No, Really, I Didn't Miss You Guys...Okay, Maybe a Little

This past weekend, I spent a few hours at my local card show. It had been several months since I'd gone to the show. I told myself that I would stay away for a while to save a little money and then go to one of the shows in North Carolina. 

Instead, I ended up spending more money on eBay. That wasn't the way it was supposed to work. But, at the same time, thanks to that massive SuperTraders mailing I did earlier this year, my wife was under the impression that many of my eBay purchases were actually return envelopes from folks in that group. 

Some of them were. Most of them weren't.

This past week, though, I decided I'd missed going to the local show. So, I grabbed some cash from the ATM and started humming an old John Waite tune.

Actually, that's a line. I have never in my life hummed that song. In fact, I pretty much have never liked that song at all. Seeing John Waite in that video with his very short hair makes his appearance as a hair-band member in Bad English and the song "When I See You Smile" absolutely hilarious.

Anyway, y'all didn't come here for a music history lesson. At least I don't think it is why folks stop by here and read the stuff I write.

I'd better get to the cards I got before I lose you.

Let's start with a few Brewers this time and see how far "Missing" will take me.

Starting all K-Pop on you here with "Missing You" by GDragon featuring Kim Yoon-Ah. Thanks to the scrolling translation, it's tough to see what Ms. Kim looks like; I think this is her:

By the way, she's 42 years old. Speaking of 42...

I was going through one of the regular seller's boxes at the show -- Ms. Brenda -- and there was a guy next to me going through the 15-cent cards from Series 2 that Ms. Brenda had out. I saw this card on the top of the stack and asked him, "Do you want that Peralta? Because I'm a Brewers collector and I'll gladly take it if you don't want it."

He handed it over immediately to me -- he was a Chicago native, incidentally, who lived for several years in a town about 20 minutes from where i grew up. As soon as I got it, I pointed out to Ms. Brenda that the card is one of the Short Print 42-jersey variations. When it came time to tally everything up and check out, she asked me, "how much are those going for on eBay?" I went to Mavin.com and told her -- "well, with shipping, it's listing anywhere from $4 to $11, and it's selling for around $5 with shipping."  So, she gave it to me for $2.

To be fair, with the damage that big Wily has done to the Brewers' ERA and team record, I feel like he should be buying up all of them himself with his $2.8 million salary and distributing them personally to each Brewers' baseball card collector in America. 

After that, he can work on apologizing for sucking so bad to everyone.

To be fair, his comps through age 26 (last year) had some hit and miss in it. Hits? Max Scherzer and Kevin Brown, maybe Dustin Hermanson or Charles Nagy or even Steve Renko. Misses? Bill Laskey, Frank Castillo (a workhorse early in his career, a complete dumpster fire later), and former Blue Jay Luis Leal, who provides the scary comp of washing entirely out of the major leagues at the age of 28.




That's Australian singer/songwriter Betty Who a/k/a Jessica Anne Newham, who was born in Sydney and lived there until her mid-teens when she moved to Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan to play cello. She's also a Berklee College of Music attendee. 

It doesn't look like this song, "Missing You," was released as a single as of yet. It's actually a pretty catchy song, at least on its first listen. To use some familiar references, this music is what might happen if Mazzy Star was remixed by Armin van Buuren -- you get dance, but it's also with an ethereal feel.






Now, that's a recent-card-dump right there. Basically, I finally found the last card I needed from Series 2 from last year -- Jason Rogers -- in a dime box. In a quarter or 5 for $1 box, I found all the Bowman from this year that I could stomach. For 15 cents each, I knocked some more cards off the 2016 Series 2 want list and picked up the Brewers team card from Heritage -- where I discovered that Jonathan Lucroy featured and, therefore, I need another. And, for a nickel, I finally found the last 2015 Heritage High Number card that I needed in Mike Fiers...whose trade helped bring Brett Phillips to the Brewers system.

A pretty good haul by itself already.

But wait -- there's more.

One more song and one more group of cards for today will do the trick.

Wikipedia describes the band All Time Low as being an "American pop punk band from Towson, Maryland" that was named for lyrics in a song by New Found Glory. I'm afraid I've never heard of this band, but I feel like I should have heard of them already. They are veterans of the Warped Tour and the Reading Festival in England, among other major tours.

I listened to this song, of course named "Missing You," and thought I'd stumbled into a One Direction concert.

That's not true at all. I don't know what One Direction sounds like. I'm not sure any of their fans do either, what with shrieking at the tops of the lungs at the mere mention of their names.

I listened to another song by them called "Cinderblock Garden" and I'm not all that impressed by that song either. They seem like a less interesting version of what Jimmy Eat World was doing 15 years ago.

It's all so derivative....

When we collectors talk about derivative, we could be talking about (a) all the recycled card designs being used by Topps in Archives and Heritage and as inserts to the flagship, or (b) all of the dadgum parallels that get issued all the time. 

I hate to say it, but as a pathetic/over-the-top/obsessive/compulsive completist, I feel like I must collect ALL the parallels. I've started drawing lines -- not needing cards for the team collection with serial numbers of less than 100, for instance....a line which may need to be revisited as a "going forward" line rather than a "all-time" line, for example. 

All of these, however, are cards I must have. We have Denson and Phillips and McGehee in Bowman Chrome Prospect parallels from the base Bowman packs -- an always confusing proposition, what with another actual product called "Bowman Chrome" floating around out there. The Kapler is a Walmart parallel (I think) from 2009. Gallardo is the base Topps Chrome from 2010 -- for just a dime -- and let's be honest about Chrome generally: it is just another excuse for Topps to reuse the photos it pays for from Getty Images without paying an additional user fee. 

That Overbay foil parallel from last year was just five cents. I don't feel bad paying a nickel for that.

Finally, the Villar gold from this year is too cool considering I paid a nickel for it. I mean, come on people -- that's your National League leader in stolen bases (as of the All-Star break) and probably in TOOTBLAN too (that's "Thrown Out On The Basepaths Like A Nincompoop" in case you're not a cool kid in the know...I know because I spent a couple of years watching Carlos Gomez).

Then again, sometimes, being TOOTBLAN has its, um....downsides.

Thanks for stopping by. More cards from the card show tomorrow.

I Wanna Baseball All Night

Peter from Baseball Every Night has been extremely generous to me. Hopefully, my latest envelope that was sent to him -- now, for a second time...thanks USPS! -- gets to him so that he can drink in all the Strawberry cards I've sent to him. 

Of course, with the title I've used here, there can only be one theme song for the second batch of cards Peter sent my way last week:

Here's the setup: the past two years, I have come out of the gate rockin' when it comes to collecting the Brewers for the Topps flagship set. By that, I mean that both in 2015 and 2016, I bought into case breaks for Series 1 and ended up with about a dozen of each of the base cards, about a half dozen of any inserts, and even a relic or two. 

By the time Series 2 rolls around, though, I miss it. I don't even notice it. Series 2 sneaks out into the world like the stealthiest of leopards, unleashing itself on an unsuspecting collecting public.

Or, at least unleashing itself on me.

I mean, I think I still need a Jason Rogers from 2015 Series 2 at this point. Seriously. I haven't found one at my local show, and no one has sent me one either. I mean, I'll probably just end up getting it eventually if it doesn't show up, but that is pretty indicative of how Series 2 usually treats me.

Since that first song got me in the mood, how about a KISS-powered post to go with the 2016 Topps Series 2 cards that Peter sent my way?

Perhaps the most appropriate KISS song for the 2016 set -- I'll call it forevermore the "smoke" set -- this song from Animalize (which I owed and may still own on a 33-1/3 RPM record):

Let's go for the basic ones first:

That top card -- the Brewers Team card -- features Ryan Braun giving third base coach Ed Sedar a low five after hitting a homerun and passing third base. I'm now tied up in knots thinking of all of the terrible Passover puns (pass, seder/Sedar...) so I'd best move on.

Ariel Pena lasted one outing with the Brewers this year to start the season before getting sent to pitcher's hell, er, Colorado Springs. Interesting trivia tidbit: Colorado Springs is the highest elevation stadium featuring professional baseball. It's a full quarter mile higher in elevation than Coors Field. The Brewers ended up with a Triple-A team there thanks to the classless organization that is the Nashville Sounds -- which used the Brewers to get a new stadium built then promptly changed affiliations. 

Michael Blazek just returned to the bullpen from the disabled list. He's the rare player who started in St. Louis, left, and got better instead of worse!

Finally, Keon Broxton suffered one of the worst starts to a major league career that I could imagine. He went 0-for-2 last year with Pittsburgh, then went 0-for-16 to start the season this year with Milwaukee. He got sent down on April 16. He came back on May 20, and he went 0 for his next 6 before finally picking up his first major league hit in the 13th inning against the Atlanta Braves on May 25 (and giving Michael Blazek the win). Broxton's big problem so far is making contact. In 71 plate appearances, he has struck out a ridiculous 33 times. That is no way to make a major league career take off.

Okay, we need some help to get through these next cards...

How about a little Cold Gin? 

To be fair -- and I'm sure to the chagrin of at least a couple of you -- I'm not a huge KISS fan. This is probably the first time I've heard this song. It's not awful. It's okay. It's too repetitive in the guitar licks for my taste, though.

Peter sent me a couple of gold parallels as well. Topps has been doing these gold parallels for what -- fifteen or sixteen years? They are okay, I suppose. It's sort of like that guitar in Cold Gin. 

These two cards are of two guys having very different seasons. Jeremy Jeffress wasn't the experts' pick to be the closer this year -- Blazek, perhaps, might have been, or Will Smith, or maybe even Tyler Thornburg. But Jeffress ended up being the guy coming out of spring training almost by default being the only one healthy and pitching well. Lo and behold, as of June 27, Jeffress is in fifth place in the NL with 21 saves in 22 opportunities. Not too shabby.

On the other hand, Wily Peralta has been a train wreck wrapped in a volcano eruption thrown into a hurricane hit by a tornado. He looked like he might be a stud in the making in 2014 as his numbers looked pretty good -- 17-11, 3.53 ERA (4.11 FIP) 9 H/9, 1.0 HR/9, 2.8 BB/9, 7.0 K/9. He was hurt in 2015 and his numbers all went the wrong way -- 10.8 H/9, 1.2 HR/9, 4.84 FIP, 3.1 BB/9 and 5.0 K/9. 

Then, this year...UGLY: 6.68 ERA (5.60 FIP), 13.2 H/9, 1.6 HR/9, 3.7 BB/9 and 5.7 K/9. All of those numbers are terrible. Every single one of them. It has a lot of folks in the Brewers organization scratching their heads. It also is likely to end up with Wily getting non-tendered, joining the Cardinals, and winning the Cy Young in 2019.

I need a pick me up now.

  

At least it is an uptempo song. The more I listen to old KISS, the less I like it, to be honest. I know -- sacrilege, right? But the music is kind of...mediocre. Sorry guys and gals who have devoted your lives to KISS -- basically they are an average band with a great gimmick.

I'm probably wrong about that, so please -- attack me at will for that comment in the comments below. 

Speaking of repetitive and mediocre, I sure am glad that we have our 948th version of Robin Yount's rookie card making an appearance in the Berger's Best/Cards your Mom Threw Out/whatever the excuse is this year insert set. I think the real reason this is in the Series 2 inserts is to make up for the typo in Series 1 which said this card was from 1974. 

Of course, it also said that the mini 1974 version was highly sought after. And that is so true. I am still looking for it.

Peter -- thank you again for the great cards, and I hope that KISS isn't one of your favorite bands since all I've done here is call them average, mediocre, repetitive, and gimmicky.

Then again, I'm a baseball card blogger. What do I know about gimmicky or being repetitive?  

You Bought Cards Where?

When I first got back into collecting, I bought a fair number of packs at Target and Wal-Mart. That was because I was trying to collect the same way I did when I was a kid: collecting literally everything.

A month or so later, as I was looking at what a "complete" or "master" checklist looked like for just the 2014 Topps set, I began to despair. There was no way I could ever get everything -- not even every Brewer card, since there are others who collect the Brewers -- so I started drawing lines. Those lines have been refined and expanded over time out of necessity, since I do not have infinite money to spend on baseball cards.

One of the lines I drew is that I stopped buying unopened packs of new products unless I had some reason for it (like my SuperTraders break). This was a reaction to the fact that Topps loads up its products with teams that the Manhattan-based Topps sees as more saleable and drawing more money than the Brewers. I think it was the 2014 Archives hobby box I bought that spring -- a box I bought before realizing that Topps had included a grand total of four or five Brewers and twelve Yankees including John Ryan Murphy, a backup catcher who we will probably never see on a card again because he's now a Twin.

Yesterday, though, my wife and I went out to a late lunch to use a gift card we had and then to run some errands. Those errands included stopping at Target, so I bought a few packs/repacks there.

I didn't get a lot of great cards, to be fair, but here are the highlights.

The first thing I got was one of those 20-card packs of Heritage. I engaged in a bit of pack searching, to be honest. The packs are red cellophane, so you can see what the first card on the pack was.  When I saw one with "Brewers" peaking through, I grabbed it.  

The Brewer I got was Wily Peralta. Just as Heritage pays homage to the 1967 Topps design, it appears that Peralta is paying homage to a Hall of Famer who appeared in the 1967 Topps set: former Brewer, Astro, Dodger, Angel, and Athletic pitcher Don Sutton.

Peralta has some work to do to emulate Sutton on the field, but he has the Sutton pose down pretty well already. But he does need to get that bubble perm too.

A second pack/box I got was a blaster of 2014 Topps Update with two packs of the Update Chrome in it. I don't need any Brewers from the Update set except for one of those ridiculous sparkle variations of the now-long-gone Tom Gorzelanny, and unsurprisingly Topps decided that there weren't any Brewers that merited inclusion in the Update Chrome set. I got the box, though, because it was only $10 instead of the normal $15, and, I mean, it was a good deal thanks to two great cards that I needed that came out of those packs:



The Molitor came out of the regular Update packs, while the Aaron is a Chrome card that came out of those packs. So, even though I really didn't need anything from those sets that I knew of, I needed something anyway.  Can't complain about that!

Next, I bought one of those "four packs" of the 2016 Topps product that comes in a blister pack with an "Amazing Milestones" card showing. Knowing that I needed the Spahn Amazing Milestones for my Milwaukee Braves collection, I chose one with him on the front.

Having participated in a case break for 2016 Topps, I once again knew that I would not get anything in the regular cards that I needed.  But, still, I got something pretty nice in the packs -- though this time, it was not a card I need.

After pulling a Yoan Moncada autograph from the Panini Contenders box I opened a couple of weeks ago for the SuperTraders group, I'm starting to wonder if the cosmic powers are trying to tell me that I need to become a Red Sox collector.  Geez.

But, this does highlight the beauty of those blister packs. By keeping the packs safe from pack searchers behind plastic, everyone has an even chance to get a relic card. 

Finally, I decided to get one of those "four packs, 50 cards, and a surprise" repacks. My surprise was one of these:

To be specific, I got Adrian Gonzalez. Does anyone happen to have the Ryan Braun out there? Does anyone want this Adrian Gonzalez thingy?

The packs I got were all 2015 cards: Opening Day, a couple of Bowman packs, and a Gypsy Queen pack. Probably the best card I got out of those packs was a mini Bowman Chrome:

The remaining cards had a few duplicates for me, but there were a couple of cards that were interesting.

First, there was a former Brewer farmhand from the 1990s:

Boze was nothing special. He was a 12th round pick in 1990 after his first year of junior college. He worked his way up to the majors slowly but surety, putting up decent numbers in Single-A and Double-A in 1992 and 1993.  He spent 1994 through 1996 at Triple-A New Orleans where his strikeout rates shriveled up and died. But, because the Brewers sucked in the mid-1990s, he got to the major leagues anyway in 1996. In his 32-1/3 innings in the major leagues, he had an 0-2 record with a 7.79 ERA and a 2.227 WHIP, giving up 13.1 hits per nine innings and walking 7 batters per nine innings. 

I'd call that ugly, but that would be cruel to ugliness everywhere. That's just positively diabolical.

Finally, there was an excellent mid-1990s card in the repack:

Sophie Kurys was truly a superstar in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Indeed, as her excellent SABR biography notes, Ms. Kurys -- who passed away in 2013 at the age of 87 -- is still the holder of the all-time professional baseball record for stolen bases in a season. In 1946 and in just 113 games, she stole an incredible 201 stolen bases. Indeed, in just 914 games over her nine-year career, she stole 1,114 bases. Sure, Rickey Henderson has broken that record with his total of 1406, but it took him 25 seasons to get there!

All said, it wasn't a bad bunch of cards that I got yesterday. Still, I don't think I'll go back to buying a bunch of packs. I'll save my money to buy Brewers.

Other cards from the Card Show

I attended my first card show of the year on Sunday. I even got a box I thought about adding to the Super Traders group breaks (and probably will, eventually)...then I realized that 1992 Fleer Ultra will not have any cards for the Marlins (no loss there), the Rockies, the Diamondbacks, and the Rays. In other words, it wouldn't exactly be a great break because, well, I'd be leaving three people out from the get-go.

And, let's be honest. Bringing 1992 Fleer Ultra to the SuperTraders is sort of like bringing a Yugo to a car show. You can do it, and people might appreciate it for the oddity, but no one goes to a car show looking to see a sweet Yugo. Or AMC Gremlin. 

Still, I'll probably break that box and throw the results into the SuperTraders stuff I mail out. I'm thinking I'll buy a box or two online and throw all three together into one big break -- probably some time around Opening Day, so I can get a couple of good boxes.

Anyway, that digression aside, I want to emphasize that I'm still trading with whomever wants to trade with me. I'm sometimes slow to respond or reciprocate, and I apologize in advance for my inability at times to sit down and put packages together. 

I need a theme for the card show...let's see...let's put my iTunes "Top Rated" on random and see what happens.

"Lolli Lolli (Pop That Body)" -- Three 6 Mafia ft. Project Pat, Young D, & Superpower

Yeah, how 'bout them apples. If you've read my blog before, you know that my musical tastes are all over the board. Sinatra to Anthrax, The Clash to The Cure, and sure, there's Three 6 Mafia too.  

What goes well with Lolli popping that body in the club?



My most surprising dime box find of the day. I really should have just grabbed all of the 1998 Pacific Crown Royale cards in that dime box. I could have used them for the SuperTraders! Damn. A missed opportunity. I think I equate these cards with rap music because of the trend in the 1990s -- and apparently still today -- to their use for storing assorted....ahem.... illegal paraphernalia.  

Or maybe that was just the use for Crown Royal bags that I saw on TV shows.

It's time to move on.

"Down Under" -- Men At Work

Like I said before, I'm all over the map. To be fair, I recall very distinctly that the first music I ever bought for myself was this very song on a 45-RPM single record. 

Surprisingly enough, this song has actual drug references in it. The first two lines of the song are: "Travelling in a fried-out Kombi / on a hippy trail, head full of zombie."  As this BBC article notes, that line refers to a Kombi -- an old VW camper van -- followed by "the hippy trail" of dropping out of the rat race in a very 60s fashion. And the "head full of zombie" is a reference to a very potent strain of marijuana, occasionally laced with angel dust.

I'm pretty sure that if my mom realized that that is what the song meant, I probably would not have been able to buy that 45 back in 1982.

What goes with that?



I think these two items qualify. On the left, we have the very weird looking manu-relic of Eddie Mathews in a Detroit Tigers uniform. Mathews had a grand total of 57 plate appearances for the 1968 Detroit Tigers (for which he was paid $75,000...about $525,000 today...which is near the league minimum but in 1968 that was an impressive salary). His final at bats -- and his final hit -- were in the 1968 World Series against the Cardinals, which the Tigers won.

On the right side, we have Larry Pardo. Larry was a minor league pitcher in the 1980s for the Rangers and, later, the Angels. My god were his stats atrocious. In 500-1/3 innings in the minors, he walked 375 guys while striking out 361. In 1987, in the California League at the age of 21, Larry pitched 71-2/3 innings. He gave up 75 hits, 110 walks, and 31 wild pitches while striking out 63. He hit 5 guys for good measure. Larry later became a scout for the Milwaukee Brewers, though. His most notable signings: Michael Brantley and Ryan Braun. So, it has a Brewers logo on it. I bought it.

I'm not proud.

"Your Love" -- The Outfield

This song has always been a big favorite of mine from the 1980s. It's so damn catchy. Then, just like "Down Under," you listen to the words and feel a little skeevy.

As Wikipedia puts it bluntly: 

"Your Love" is written from the point of view of a man who tries to convince a younger female acquaintance to have an intimate night with him while his older girlfriend, Josie, is away on vacation.

Yeah.

Since we're talking about youngsters...sorry, it's all I've got.



I loaded up on a bunch of minor league cards. A fair amount of them are recent, and some aren't -- like 2010 Eric Arnett Helena Brewers card from the Topps Pro Debut set. Eric was old for Helena in 2009, when he played there. The guy was a first round pick out of Indiana University, and well, he was a 100% 1st round bust. He never played about high-A ball in 2012 and 2013 for Brevard County in the Florida State League. He didn't exactly do superbly, either. 2013 was the end for him in the minors -- assuredly he's moved on to something else by now...and he's pocketed his $1.197 million bonus too.

Okay, a couple more songs for a few more songs.

"Soul Meets Body" -- Death Cab for Cutie




In the mid-2000s, I had XM Radio. In my condo, I'd listen to XM, play video games or read books, and drink wine. That was a nice, relaxing weekend night for me. I enjoyed my own company. I didn't mind being alone. Life was good -- not great, sometimes lonely -- but still good.

I found some vintage cards at the show that fit that feel. They are good -- not great -- but good. I paid more than I should have, probably, in light of their condition. But I needed the cards for my Milwaukee Braves collection.



Like I said, good. Not great. Good. The Mathews is the most disappointing, certainly, since someone felt the need to change his affiliation in 1967 for those 101 games he appeared in. I mean, kid in 1967, did you really have to do that to a card from 1963? 

That Lou [sic] Burdette card looks like someone spilled a drink on it too. It was something like $0.50, so it wasn't pricy, but...you know...it could be better.

Okay, last one:

"Famous Last Words" -- My Chemical Romance




Filming this video hurt the band badly. Literally. Gerard Way (lead singer) suffered torn ligaments in his ankle, and Bob Bryar (the drummer at the time) suffered burns on his leg that turned into a staph infection.

Funny thing about this band is that I like their music, but their entire persona was so overwrought and pretentious that I probably would have hated seeing them in concert. In fact, I probably would have hated them personally, even. In fact, I recall seeing them live on some show and thinking, "what a bunch of prats."

Because, pretentious as I was, I would have used some British slang instead of calling them more choice American slang like "C**ts" or "a**holes."

None of that has anything to do with this last assortment of cards, though.



The Fielder rookie was in a quarter box. The autographs were like $2 each. The Hall UD Game Materials was $3. The Braun bat -- which I didn't check to see if I had and, yup, already had it -- was $2. The Lucroy 2014 Update jersey card was $2 also. 

I'll spare you all the shiny Panini I got. After all, there is only so much logoless stuff anyone can take at any one time.

But, I'll leave you with one final song off my playlist.  It doesn't fit with anything else on this page either.




But I like this song by Georgia boy Zac Brown anyway.