THREE!!!!!

When I was in college, nothing was better to me than watching Vanderbilt basketball. I stuck it out through four miserable football seasons (1-10, 5-6, 4-7, 4-7) in the marching band simply because I loved being in the basketball pep band. That was especially true thanks to getting to watch games like this one in person:

Early next season and assuming that this streak continues for the rest of the year, Vanderbilt will mark its 1000th consecutive game with a three-point field goal. Only three teams in NCAA basketball have had a three-point field goal in every game since the rule was passed prior to the 1986-1987 season: Vanderbilt, Princeton, and UNLV. 

As I mentioned yesterday, today is the three-year anniversary of my deciding to start writing incomprehensible drivel understandable by and interesting to perhaps 25 other people on this planet. Actually -- somewhat surprisingly to me -- my readership stays consistently between 100 and 250 hits per post, and I'm a little under 7,000 pageviews from hitting the 150,000 pageview mark. This is all very cool to me considering that some of my posts in my first month have yet to break into double digits even three years later. 

Maybe I'm more interesting now?

Tease me with a title like, "Worst Song Ever!!!" and I'm probably going to click on it. Give it a listen -- it's like what would happen if those "Ricola" horns met up with a yodeler trained by the people who sing Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo, but only if those people had stuttering problems. It's fantastic.

Last year, I made some "resolutions" for the beginning of my blog year. Let's revisit those to see how I'm doing.

1.  Grow the Robin Yount Collection to 1000 items: As I mentioned yesterday, this one is a SUCCESS, since I have pushed the count to 1,041 items (and I just got in a few more cards to add to that collection yesterday and today). 

2.  Get More Organized, Again: this one related to the need to sort through about 30,000 cards from the "Christmas Horde" that I got from my in-laws for Christmas in 2015. I will say that I have gotten someone more organized within my card room. However, my time allocation has been bad, so I still have about 20,000 cards from 1989 through 1993 to sort through.

That is a FAIL...like on the level of this kid, who calls this his worst trumpet playing ever:

Be sure to ask this kid why his video is so orange. Also, if you play an instrument, there is no need to put your practicing on YouTube.

3.  Winnow down my collection: Nope. Haven't really made a dent. I had less time than I wanted this year to devote to collecting, and it showed. I actually have been downright awful this year in sending out trade packages. 

FAIL

4.  Send out Cards to the SuperTraders: This was and is a great idea -- to have an identified team collector to whom you can send cards. I got plenty of packages just before Christmas this year from some of the SuperTraders, so it's been good to add some new trading partners. I even bought a couple of boxes early in the process to help kick off the group -- and pulled a Yoan Moncada autograph card for Mark Hoyle:

Of course, now Moncada is with the other Sox, having been traded in the Chris Sale deal. Can't blame the Red Sox for that trade -- they can always spend more to get players and their hitting prospects were deep already.

Anyway, I didn't do all that well here in sending cards out, but I did do some. Minor success

5.  Stick to a budget for cards -- or create one.

6.  Get my Brewers Parallels, Oddballs, & Paninis organized and get my post-1965 Milwaukee Braves organized and get want lists created.  

I've been sort of successful here. Little did I think about what getting want lists put together for all those damn Bowman parallels would take. I'm to the point now where I am thinking about giving up on serial numbered cards with serial numbers under about 250 or 500 as going into my team sets. I don't catalog cards numbered 100 or fewer any more except for wanting them for my player collections. But, I'm almost done with Bowman, and I'm getting closer to typing up all the checklists on Topps for parallels.

After that, it will be Donruss, Fleer, and Upper Deck. Ugh.

Then, it will be the police cards and oddballs getting the full treatment.

Finally, after that, I'll pick up the Milwaukee Braves. The Milwaukee Braves are difficult because online checklists will often list cards as Boston Braves or even Atlanta Braves when the player is wearing a Milwaukee hat. It's annoying. Fix it, people. Fix it for me. 

7. Keep on the 1982 Blog and the "Meet the Brewers" Posts. The 1982 Blog is about dead. I fought the 792, and the 792 won. I was too ambitious, basically writing far too much about each card. When I have time, I'm busy creating want lists. So, bye bye 1982 Topps Blog for me. Anyone want it?

The Meet the Brewers posts are actually turning into my personal favorite posts. I have gotten the opportunity to speak with two former Brewers already thanks to that series, and I am hopefully going to get the chance to speak to a few more. I may need to get some drafts done there, though, in order to get ready for speaking with those players -- so I can ask more informed questions.

As the song says...Moving On.

What about this year?

Let's set a few goals.

1. Increase my main player collections. Not just Yount this time. Let's do a list:

a. Robin Yount: Current: 1,041. Goal: 1150

b. Paul Molitor: Current: 516. Goal: 610

c. Gary Carter: Current: 261. Goal: 310

d. Eddie Mathews: Current: 183. Goal: 225

e. Warren Spahn: Current: 143. Goal: 180

f. Joe Adcock: Current: 44. Goal: 60

g. Lew Burdette: Current: 36. Goal: 50

h. Harvey Kuenn: Current: 58. Goal: 70

I set lower goals for some of those older players for obvious reasons -- there just aren't as many cards available. 

2. Get the Parallels, Inserts, and Oddballs organized and bindered up. Carrying on last year's work. This one will be a continuing challenge. It's not like Topps has decided suddenly to reduce the number of parallels, inserts, and card sets they are issuing.

But I also want to add the minor league cards from the Brewers organization to my lists as well. 

I am a glutton for punishment.

3.  Trade More: Time conspired against me over this past year. My goal this year will be more tangible: to send out at least 4 packages per month. It's a small, attainable goal.

Who wants some cards? Comment below and email me your address.

4. Care Less about the surrounding bullshit.

That has grown. 

I know that I get too worked up about Topps ignoring the Brewers in things like Topps Now and Archives. It's a simple answer, of course: focus less on the current and more on the holes in my collection. If Topps doesn't want my money, well, it doesn't have to get my money.

5. Keep up the Meet the Brewers. Like I said, I enjoy these posts a lot. It's a great excuse for me to read old newspapers, old news, do internet sleuthing, and generally find out about guys who played the game. I'm disappointed, though, that one of my main sources of information -- Google Newspapers -- no longer has the Milwaukee Journal and Milwaukee Sentinel online for free any more. When Gannett -- owners of USA Today -- bought the newspapers this past year, they decided to monetize that archive for their own profit rather than allowing the world to have access to it for free. 

F*ck Gannett.

That said, my SABR membership has given me access to the archives of The Sporting News, so I have something of a substitute. It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing.

6. Write anywhere from three to six times for the SABR Baseball Card Blog. That's a tough audience, to be fair -- tons of big names read it and write for it, like Keith Olbermann and Rob Neyer and Jeff Katz and Mark Aubrey and Mark Armour and Matthew Prigge. But I enjoy writing there so I'll try.

Hopefully I can stick to these better than last year's goals. 

Finally, let me close with five cards I got at a recent card show. I've started a binder called, "Cards I Like" as I have mentioned before. Here are the five cards I dig from that card show:

The Topps Tribute space race card just feels and looks cool in hand. It's from back when Tribute sort of did what Allen & Ginter does now -- with random rivalries and such. But Tribute cards are cooler. 

Then, we have Josh Gibson and his Tape Measure Blast in Yankee Stadium and, on the bottom, Judy Johnson. I have had a fascination with the Negro Leagues ever since I read Only the Ball Was White followed by I Was Right On Time. Even as a kid, stories of those leagues intrigued me -- I couldn't imagine why a Negro League was necessary, and it struck me as ridiculous that it existed. Then I read Buck O'Neill's book, and I realized that it wasn't ridiculous -- it was just life, and the guys who lived it actually loved it. Sure, those players would have loved the opportunity in the major leagues, but they loved the opportunities they got.

In the middle row, we first have Paul Gauguin. I've actually featured Gauguin's art on this blog in my first year, and I've been an admirer of his work since high school. I like this Mayo set -- using old photography makes the card more attractive to me, for some reason, over using faux old art like Ginter does.

Finally, we have David Price. The only reason I bought this card was because he is wearing his Vanderbilt uniform. Maybe I'll start a Vanderbilt-uniform collection at some point, but for now, it's going to be a "I like that card" visceral basis.

Thanks for sticking around for these three years. Even though I rarely respond to comments, I enjoy getting them. It means that I struck a chord with someone enough to get them to stop and take a few minutes to write a comment.

Here's to a few more good years here for me, and thanks for reading.

#SuperTraders Box Break: So, What Did We Get???

I listed out the boxes that I bought to break up for the #SuperTraders group on Thursday. I titled the post "What are you THINKING Tony?" because I'm always complaining about how I hate the logoless Panini -- and then I go and get three Panini products to circulate around. 

Being an impatient sort, I literally ripped through all the unopened packs on Thursday night. Last night, I scanned the better cards and sorted most everything out. Today, I finished sorting and packaged up everything to go out in the mail. With it being 26 packages, I am leaving it to my wife's discretion as to whether all of them go out at once or whether they go out over a few weeks. 

After all, as anyone in a relationship knows, the best way to have a happy life is to make sure that your significant other is happy. Well, that, and making sure that you still indulge in those guilty pleasures like chocolate, baseball cards, and a good bottle of your favorite tipple.

That proves two things: first, that you can find a song for nearly every word imaginable and, second, there are still people paying money to hear Fiona Apple play music. 

Or, maybe that was a free show in Portland. I don't know.

Anyway, here's what the #SuperTraders got in our boxes of cards here at Off Hiatus Central:

1.  2012 Panini Cooperstown Blaster

This one did not have much to offer us. No parallels of any sort, no serial numbers, and barely any inserts. It was like a pack-searched blaster.  To be fair, this is a pretty cool set generally. If Panini didn't put out literally the same set every year with very few changes to the photos, it would be a better set.

Because I felt like I needed to scan something from the blaster, here's a card that helped me:

I mean, I own this card already, so it didn't help me *that* much.  Let's move on.

2. 2014 Donruss Baseball Factory Set

This could have been a much better set. It's been said before elsewhere, but this set is annoying. The first half -- the original release -- was pretty cool. A decent design with pretty good photos and a pretty good idea generally to bring back the Donruss name led to a more successful release than Panini expected, I'd guess. 

As a result, Panini tried to capitalize on that good feeling and released Series 2. Series 2 was a car crash in a flood caused by a tornado destroying a dam by pushing a bridge over onto the dam. Seriously, it's that bad. 

Why? Well, there are two Diamond Kings for each team. That never happened before. There are two sets of Rated Rookies, which may or may not have happened before, but it was unnecessary and not in keeping with the 1980s nostalgia part of the release. 

More to the point, Series 2 featured cards for a multiplicity of players who appeared in Series 1. If Series 1 had been, say, 800 cards, then I could see this being necessary. It was not -- it was like 150 to 200 cards. Why repeat players?  Also, there were a few random retired players thrown in -- such as two or three retired Cincinnati Reds and a couple of retired New York Yankees. But, not every team had a retired player in the set. And, what the hell are retired players doing in the set (unless they were a puzzle insert?)? 

It's just a nonsensical set generally.

There was one relic card in the factory box, just to keep up with modern collector needs:

Congratulations to Sam, the Daily Dimwit, who is the lucky recipient of a Rated Rookie Relic of George Springer serial numbered 14 of 99. It looks like this is a new addition to his Springer relic collection, so that's an awesome hit for him!

3.  2012 Topps Mini

This box promised one autograph or relic mini card. In addition, six packs had inserts and, in addition, there were five Gold parallels serial numbered to 61. Let's start with the inserts:

Yes, it's the return of Golden Moments, but in mini form. Also, my apologies go out to Jaybarkerfan, as you'll have to wait to get your Smoltz mini insert because it got buried under the Diamondbacks and I didn't find it until your envelope was sealed up. Don't worry -- you'll get it, though!

Next up: the gold parallels.

So far, so good. All but the Indians were claimed of these inserts and parallels. It's always cool to get a parallel that is numbered to less than 100 total, so hopefully these are good additions to the various collectors' collections.

Finally, this box featured one of the funkiest looking relics I have seen:

Is that relic made cooler by the writing, or is it that the Rays wrote the date and had an employee sign it -- and then Topps just cut that part up too and put it in the card?  I'd like to think it was Longoria himself writing that, but it's probably my wild-ass guess that is closer to the truth. Still, I do feel like this is a more interesting relic due to the writing.

4. 2009 Upper Deck O-Pee-Chee

So, I blew it on this one too -- I didn't cut up the box and insert the cards I was supposed to insert into the various envelopes. Sorry guys. Next package, I promise.

Anyway, I hate myself for my reaction to this box. I really like these cards -- they are attractive cards that are intentionally styled after the 1976 Topps set. My ugly reaction, though, was of disappointment for not getting any autographs or relics in the box. 

I've become a modern collector. Dammit.

What did we get?

Well, I got a Corey Hart black mini:

There were six of the "20th Anniversary" cards:

There were two "New York, New York" inserts that were thicker than the average card:

Looks about right. The Yankees get Jeter, the Mets get...Mike Pelfrey.

And, there were a few other random insert-type things:

So, it wasn't a bad box overall...well, other than the fact that I received only TWO base Milwaukee Brewers cards in the whole box. Maybe that's what's coloring my view.

5.  2015 Panini Contenders

As with all things Panini, I was ready to hate this product. There are some things that are not great about it. It's basically about three main sets thrown together with a bunch of random inserts. Set one is the "Season Ticket" set of current players -- some minor leaguers, some drafted last year, some current major leaguers, and some retired players -- in color photos from their college days.  Let's have John Elway (yeah, really) model this card:

The second set is the "School Colors" set. It's pretty similar to the Season Ticket set with the color photography and all, but it has no backgrounds other than the player's college colors. Here's Brewers' 2nd round draft pick (out for 2016 after TJS) Nathan Kirby from the university whose students refer to their school humbly as "The University":

So, I hate Kirby already for two reasons -- that he's out with a ligament transplant, and because he was the pitcher who closed out Vanderbilt in the 2015 College World Series. If I need a third, it's that his middle name is "Winston." Seriously. The guy should talk like Thurston Howell III on Gilligan's Island.

Finally, the third set within a set is the "Old School Colors" set. This is where it gets annoying, because I can't explain what the hell this set is about except being "School Colors" with black & white photos.

At least I can add that one to my player collection.

The upside to this box were the six autographs. 

Again, because of the random way that some of these cards are named, a few guys are shown with college logos and four are shown with their major league city. 

Probably the highlight -- at least for Mark Hoyle -- is the fact that the Red Sox's top prospect, Yoan Moncada, was one of our autographs. I wish the autograph were better, but I'm guessing Yoan signed this sticker in the middle of signing several thousand for Panini. Still, this autograph was going on eBay for somewhere around $50, so it doesn't suck!

The best autograph, of course, is the one going to Brett Cooper of Blake Perkins -- you have to appreciate a guy who actually took his time and signed the sticker well.

I hope y'all enjoy the cards you get from this break!