Give a Hoot #SuperTraders!

So, today I was just about to post about an envelope I received from Canada's best blog about cards from the dollar store. Then, I saw that Night Owl did exactly that. As a result, I felt compelled to change up and see what other envelope I had available to blog about.

In a twist of irony only Canadian Alanis Morissette could find ironic, the only other cards I received recently came from...Night Owl. 

Isn't that ironic, don't you think? 

Recognizing that everyone is probably tired of hearing about how not ironic Alanis's lyrics really were and also recognizing that I need some music to pick myself up, let's go with songs and stories from and relating to the band that Rolling Stone called the "Best New Band of 1985." Of course, it's The Hooters.

1. "Who the F*ck are The Hooters?"

For those of you who don't know, the Hooters were/are a Philadelphia band who achieved some mainstream success in the 1980s. Notably, the Hooters opened the U.S. side of the Live Aid concert in Philadelphia in 1985. 

Main Live Aid organizer Bob Geldof famously responded to being required to put The Hooters on the bill by asking, "Who the f*ck are The Hooters?" At that point, Geldof could be forgiven for not knowing, seeing as their first major album did not come out until 1985.

Guess what? I've got a card for that.

Chris Demaria was drafted by the Pirates in the 17th round of the 2002 draft. The Kansas City Royals then picked Demaria up in the minor league portion of the Rule V draft in 2004, kept him for a year, and shipped him to the Milwaukee Brewers for the 2006 season. Weirdly, I have this card with Demaria in both this Royals uniform and in a painted-on Brewers uniform. I don't think I've seen that variation identified online, but it's not like anyone notices or cares other than Brewers and Royals collectors.

I don't think even Demaria noticed.

2. The Who "Behind Blue Eyes" 

In 1982, The Who went on the first of their ten farewell tours -- the current one is the tenth and possibly final one. The Hooters were the local band chosen to open for one of the farewell shows at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia on September 25, 1982. 

To go with this?

I bet Zack Greinke thinks he knows what it's like to be the bad man, behind blue eyes.

3.  Cyndi Lauper: "Time After Time"

Speaking of "and I blame you," one of the co-founders of The Hooters was Rob Hyman. Rob was brought in by Cyndi Lauper's producer, Rick Chertoff, to help write "one more song" for Lauper's debut album She's So Unusual. According to Wikipedia, Hyman and Lauper sat at a piano and started working on it by drawing on their own particular relationship issues. Hyman is the male backup singer on the song.

It ended up being one of the most critically acclaimed songs in Lauper's entire catalog and regularly rates in those "Greatest Love Songs" or "Best Ballads of All-Time" countdowns that VH1 used to issue with a vengeance to fill weekend time.

I have to admit -- I've never really liked this song. I don't know if it is Lauper, the syrupy ballad not appealing to the then 11-year-old me, or what. Well, it can't be that 11-year-old thing, though, because I still don't like it.

I also still have problems with Bud Selig. In addition to my much discussed antipathy toward the club's player recruitment policies in the early 1990s, Selig made himself a laughing stock by declaring the 2002 All-Star Game -- held at Miller Park in Milwaukee -- to be a 7-7 tie when the teams ran out of pitchers after 11 innings. 

Selig put the All-Star Game in Milwaukee as an ego-feeding piece, aggrandizing the openly rapacious sales tax imposed on a five-county area (including the county in which I grew up) in order to buy Milwaukee a new stadium to increase his franchise's value. After that game, the ridiculous "solution" of giving the winning league home-field advantage came into effect. As if that made a difference. 

And yet, there is now a "Bud Selig Experience" in Miller Park to pay tribute to the man. I get that he brought baseball back to Milwaukee. It's just that he spent so much time making sure that baseball in Milwaukee would always feature a terrible team that pisses me off.

4. The Hooters "All You Zombies"

This song is almost as much about biblical stories as it is anything else. It does rip on people being "zombies" and not paying attention to those who are trying to lead them away from bad things -- like Noah and Moses. This song may name check Moses more than any other song in history.

Apropos of nothing, here are four cards from the 1980s and 1990s. Let's talk about Don August. From everything I've heard and seen, he is a pretty decent dude who still participates in Brewer fantasy camps, as he mentioned on April 24 on Twitter. He was traded from the Houston Astros to the Brewers with Mark Knudsen in exchange for the skeletal remnants of Danny Darwin's career in August of 1986. August is a trivia answer as well -- he was the winning pitcher in the first game played at SkyDome (Rogers Centre) in Toronto back on June 5, 1989.

5. The Hooters "And We Danced"

The song I most remember from The Hooters is "And We Danced." It only reached number 21 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts, though it hit #3 on the Mainstream Rock chart. This article compares the song unfavorably to one of the universally most disliked pop songs of all time, "We Built This City." The article concludes that the video -- watch it yourself! -- "may be pop culture's worst musical moment ever."

Ever? Really? I mean, it's pretty cheesy, what with the breaking into a drive-in theater being featured in a mid-1980s song as if drive-ins still existed at that point. They did, but they were dying fast, of course.

UK music magazine NME calls the following song only the fifth-worst video ever. It's a song called "Call on Me" by Eric Prydz. 

I'm legitimately scared for my life after watching that video. Is it the simulated sex with a towel? Women working out in thongs? The legwarmers? The sketchy Italian guy just hanging out in the class with a dirtbag smile? The fact that one of the women actually walks up to sketchy dude and is interested?

Yes. Yes it is.

To go with this, well, nothing Night Owl sent deserves this. 

But, let's go with some Finest and a little bit of Oddball. Something needs to redeem this post. 

Only an oddball can. It's certainly not The Hooters.

Night Owl, thank you once again for sending these cards my way -- they are greatly appreciated...far more than The Hooters ever could be. 

A PWE From the Shoebox featuring Flogging Molly

I recently packaged up a bunch of cards that I didn't want and didn't need -- they weren't Brewers, after all -- and sent Shane at Shoebox Legends an envelope that he wasn't expecting. It had been a while since we had swapped cards, so it was good to surprise him with a bunch of cards that he needed.

With it being St. Patrick's Day and all, it would make sense if I put the PWE I got in response from Shane to music. Spotify tried to help me out with a playlist called "Greatest St. Paddy's Day Hits."  Then I looked through it, and it's nearly useless. Yes, there are songs by The Pogues, Dropkick Murphys, House of Pain, and even Macklemore & Ryan Lewis's "Irish Celebration."

But what, pray tell, does the Van Halen song "Runnin' With The Devil" have to with St. Patrick's Day? Or "Take On Me" by a-ha? Also, how can you put together a 12-hour playlist for St. Patrick's Day without a single song by Flogging Molly?

Seriously, check out this 185-song monstrosity for yourself.

Just unbelievable.

I have to do something about that. So, featuring cards sent by Shane, here's your Flogging Molly playlist.

"To Youth (My Sweet Roisin Dubh)"

Let's start with a song featured on the FIFA 2005 game soundtrack. I played the hell out of that game, and the music EA picked for that game was just excellent. This one, "Irish Blood, English Heart" by Morrissey, "Fit But You Know It" by the Streets...just a crazy good soundtrack that included this great song that is an homage to youth and to a very old and famous Irish political song.

By the way, "Roisin Dubh" is a reference to a black rose.

To go with this song, I go to a player from my youth -- Ted Higuera -- who made a huge splash with the Brewers in 1985 and was Milwaukee's best pitcher in the second half of the 1980s before shoulder injuries from all the mileage on his arm in the Mexican League caught up with him.

"Salty Dog" & "The Lightning Storm"

"Salty Dog" was the first song on Flogging Molly's first album, Swagger. and this is Irish-punk done as it should be to me. It doesn't hurt that the lead singer is actually Irish. As he says mid-song, 

"It could be worse, California. It could be worse. 

We could be Welsh!"

BONUS: Watch after "Salty Dog" ends for a toast to Johnny Cash just before they break into "The Lightning Storm."

These were the oldest cards that Shane sent me, to go with the oldest Flogging Molly song on the playlist. I'm midway through opening a box of 1992 Fleer Ultra, and the design is close enough that I thought that these cards belonged to that set. They don't -- they are from 1993 -- and they reminded me what full-bleed cards without distracting smoke effects can look like.

Good, that is.

"Drunken Lullabies"

One of my absolute favorite Flogging Molly songs is the title track. This appeared on a video game as well -- "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4." It's a song about how as much as things seem to change, we still seem to repeat the mistakes of the past -- "Has the shepherd led his lambs astray to the bigot and the gun?"

For whatever reason, this Bowman Platinum card seemed appropriate for this song. The Bowman line of cards expands and contracts fairly regularly, it seems. Topps never learned its lessons from the overproduction era, though. Rather than cutting back on the number of sets and the number of cards printed, instead it chases artificial scarcity and buzz about crazy photo variations and 24 wacky parallels each serial numbered to numbers ranging from 599 to 1.  "Catch the collecting fever, kids!"

"Float"



Float is another great song that is catchy and sad all at once. It's especially sad watching the paperclip man walking sadly through the dirty streets looking for who-knows-what to make himself happy. Then, he builds himself a boat, only to get buried under the first wave that comes along.  

It's tough to explain, but I get legitimately sad for that little guy.

See, that's the thing about real punk music. Yes, there's a lot of upbeat aggressive music, but it's also about a mentality that things need to change for the better. 

Then again, I guess that doesn't go as well with drunkenness off crappy green beer as "Hotel California."



To go with this general sadness, here are cards from two guys the Brewers traded away. Vaughn was traded ostensibly to assist with a rebuild in 1996. Getting Bryce Florie, Marc Newfield, and Ron Villone didn't build anything, though.

Matt LaPorta was the Brewers first round draft pick in June of 2007 out of the University of Florida. Thankfully, the Brewers ditched him with Rob Bryson, Zach Jackson and a player to be named later for CC Sabathia. Weirdly enough, the PTBNL ended up to be the best piece of that trade for the Indians since they received 2014 All-Star and the third-place finisher in the MVP race that year: Michael Brantley.

"Requiem for a Dying Song"




This song is upbeat, though it still has the punk in it -- "Does the Government whip crack across your back? Is the Order of the Day don't listen, attack?"

Still, it's a fun-sounding song. It puts me in a better mood than before.  

Just as a new addition to my Prince Fielder collection puts me in an even better mood. This "Upper Deck Elements" was a new one on me -- I'd never seen it before. 

I criticized Topps earlier for blowing through different "brands" or products regularly. Well, Upper Deck might have been the king of doing that. You would get the flagship and Sweet Spot about every year, but otherwise, you could end up with just about anything -- Goudey, O-Pee-Chee, Baseball Heroes, The Ballpark Collection, even Fleer one year.

Upper Deck should get a lower-priced license to release two sets a year -- one with current players, one with former players (or a mix of current and former players). Impose discipline on them, and they'd be a fantastic addition.

"Rebels of the Sacred Heart" (NSFW language)

Careful -- there's a bit of cursing here.  But it is punk, so tough f**king luck, right? Now THIS is a proper Irish punk jig -- tin whistle and all. Just an awesome song, done live with a ton of energy. And I mean, come on, it talks about being drunk (Three sheets to the wind), being human (aiming for heaven, probably winding up in hell), and being free in the end ("no ball or chain, no prison shall keep!")

To go with it? The exuberance of youth -- or, more particularly, of a prospect still on his way up in Tyrone Taylor. 

For Tyrone and for all of you on this St. Patrick's Day -- when we're all a little Irish:

May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind always be at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
and rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of your hand.

Failing all that, just send out a lot of PWEs to your blogging friends no matter who they may be. That's what makes our hobby fun and great -- and my thanks to Shane for the great reminder.

National League Pillow Fights

If you are not a fan either of the Milwaukee Brewers or the Philadelphia Phillies, you are excused if you did not realize that those two teams are squaring off against one another. The Brewers and Phillies are the owners of the two worst records in baseball, though (oddly enough) the Brewers actually own the longest winning streak in the majors at 4 (and I know that means that the Brewers will lose tonight).  

With such bad records, fans like myself and Brad -- the proprietor of the Phillies-centric and eponymous Brad's Blog -- are left to focus on our baseball card collecting and the race to see who will own the right to select perhaps A.J. Puk from the University of Criminal Activity....I mean, Florida or high school pitchers Riley Pint or Austin Bergner or whomever emerges as the top pick next season.

That "in the meantime" for Brad and me means that we get to swap cards. I sent Brad a ton of cards that he needed, and he returned the favor recently.  Here are a few of the highlights.

Rickie Weeks looks so happy that he was not involved in this week's series in Philly. He should really calm down -- it's not like the Mariners are above .500 or anything.  Maybe he is in Philly and thought that the Pillow fight would look like this:

Clickbait?  Of course.

Ryan Braun is in Philadelphia. He and Ryan Howard are likely to be trading stories about snookering their respective teams into long-term contracts far longer than they ever should have received.  But, at least Braun didn't get tackled by a pitcher...

It's the little victories that matter.

Brad also sent me a couple of Greinke cards, as if to remind me of the time when the Brewers had a pitching staff that did not require heavy doses of morphine to get through the pain:

Finally, my favorite card from all of the ones Brad sent is a parallel from the 2014 Topps set:

Back when the Brewers actually won more games than they lost and had reason to celebrate, Getty Images captured an overjoyed Jonathan Lucroy getting mobbed by his teammates and, directly behind him, a guy who looks like the lead singer from the Spin Doctors.

Brad, thank you very much for the great cards and the great trade.  Hope we can trade again soon!

And so do they:

Breakdowns

I'm in the mood again for a good theme post.  Late last week, I received a package from Defgav at Baseball Card Breakdown with some great cards for my Brewers collection. Since I love music and discovering new music, I thought, "hey, I'll see what comes up when I try to find songs called 'Breakdown'".  

There were five cards that I scanned in the envelope, so five songs called "Breakdown" will go with these cards.

Thusly I spake unto him that a card blog theme post was born.  And it was good.

I hope.

1.  Super Junior-M, "BREAK DOWN"

So, who's up for a Chinese-South Korean boy band (a/k/a Mandopop)? This song was released on SJ-M's second studio album also called Break Down.  The Chinese version of the album hit number one on the Billboard World Album chart and number forty-nine on the Billboard "Heatseekers" Album Chart (I think that's the "Top 200 Albums").  

In case you don't listen or watch, it's a strangle melange of Mandarin and English with Korean subtitles that occasionally show up in English too.  It's a super-catchy, poppy song. If you're not careful, you'll get it stuck in your head.  

Its card equivalent?

A Bowman Gold Parallel of Zack Greinke. Why? Well, the gold catches your eye.  It's flashy -- almost catchy -- and having Zack on the Brewers appears to be a strange melange as compared to the current team.  I mean, to have a real pitcher on the team?  Nearly inexplicable.

If you're not careful, the thought of the Brewers being good might get stuck in your head!

2.  Jack Johnson, "Breakdown"

I saw Jack Johnson in concert once. One of my work seminars took me to Palm Springs, California -- I know, tough life, someone has to do it -- and to the incredible La Quinta Resort.  I had been in the Middle East the week before in Dubai (to see if I wanted to move there...two words: Hell. No.) so I was all out of sorts. 

It took until Thursday for me to find out that the Coachella Music Festival was going on that weekend.  If I had known that, I'd have stayed the whole weekend.  Instead, I could go only on Friday.  So, I did.  It was excellent, too -- saw The Verve, The Raconteurs, Serj Tankian from System of a Down...and Jack Johnson.

I remember two things from that concert.  One of my friends got completely baked, and I ended up tracking him -- not babysitting, mind you...just tracking him.  The other thing was the fact that nearly every woman in the crowd knew every word to every song that Jack Johnson sang -- including this one.  To me, they all sounded the same.  

His music is innocent enough.  It's harmless. I don't actively avoid his music, but I don't seek it out either. I just am not that big of a fan.

Sort of like Bowman Chrome and its X-Fractors. It's harmless and innocent enough.  There are a ton of people who just love the stuff. And, as with Jack Johnson, it's not that I actively avoid the cards -- I just am not that big of a fan.  

I was surprised to learn that this Cole Gillespie is the same Cole Gillespie that played for the Diamondbacks a few years ago and continues to play in the Miami Marlins system this year. The dude is Quad-A through and through -- too good for Triple-A, not good enough for the major leagues.

Sort of like Jack Johnson.

3.  Noisestorm, "Breakdown"

I know a lot of people like triphop/dubstep/techno/electro/whatever the hell this is called. I don't mind it, for the most part.  Honestly, it just gets boring to me after a while. 

Then again, I never understood the allure of jam bands until I took a hit of a hippie's pipe at a Bela Fleck and the Flecktones show at Music Midtown in Atlanta.  When I emerged from haze I found myself in, I felt like I'd lost a day -- but I knew Bela Fleck was the coolest act ever.

So, I just haven't taken the right medications, I suppose, to make this make sense.

On the other hand, I'm not sure there are enough medications to make Danny Klassen make sense.  Let's just move on before I roll a spliff.

Not that I could, mind you.

Ahem.

4. Seether, "Breakdown"

I thought I needed drugs for that last one?

Yikes.

Seether is a very earnest sounding alt rock band who have songs that I've thought were decent in the past -- Remedy is pretty catchy and all -- but this one sounds like 2009.  It just does.  

But it has that throwback feel about it too.  It's new, but it feels like mid-90s rock.  

Likewise, the Topps Archives 2001 set were new, but they felt old.  Like this reprinted 1981 Topps Sal Bando, mocking Brewers fans for (at that time) the futility of the 1990s under Bando's watch as the Brewers General Manager (until August 12, 1999, when he finally resigned his position and the equally inept Dean Taylor took over).

Sal was very earnest about his position as well, to be fair. He loved Milwaukee, became a paragon in the business community, and really seemed to want the best for the team.  

But it was like the Green Bay Packers in the 1980s -- only after the team threw off the shackles of past glories (such as, for Green Bay, hiring first Bart Starr and then Forrest Gregg as its head coach) could the team succeed.  

5.  Tom Petty, "Breakdown"

This is a classic off Petty's first album, performed here live in 1978.  I picked this because the versions with the album cut are literally the song playing with a single PowerPoint slide saying "Tom Petty - Breakdown" on it for the whole song.  

This is almost certainly the best known song called Breakdown, at least to me. It is the one that I could sing along with, certainly.  

I actually like it.  I hate to say that about anything from Gainesville (other than Johnny at the Trading Spot), but I like this song.

Nothing, though, can approach this Bronze Topps Clubhouse Relic from 2004 serial numbered to 99.  I had the base of this relic in my collection previously, but I did not have this one.  

Trust me when I say that it's far better than Tom Petty in my book. 

Let me close by saying I echo the thoughts of Defgav's cable company, as set forth on the advertisement to protect the cards enroute:

Thank you, Gavin, for these great cards.  I think some Reggie Jacksons might have to come your way!