Thankfully Another Baseball Card Blog Popped Up

Writing all the time is not easy. This is especially true when the writing being done is blogging. It is legitimately difficult to come up with new or different or at least interesting topics or angles or themes for blogs. New voices can be lost in the wilderness or missed entirely. Voices that have been with us for a while lose their enthusiasm, though thankfully they have not left entirely.

For others, life gets in the way. Some folks sign off for a while because they move. Thankfully, Robért at $30 a Week Habit has come back, though posting much less frequently. Others shutter up shop completely only to return in yet another excellent new form.

Still others get new jobs that prevent regular updating. I'm still waiting for Julie from A Cracked Bat to emerge from her slumber, for instance, and I hope she's still collecting and reading.

I was at that point back in late 2014, as I transitioned away from the massive law firm I worked for then to now working in a small firm more for myself. The fall is tough for me generally with college football thrown in too.

Another blogger who has seen his energy and time taken up with a new venture in life is regular commenter Mike from Not Another Baseball Card Blog. Mike is kind enough to comment frequently on the drivel that I post here, often ignoring my horrible non sequiturs and providing insight on Canadian cards that only an Ontarian can provide. I look forward to those comments.

Mike was kind enough to put together a sweet package of cards to send my way. To accompany these cards, let's talk about Mike's homeland about which he is rightfully proud.

1. Mike lives in Ontario. At 1,076,395 sq. km (415,598 sq. miles), it has more land area than France and Spain combined.

Thank you, TripAdvisor, for that fun fact. I mean, all you need to do to see that Ontario is huge is to look at a map. It stretches from almost all the way to Montreal almost due north of New York City all the way to the oddity that is the Lake of the Woods north of Minnesota. Interesting side trivia tidbit: Lake of the Woods features several islands and two peninsulas (Elm Point and Angle Township) which can only be accessed by boat if you do not want to leave the United States.



To accompany the Lake of the Woods and the huge size of Ontario, let's go straight to O-Pee-Chee from 1984. I live so far south that finding O-Pee-Chee is like seeing Ogopogo/Naitaka (an alleged lake monster that some call the Canadian version of the Loch Ness Monster), so I'm always psyched to see the OPC.

2. Until 1999, a popular misconception was that Yonge Street was the longest street in the world.

Yonge Street starts on the shores of Lake Ontario in Toronto about two blocks east of the Air Canada Centre. The reason that I say it was a misconception is that Wikipedia said so -- that Guinness mistakenly gave credit to the rest of Ontario Highway 11 as being part of Yonge Street. Seen that way, the road would have been 1,896 km (1,178 miles) long. In reality, it's just 86 km/53 miles.



Fitting the realm of being something of a mistake are Topps Opening Day cards. Don't get me wrong -- I like the general idea of the Opening Day set, with its limited number of parallels and not being driven by hits. Its problem is well documented, though -- it's the same card as the Topps Flagship, making it just another lazy parallel rather than being something cool and different.

The problem is, though, how lazy Topps has gotten with its exclusive license. I doubt that will change any time soon.

3. Ontario is Canada's most populous province with over 13.5 million people -- about 40% of Canada's overall population.

Most people live along Lake Ontario -- from Brantford to Kitchener through Brampton and Toronto and all the way east to Peterborough (Mike's hometown). This "Greater Golden Horseshoe" area (I didn't make that title up -- the Ontario Provincial website did) has more than 9 million of the 13.5 million people in Ontario.

Outside of that area, Ontario is probably about as populated as Alaska is outside of Juneau and Anchorage. Including everyone in the equation, Ontario has approximately 32.5 people per square mile (sorry, using miles here for ease of comparison). If Ontario were a U.S. State (no jokes, folks), it would be less densely populated than Kansas and Utah and would rank 42nd overall -- ahead of Nevada, Nebraska, Idaho, New Mexico, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, and Alaska (which has 1.3 people per square mile). 

In terms of pure size, Ontario is still dwarfed by Alaska -- in fact, the difference in acreage between Alaska and Ontario is nearly equivalent to the area in the State of California (about 155,000 square miles) but it would be second overall. One more odd comparison: the difference in square mileage between Ontario and number 3 Texas is 154,366 square miles -- again, nearly the size of California. And yet, between California and Texas, there are over 67 million people.

That got a little too into the weeds for most of you, I'd bet, but stuff like that kind of fascinates me. My weird, trivia-filled head thrives on crazy information like that in a way that my collection thrives on receiving great serial numbered cards like this one from people. It's actually my third one, but since all three are serial numbered, they all count as separate cards in my Yount Collection, which has ballooned to 910 as of Saturday. I still need 90 more new items to get to my goal of 1000 by the end of the year, though.

4. Newfoundland is where the first Europeans settled in North America -- around the year 1000.

I know most of you are educated sorts such that you realize that Christopher Columbus's "discovery" of America was less like discovery and more like finding a new restaurant because you took a wrong turn, got hopelessly lost, and ended up stopping because otherwise your partner would kill you. I think most people understand that the Vikings -- perhaps an offshoot from Vinland under Leif Erickson around the year 1000 -- came and settled at a place now called L'Anse aux Meadows.

While not a good analog in anyway, I think this 1959 Topps Wes Covington is a worthy way to finish out this fantastic envelope of cards from Mike.

I hope some day to visit L'Anse aux Meadows where the first settlement is located. It's at the very northern tip of Newfoundland and it's truly a place that is difficult to reach -- basically, it's at least two or three flights even from a major metropolis like Atlanta, and even flying into Deer Lake still puts you nearly 5 hours away driving.

I guess R.E.M. had it right, though. You really can't get there from here:

Mike, thanks a ton for these great cards. Sorry I didn't choose Canadian music to go with this post, but this R.E.M. song leapt into my head!

Post #300: PACKAGES ADDRESSED! And, I Went to A Card Show

This is my 300th post. This being post 300, part of me wants to leap up from my seat and scream:

I have to confess: I've never seen that movie, and the only reason I know that line is because of the incredibly effective advertising campaign causing that line to stick in my head. But, the number 300 could be a unifying theme for this post...let's see where this goes. 

As was the case with my 1-year anniversary of blogging, I almost forgot to celebrate it. I know -- big round numbers usually involve contests.  Instead, I'm going with the SAME offer as the one-year anniversary:

If you would like some cards from me, no strings attached, no trades required, just comment below with what you want and e-mail me your mailing address.  

Rules for this giveaway: you are limited to picking one team or up to five different players whose cards you would like me to send to you.  If you have a want list, e-mail me a link.

And, one more thing: I've spent most of the past few days putting together packages that are already addressed and everything that are all set to go to the post office.  These packages are going to the following ZIP Codes:

62450
77251
60706
61615
55419
35750
80020
60618
26505
34479
55129
02919
16101
and, while I'm still putting these two packages together, I've also got cards ready to go to: 
13601
V9T 5T1

And there are a couple of other people to whom I am way overdue in putting packages together, but those are getting closer to fruition.


On to the (Card) Show

So, I've been to a couple of card shows recently. Two weeks ago, I went to my usual card show that I have attended probably about 4 or 5 times in the past year of collecting. Then, last weekend, I drove south of Atlanta to a show I'd never attended before to check it out. Both shows had their interesting parts, both had their disappointments, and both yielded some great cards, some great trade bait (a lot of which has been packaged up already) and some cool oddballs.

This post is going to focus on the first show -- from which the Topps 3D box came.  I'll post about the other show soon.

With no other unifying them other than, "this is what came up in Google searches for 300", here we go:

The Onion: Travel Cincinnati in 300 Days

Cincinnati is actually a great city to visit for a weekend.  I have friends there, neighbors from there, and my wife's uncle and aunt live there.  But this is still a funny faux travel magazine from the Onion.  This random start to this post deserves a pretty random card, and it comes with a tie to Cincinnati:

A 2001 Topps Archives reprint of Gus Bell's 1964 Topps card.  Bell's Braves career consisted of 85 games over three seasons -- 79 in 1962 and 3 pinch hitting appearances in each of 1963 and 1964.  The majority of his career -- from 1953 through 1961 -- was spent in Cincinnati.  Cincinnati is where son Buddy grew up and went to high school, and Cincinnati is where Gus was laid to rest when he passed away on May 7, 1995.

This card is random because, um, Topps, why 1964 Gus Bell in 2001?  

The Brewery: 300 Suns Brewing, Longmont, Colorado

A Brewer-y angle is an obvious one, and pretty punny too.  Let's celebrate Brewers with this Brewer card:

One of the guys whose tables I always stop at is a guy named Ryan, who's an Auburn fan. Since I hadn't been to the show in a couple of months, Ryan had a couple of great cards for me, including this 2008 Topps Triple Threads Auto-Relic serial numbered 23 of 75.  He also had a couple of more cards for me, and for all of these together, I think paid $25 (but it might be $40 too...either way, it was still a good deal in my book):

The three Seguras include a 2014 Bowman Chrome Green Refractor (SN38/75), a Topps Supreme Autograph (SN11/50), and a Topps High Tek Net Background (not a base background...no clue, obviously, how rare it is).  The very red Braun is a 2011 Finest Red Refractor serial numbered to 25.

That beer in Colorado had better be pretty good to live up to this.

The 300th Win

An obvious milestone for pitchers is achieving their 300th win.  Of all the pitchers to pitch in Milwaukee for the Braves or Brewers, two men have reached the 300-win mark.  The main guy, of course, is the one who achieved his 300th win as a Milwaukee Brave:

And this 1961 Post card of Warren Spahn comes from the very season that he won his 300th game.  Spahn first appeared in a game in 1942 at the age of 20. He refused to throw at Pee-Wee Reese in a game, so Casey Stengel called him "gutless" and sent him to the minors.  Spahn went on to be a war hero who won a Purple Heart while seeing action in the Battle of the Bulge.  

The other 300-game winner to pitch for a Milwaukee team was, of course, Don Sutton.  I didn't get the card below at the card show (I got it at the 1983 game at which they were given away) but it is an example of a lesser pinstriped side-Suttoning [(c) 2012 Garvey Russell Cey Lopes]:

Mathematical Properties

This is a direct headline quote from Wikipedia in which it is noted that the number 300 is "the sum of ten consecutive primes (13 + 17 + 19 + 23 + 29 + 31 + 37 + 41 + 43 + 47)."

So, how about ten great vintage cards, which may be in or near their respective primes?

That 1961 Covington has been blogged about before by Commishbob, Shoeboxlegends, The Chop Keeper, Night Owl, and Commishbob again, and that's just from a quick search. My version is off-centered, which kept the price for it down to just 50 cents.  In fact, all of these except the team card were all 50 cents.  The team card was a dollar or two.

There are others, you know.

Other vintage, I mean:

There were 14 of us, you know.

The Lowest Possible FICO Score

FICO stands for "Fair, Isaac, and Company." FICO was the originator of the 300 to 850 credit score on which nearly every lender in America now relies.  As you can see, you are in the absolute pits if you have a 300 score.  300 is bad.  So is the card for which this is being used.

I was alive in the 1970s -- for most of it, in fact, having been born near the end of 1971.  I remember the 1970s.  The look for most adult men featured lots of hair and lots of facial hair, right Mr. Stallone?

Paul McCartney agrees.

As a result, I guess that some kid felt like a baseball card of four grown men from 1976 that featured four men without facial hair was just not right.

So, that little kid 39 years ago took the pen into their own hands and gave Larry Anderson, Ken Crosby, Mark Littell, and Butch Metzger the facial hair that each deserved.

I needed this card for my 1976 Brewers team set.  I would not turn down this card, since the price of FREE was right, but safe to say that I am looking for a less hirsute card.

The Perfect Game

Okay, last one.  In bowling, a 300 game is a perfect game. Twelve straight strikes, from frame 1 through frame 12. My final vintage purchase of the day qualifies as being a baseball card version of the Perfect Game:

Ed Mathews in all of his 1959 Topps glory.  This card is in excellent shape, is not nearly as off-center as it scanned, and, with the 1961 Post Warren Spahn cost me a total of $25. That's a lot for me to spend on two cards, but when you're getting two cards that each are well over 50 years old of guys in the Hall of Fame and which are in very good to excellent condition, I think that's a fair price.

Thanks for reading this post and the 299 that came before it -- or as many as you could get through before giving up!

Catching Up: A PWE from Mark Hoyle

In the past few weeks, my blogging has slacked off to next to nothing. There are a lot of reasons for that. The first reason is one that I mentioned just before the end of the year -- that I got busy with organization. The second reason was Christmas and New Year's and all that.  

The third reason is perhaps the most personal though. I have been in the process of transitioning from large law firm life -- with its corporate, wait-for-work atmosphere based around a few rainmakers bringing in large clients and cases for which the clients are willing to pay, say, $600 an hour for a lawyer who has practiced 15 years and upwards of $900 an hour for the senior people -- to small firm life. Small firm life for me is now reality -- I'm part of a five-attorney firm now, and I'm in the process of trying to build a practice of my own. It's a tough move to make in many ways, and it's taken a lot of my mental energy to deal with all the changes.

Now that I've started though, it's back to being more of a day-to-day job. It's moved from worrying about the unknown to focusing on making this move pay off for me emotionally, financially, and personally. So, it means that I'm now finally able to get back to writing on my blog at night sometimes. I may not write as frequently, but I will keep writing. Also, I'm going to kick start the 1982 Topps blog again as well.

To get things going again here, I have to catch up on some envelopes and packages that I received last month. This first PWE came from vintage collector extraordinaire, Mark Hoyle. Mark sent me a mix of Milwaukee Brewers and Braves with the 1960s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s all represented.

These first two cards are our 2010s representatives and, in many respects, they represent the good and bad of modern collecting. The good: bringing back classic designs from yesteryear. The bad: incessant parallels. I do not know who is telling Topps that the hobby needs more parallels, but whoever it is probably ran Press Pass.

Sorry. Low blow to Press Pass.

Moving back to the beginning of the 2000s, we have this Fleer Impact from the year 2000. Having not collected through the late 1990s and early 2000s but, now, having created a checklist through 1998 and a wantlist through 1995 (and I've organized everything through 1998 as well), I sort of wish I had collected then. Yes, there were too many card issuers with a lot of sets. But, even so, the variety and diversity in collecting must have been a lot of fun at times -- even if it was in some respects just as frustrating as collecting today.

The older I get, the more I start missing the 1990s in many respects. I did not have the same responsibilities then -- I was in school for 7 years then with a year off living at home in between. It was a fun time for me -- being in my 20s and, by the end of the decade, having some money to have fun in a great city of Atlanta. These cards show off the focus of collecting then as well -- the cards either were psychadelic 1995 Fleer, or they were full bleed photos with foil. Yeah, they start to look alike at times, but at least the companies used different photos on their various products.

When I got back into collecting, I think it was because I was nostalgic for the early 1980s -- pre-1984 in particular. Things went wrong in the middle of the 1980s though. Topps started with parallels in 1984, issuing both the uncut-sheet set with Nestle logos on them and the first of the Topps Tiffany sets. The bubble in baseball cards and speculating on rookies began in earnest with the 1984 Donruss sets. All that led to increased buying of cards, increased production runs, and, soon, in 1986, the weird Sportsflics cards. I mean, I get that some folks like the multi-photo stuff on these (and the Slurpee discs that came out around that time as well), but I am not a fan. I needed this card, though.

The piece de résistance of the envelope was the 1960s representative, Milwaukee Braves outfielder Wes Covington, a North Carolina native who served as Hank Aaron's cohort through Aaron's trip through the Braves minor league system. But, Covington was considered to be a better prospect than Aaron -- at least that is what Aaron said (quoted here in Covington's SABR biography). He moved to Canada after some "tax issues" forced him to leave the US, and that is where he died -- in Edmonton in 2011.

Mark, please accept my apologies for taking so long to highlight these cards, and thank you very much for the trip through the decades that this card took me on.

Card Show Purchases: The Vintage

When my interest in baseball cards was rekindled earlier this year, the one new spark that produced a flame in me immediately was to seek out cards that I did not collect when I was a kid -- either because I couldn't find them or, more likely, because I couldn't find them in a price range that I could afford then. Since I now can afford some of those cards, I decided to collect some of those cards.  

Once again being choosy, though, led me to decide to collect only Milwaukee Braves cards. Yeah, I have nascent player collections of Joe Adcock, Warren Spahn, and Eddie Mathews, and I'll probably add 1957 World Series MVP Lew Burdette to that. But, I want to collect all the Milwaukee Braves cards I can. At least from the major sets.

Since I haven't catalogued those PCs yet, I was careful about what I bought from any of those players.  But, I knew that I had not picked up the Mathews or Spahn from Gypsy Queen.  

Those photos are nothing original from Topps; I'm pretty sure that the Mathews photo has been on at least four different inserts in the past several years, and the same is true for Spahn.  

Now, these cards are new so they better be in perfect shape or else they better be free.  I'm not all that choosy on vintage cards, though, when it comes to condition. Let's be honest -- finding a few dime or 50 cent cards from the 1950s or early 1960s is likely to lead to finding these cards in less than ideal condition.  But, when I saw the vintage binder with dollar cards, I got sucked in.  

Hank's brother was nowhere near as good as he was, but not many people have ever been that good.  

Future GM Woody Woodward is looking very serious in his pose in foul territory during spring training.  He never hit any homers as a Milwaukee Brave and had a slash line of .207/.241/.257.

Did he have blackmail photos of the Braves GM?
    

Blasingame was touted as being the heir apparent to Warren Spahn when he was signed straight out of high school in 1961. He ended up on the Houston Astros in 1967. Eventually, his sartorial style featured in Ball Four.

Someone before me thought that Ty's hat looked better Red. Ty attended Clemson University, so after Clemson's recent trip to the land of Red and Black in Athens, he may disagree with that assessment.

Yup, it's a 1966. Joe's as disgusted about my inability to identify a 1966 Topps as I am. Topps avoided showing guys in hats so as to avoid the whole "Atlanta stealing the Braves and leaving Milwaukee without baseball" discussion.

Mack had to be happier than most of the Braves when the team moved to Atlanta, since he grew up in the ATL. Mack passed away 10 years ago and is buried in Forest Law Cemetery here in Atlanta.

Rico was one of the first players from noted Dominican baseball factory San Pedro de Macoris to make it to the major leagues, and he was the first San Pedran to be an All-Star. Indeed, he still stands fourth all-time in games played by San Pedro natives -- though Robinson Cano probably will pass him in the next year or two.

Lee Maye (not Lee May) played 7 years with the Braves beginning in 1959. He was a far better R&B and soul singer under his full name, Arthur Lee Maye.

See?

I love YouTube.

Bob Buhl to me will always be the pitcher who couldn't hit. I think it came from going 0 for 1962 -- 0 for 69 at bats, to be exact, with the Chicago Cubs.  With the Braves, his worst hitting year was probably 1954, when he went 1 for 31. 

Pisoni got a badly-drawn boy card in the 1959 Topps set. He had never played for Milwaukee before and had appeared in 9 total games for the Braves that season -- going 4-for-24.  After that performance, the Braves decided to send Pisoni back to the New York Yankees from whence he came in the Rule 5 draft.

Covington came up with the Braves in 1956. He and Hank Aaron were contemporaries in the Braves system and, according to his SABR biography, Covington had a propensity for two things -- getting hurt and pissing people off by opening his mouth.

I'm a lawyer, so I can relate with that second one.

This card of the Nitro, West Virginia, great is what may spur my starting that Lew Burdette collection.  It's actually in much better shape than most of these cards are, but that's not why I am going to start the Burdette collection. I'll start the Burdette collection because Lew went 179-120 with a 3.53 ERA with the Braves (6-11 in Boston in 1952, otherwise with Milwaukee) and he was the MVP of the 1957 World Series -- which, to date, remains the only World Series victory for a Milwaukee team.

When I tell people about my collecting the Braves, I tell them that while some kids went to bed with stories of giants and beanstalks, I went to bed with stories of Giants and Brutons. He didn't get to the major leagues until 1953 when he was already 27 years old, and he immediately led baseball in stolen bases in 1953 (with 26), 1954 (34), and 1955 (25). 

People didn't believe in stealing in the 1950s.  It was a simpler time.

Ray Shearer got a baseball card in 1958 for playing in 2 games with the Milwaukee Braves in 1957 -- one on September 18 and one on September 29. He passed away very young -- at the age of 52 in 1982 in York, Pennsylvania.

Bob Buhl appears to be questioning me about why I'm picking on him for his hitting when Al Leiter didn't get all kinds of crap in 2003 when he went 1 for 53 for the New York Mets.  

I'm sorry Bob -- I didn't know. 

Like I said at the top, I'd have rather these cards been in better shape than they are, and perhaps some day I'll seek out better and better copies of these cards for my collection. But I'm not buying these for "investments" so frankly, I really don't care if Ty Cline's hat is colored in red. I just care that I have the cards.

Even for Ray Shearer and his 3 at bat career.