica, and the rest of Archie's gang in Riverdale. The song was a massive hit -- finishing as the number one hit for the entire year in 1969 ahead of such (much better) songs as "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In," "Honky Tonk Women," "Sweet Caroline," "Come Together," and "Proud Mary."

This is another song that I had on a 45 record that I probably wore out as an 8-year-old. I loved reading the Archie comics as a kid too, so that probably had something to do with my enjoying the song.

Sweet candy to me is getting a new card or two for some of my player collections. To be honest, I'm not sure if these went into the player collections or not -- well, other than that Jonathan Lucroy Platinum Bunt card serial numbered to 99, which certainly did. But, these are all great cards for either the player or team collections. Especially that Yount prism, which looks really awesome in this scan.

Bubblegum pop music was huge in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was so huge that it literally led to a number of television shows, including The Partridge Family. Singer/actor David Cassidy was one of the heartthrobs to emerge from the show. Only Cassidy and Shirley Jones sang on this song; the rest of the musicians are from the now-famous Wrecking Crew group of studio musicians.

As was the case with The Archies in 1969, this song was massive in 1970. It hit number 1 in Australia, Canada, and on the Billboard and Cash Box charts in the US, though it oddly did not hit the year-end chart for Billboard. Weird.

Not weird are the five Warren Spahn cards that Wes sent to me to finish off this envelope. I have yet to finish my checklist of cards that I need for the Braves, a failure due mainly to my own lack of time to do the work and my own lack of effort into getting it done.

That happens when you don't make it home on weekends. 

Wes, thank you very much for the great package. You are truly a generous gentleman whom we in the blogworld are lucky to have with us.

A Card Show in June

About a month ago, my pal Joey a/k/a Dub Mentality tagged me and Dayf a/k/a Card Junk on Twitter with an announcement about a small card show at a local antique mall here in Atlanta. It gave me an excuse to get up and active on a Saturday morning when I otherwise might have just sat at home, so I marked the tweet and made sure to go.

I'm glad I did.

It had been a while since I had attended a local card show. In fact, it had been probably four or five months. As a result, the folks whose dime boxes I tend to clean out had restocked their supplies of Brewer cards. This led to a great show for me. I even found a non-Brewer I needed:

I know I have posted a lot of Pearl Jam songs here, but they are my favorite band. So, guess what? Y'all have to deal with them again.

While I know that "Last Kiss" -- a cover of a 60s song that PJ issued as a Christmas bonus vinyl to its fan club in 1998 before it was included on a charity album for Kosovar refugees in 1999 -- was PJ's highest ever charting song when it number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, "Even Flow" is to me one of the band's biggest hits. The band absolutely did not like the take that ended up on its album Ten, with guitarist Mike McCready saying that they redid the track 50 or 70 times and played it "over and over until we hated each other."

For what it's worth, Rolling Stone put this song at #77 on a list of the "100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time" and VH1 listed it at number 30 of the "100 Greatest Hard Rock Songs." After 26 years of hearing the song, I still like it. There's nothing new about it, but sometimes having those classic hits to go back to is a good thing.

Speaking of classics, here are some new cards of classic players from the Milwaukee Braves. I teased the Hank Aaron bat relic card on Twitter right after the show, and it got rave reviews. It's an early relic in terms of baseball card history, so perhaps it is a bat that Hank actually used in a game at some point as opposed to a bat he picked up in Upper Deck's offices, swung it once, and then it got called "event used."

The Spahn Cy Young award card is a super-thick manu-relic from about five years ago. Topps has gone to thinner manu-relics these days. I'm guessing that is a cost measure to save a few bucks on not buying real metal for the relic and saving a few pennies on card stock. 

The Hank Aaron Hall of Fame card just made me realize that there is an error in the Cramer Baseball Legends set that I wrote up for the 1980s Oddball blog yesterday. On the back of Aaron's card, it lists him as being inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1981, but he was inducted in 1982. Perhaps that was meant to mean that he was voted into the Hall in 1981. Of course, the real issue I'm having is that his card was included in the 1980 Series 1 set. While he was certainly guaranteed of induction, did Cramer's first issuance of that 1980 card really say he would be inducted in 1981? I'm all confused now.

Finally, those chrome Bowman cards are all nice and shiny. I appreciate the effort at times from Topps/Bowman to keep baseball's past greats in our consciousness by including them in new card sets. It's fun to get new Spahn cards, even if it is the same photo from the 2015 Archives set. I do wish that Topps expanded its pre-World War II player list to go beyond just Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, and Lou Gehrig to add some of the other greats of the 1920s and 1930s. Maybe an Al Simmons card? Or some of the guys in that Cramer Baseball Legends set that you never see in card sets these days like Rabbit Maranville. 

There's always room for improvement. As one law school professor I had once said, "There's nothing so impeccable that it can't be pecked at."

In 2009, Pearl Jam released its album Backspacer. The breakout hit from that album was this introspective ballad called "Just Breathe." Backspacer was a much more upbeat and optimistic and less political album than the band's previous efforts -- a fact that the band attributed to Barack Obama's election. 

The album was also the first time since 1998's Yield that the band worked with Atlanta-based producer Brendan O'Brien on a full album. Indeed, the album was finished at Southern Tracks studio here at Atlanta in April of 2009.

The show provided me an opportunity to stock up on some Ryan Braun cards. Braun is the longest-serving current Brewers player, having passed the ten-year mark with the team earlier this year. He's the team's all-time leader in home runs and, recently, became the team's all-time leader in grand slams. 

As far as other categories, he's third in career WAR (45.0), tied for second with Paul Molitor in batting average (.303), tied for sixth with Richie Sexson in OBP (.366), first in SLG (.544), second in OPS at .911 behind Prince Fielder's .929, fifth in games played with 1401, third in runs scored at 913, fifth in hits with 1642 (54 behind Jim Gantner), third in total bases, fourth in doubles, third in triples, second in RBI, fifth in walks, third in stolen bases, and second in extra base hits (having passed Paul Molitor earlier this year). 

He's creeping up on career totals that give him a potential Hall of Fame argument, or would had it not been for the Biogenesis stuff. Maybe that's what's preventing me from saying that I'd still collect his cards in another uniform, but he's not to that point yet. He's close.

This past Friday at work, four of us got into a very heated discussion about the fact that one of our co-workers did not see much difference between Pearl Jam and Journey. Needless to say, I lost a lot of respect for that misguided opinion coming from someone who otherwise is an educated man. 

I think the reason that he has such an incredibly wrong opinion is contained within another statement he made: that he's not a "live music guy." To me, that's the very essence of Pearl Jam. Their concert versions of songs simply are better than what gets laid down in the studio. The sound is warmer, less antiseptic. Vedder's vocals in concert are just better than what gets put down as a remixed studio track. 

Also, if you're not a "live music" guy or gal, your life priorities are wrong.

I found a vein of the Panini Diamond Kings as well. I think these were in a quarter box, which is slightly annoying for new issues but not as annoying as having a card called "originals" featuring Paul Molitor as a Minnesota DH. 

Still, if ever I were inclined to collect any particular Panini set, it would be the Diamond Kings set. I like the card stock with its canvas feel. The artwork and touch-ups taking these from being photos to make them into what look like paintings is of excellent quality -- much better than the garbage retouching that happens with the Donruss brand. 

On the other hand, that Aurora card of Jonathan Villar may be the most godawful insert of 2017. It's ugly as hell with all that orange coloration. Also, I am guessing that the Aurora insert is meant to signify some sort of sunrise or draw a parallel to a sunrise. If my sunrise has those colors appearing in that way, I'm thinking a nuclear bomb has been dropped.

This song is one that came off PJ's second album, Vs.. The song is a reaction to all the media coverage the band got in its early days, in part from "Spin", "Rolling Stone" and "Circus"; this led to the lyric, "SPIN me round, ROLL me over, f**kin' CIRCUS" in the song. The basic idea behind it is that the media used the band and bled them to "fill their pages."

I can understand how that would be a pain in the ass. No doubt. It's a rage song of guys tired of getting used to sell magazines. When PJ was at its height in the 1990s, people wanted that blood. They wanted that drama. Now that the band is more mature and its fans tend to be more mature, I think the band and its fans appreciate not the drama but the journey in getting there. 

But not the band Journey. 

The rich vein of Brewers cards I found also yielded some decent parallels, inserts, and autographs. Sure, the Carlos Lee card says he is on the Astros, and when the card was released he was. But he's shown on the Brewers so it's a Brewers card. For $1, I'll take that.

While I don't chase Wily Peralta cards and, therefore, have no real reason to pick up a silk card from 2013 serial numbered to 50, I think it was $0.50. For that, I'll take literally any serial numbered Brewers card that I don't have in my collection. Even a Gary Sheffield card.

The rest of these were all $0.50 or $1 or somewhere in that range. I got them all thrown in on a package deal with all the other dime and quarter cards, so I don't quite recall how much each was individually.  

Finally, "Light Years" was released in 2000 from the album Binaural. Recording this song was a chore from all indications. When it started out, it was too close to "Given to Fly" as a song. According to interviews the band has given, the song had its tempo changed, its keys changed, its drum part changed, and its arrangement changed dozens of times before it came together in its current form. 

The song itself is actually about the death of a friend. If you can find a copy of the lyrics, it is worth it to read them. At various times, the band has dedicated the song to Diane Muus of Sony Music (a friend of the band who died at age 33 in 1997) and to Gord Downie, whose band The Tragically Hip was playing their last show on the same night that Pearl Jam played Wrigley. Downie has been diagnosed with glioblastoma, a terminal brain cancer.

While the song is a bit of a downer, these cards are all really uppers. All of these are player collection cards for me. I think the Fielder manu-patch may have run me about $2, but the rest were all very affordable. 

As always, I recognize I am really lucky with how many card shows there are around Atlanta on a regular basis. With the recent Judge-mania gripping the hobby, there's some hope that this moment could be a real turning point for our hobby in bringing in new collectors -- particularly kids -- who are big fans of the young superstars of the day like Judge, Kris Bryant, and Mike Trout. 

Let's hope that Topps doesn't view this rise like the media viewed the rise of grunge -- in it only to suck all the blood and fun out of everything.