Monster Package Post #5: A Cracked Bat

I'm not quite sure how I came across the new-ish blog "A Cracked Bat." I know I was reading a post on someone's blog and, as I tend to do, I looked at their blogroll to see what blogs they read that I might not have on my list.  

Somehow, somewhere, though, a link to Julie's blog was floating on the right-hand side of a page. I clicked through, read a little bit, and realized that Julie was collecting for much of the time that I was not collecting, and that I had backfilled my collection for the period that Julie needed cards.  I sent her an e-mail and we swapped packages of cards.  

To what I was saying, Julie collected during the 1990s, which was exactly the time that I spent 7 years in college/law school/stretching loan money out to live and pay rent. So, she sent me a bunch of great 1990s cards and even one or two Brewers of recent vintage.  Let's start with the recent stuff:

That some Prizmatic action from Panini there. I have been slow to buy any of the unlicensed cards, but I've been lucky enough to trade with folks who have dived into that pool of cards and want to get rid of their Brewers.  I'm especially happy to add the Carlos Gomez to my player collection of him.

As opposed to past posts, this time it makes sense to group the cards by the issuer and year. So, here goes.

The Lone 1999 Topps
I think it's the lone one I scanned, and not the only one I got.  I just have the rest.

1994 Triple Play (Donruss)
There is something about this set's design that I really like. I'm not sure what it is. Maybe it's that thing that happens to guys -- at some point in our lives, we stop trying to be "fashionable" and basically end up buying golf/polo shirts and khakis for the rest of our lives in our effort to appear at least "relaxed" and "business casual." So, perhaps my "style" for cards is locked in solidly in the year I graduated from college. 

Or, maybe, I just like them.

1994 Select

See, these are from the same year, they echo some of the same design elements, but these cards are too busy on their fronts for my taste.

Weird, huh?

I forgot that Jody Reed was a Brewer, by the way. I think the early 1990s were spent trying to sign every second baseman who had anything remotely close to a decent year in the 1980s. So, Brewers fans were treated to the musical stylings of Jody Reed, Willie Randolph, and Bill Doran, among others, and to Phil Garner as the manager. What -- was Johnny Ray unavailable?

1994 Pinnacle
I didn't scan all of the Pinnacle cards that Julie sent to me. I mean, we've already seen Jody Reed and Mark Kiefer, and I've used up my Johnny Ray joke.  And, I couldn't bear to see a Brian Harper card on my blog. Not yet, anyway. I'm sure I'll get there at some point when I'm looking for blog post #34,501 when I'm the last blogger standing.

Anyway, I'm starting to think, though, that I'm just a sucker for full-bleed photos. I don't like the name placards, but these cards are pretty well done.

1994 Bowman
Again, I didn't scan all of the 1994 Bowman that Julie sent.  The lost promise of the man who shares my birthday (though he's younger than me by a little) -- Jeff D'Amico (the big dude who was 6'7" tall and not the one who pitched for the Royals) -- and of the toolsy non-baseball player Duane Singleton were too much for me to scan and show at this point.  So, I went with two guys from my PCs:

1995 SP Championship Series

Julie sent pretty much the whole team set from this card maker. Full-bleed photo fatigue is starting to set in, though. All you collectors who dislike the full-bleed photos and love cards with borders must have collected in the mid-90s.  It gets difficult to tell these apart after a while.

1996 Fleer
Yet another full-bleed photo. But, these have grown on me too. I actually like and appreciate the fact that they are not high gloss cards. And, I guess the thing I most like about full-bleed photos is that it accentuates photography and minimalistic design -- the full-bleed forces the issuer to be a little less over the top. 

As long as your name isn't "Pacific."

David "The Incredible" Hulse. Perhaps the biggest misnomer in Chris Berman's long (now obnoxiously so) career of giving nicknames to players.  Some of his nicknames were truly inspired; others less so. This one stuck, but there was absolutely nothing incredible about Hulse, unless you consider keeping a job in the majors as a putative leadoff man with a .285 OBP incredible.  Irrational, perhaps -- but not incredible.

The final randoms:

That Brian Mallette card is numbered 91 of 100.  Mallette pitched a little bit of 2002 with the Brewers and pitched in Japan as well.  He was born in Dublin, Georgia -- a city of about 15,000 or so that is located about 45 minutes to an hour from Macon along Interstate 16. Dublin is a speed trap of some renown in Georgia, and, appropriately, Mallette's career came to an end after a season during which he was suspended for failing a drug test. "But officer, you were hiding behind that billboard!"

The Bobby Hughes card is interesting as well -- it is a 1998 Leaf Rookies & Stars card for a rookie who was 27 already. The Brewers system after Sal Bando became the GM turned into a massive maelstrom of total crap. Wasted high draft pick after wasted high draft pick became the norm. That was what led to the decade-plus of terrible baseball in Milwaukee that mercifully came to an end in the past decade.

Julie is new to the blogging scene, so all of y'all should check out her blog and trade with her. As she put it herself in her note to me:

Julie, I definitely enjoyed these cards. If you enjoy sharing, I'm sure that some other bloggers will share more Tigers with you too!

Hot Weekend, Hot PWE: Starting Nine

I mentioned in my last post -- well, I complained in my last post -- that we are having to replace one of our HVAC units. The guys came yesterday to do the work. The problem was that it was so hot here in Atlanta yesterday -- mid-90s and with humidity that made it feel like it was over 100 degrees.

The real problem is that the unit being replaced is our upstairs unit in the attic/crawl space above our upstairs bedrooms. That meant that the work was attempted to be carried out in temperatures probably reaching into the 135 to 145 degree range.  In other words, even with two guys, some of the work could not be completed for fear of them passing out from heat exhaustion.  So, that means a short post today while it's still cool in my card room/office -- which is on that upstairs level -- and hopefully, tomorrow, the AC will be fixed early enough so that I might be able to keep trying to catch up with all the mail I've gotten lately.

A short post today, though, to thank Max at Starting Nine for a small trade we made. A few weeks ago, I posted the contents of the hobby box of Topps Archives that I bought. In that box, one of my inserts was a deckle-edge John Olerud.  Max and I worked out a trade for him to get the Metropolitan-attired Olerud and for me to get a Robin Yount card in return.  As it turned out, Max actually sent me two Younts, both of which I needed for my Yount collection:

1992 Mr. Turkey Superstar

2003 Topps Tribute

With these two cards, my Robin Yount collection has now reached 600 items.  If you would have told me 6 months ago that I would hit that number before September, I might have laughed or cried.  I would have laughed for its implausibility, but I might have cried for the amount of money I probably spent getting there!

In any case, these two cards are great additions to the Yount collection.  Many thanks, Max, for the quick and easy trade. You'll be getting that Olerud soon!

A PWE from the Hot Corner

I hereby interrupt the "here's a massive stack of cards I got" posts to bring you a "here's two cards I got in a plain white envelope" post.

It's Thursday evening. I am speaking to a group of architects in the morning and generally otherwise skipping out of going to work.  I'm in a good mood.  Well, except for having to replace an HVAC unit in my house...which also is tomorrow. But now, I'm just complaining.

Here's a song appropriate for being plain and white:

Now, on to the post. Pat from Hot Corner Cards sent me a two card PWE last week that had two cards I needed for my collections.  One is a Brewers parallel of Travis Ishikawa -- which means that I have gotten both the Target and the Gold parallels from fellow bloggers in the space of a week:

Granted, #45 in my mind is always Rob Deer until someone supplants him, but it's pretty cool to have gotten both of those parallels in rapid succession.

The other card Pat sent to me went directly into a player collection:

That Gypsy Queen mini of Jean Segura matches the mini-OBP that Segura has had this year. It's been a tough year for him -- he's struggled at the plate and, more tragically, his nine-month old son died just before the All-Star break this year.  Hopefully, his struggles were caused by those off-field issues and next year will be better.  Lord knows I'd struggle at my job if something similar happened to me.

Thank you, Pat, for the PWE.  I'm putting together a much larger package in return for your Brewers from the "team box break" post you had.   

Monster Package #4: Angels, In Order

This is the fourth installment in my "Monster Package" series.  This package came to me from The Angels, In Order. Only a few days after commenting for the first time on my blog, I got an e-mail saying that Tom wanted to send me some cards.  It turned out to be dozens of cards -- oddballs, major releases, inserts, minis, parallels...even some Brewers Police cards.  

These "here are the cards" posts are a lot of photos, so bear with me. Because, well, here are the cards.

Paul Molitor
A couple of those garish Classic Baseball cards from the early 1990s and a Stadium Club All-Star card. There were a bunch of these Classic cards, but they hurt my eyes so much that I'll only show the cards that go into player collections (and, this way, I don't have to show Gary Sheffield again)!

Ted Higuera

Greg Vaughn

B.J. Surhoff

Rob Deer
Big Rob Deer came from the Giants in a trade in 1986. He immediately hit 33 HR that year, along with 72 walks and 179 strikeouts -- the patron saint of the three true outcomes. He excited Brewers fans as possibly being the ideological equivalent to Gorman Thomas. But when his OBP started dipping dangerously close to .300, the Brewers let him go to Detroit as a free agent. There, he excited crowds by hitting 25 homeruns and tallying just 55 other hits all year in 448 at bats for a pathetic .179 AVG. Sure, his OBP was still near .320, but everyone noticed the AVG...and the sub-.400 SLG as well. But, he was what he was -- TTO all the way.

Robin Yount

I already had this blue one, but oddly enough, the Fleer Baseball MVP card was new to my collection and pushed my total Yount card collection to 597.

Dan Plesac

Ryan Braun

 Wait -- recycled photos? Man the battle stations!

This is a Mini!

Jonathan Lucroy

Prince Fielder

Jeromy Burnitz

Geoff Jenkins

Dave Nilsson

Ben Sheets

Rickie Weeks

There are a ton of other cards that Tom sent to me as well, but this post is getting pretty long already, so how about I go with "The Best of the Rest"

Tony Plush

Quickly becoming a favorite

Who?

The Massive Richie Sexson

Another Brewer Steroid user...sheesh

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A 2012 Safety card

Many thanks go out to Tom, the great blogger at Angels, In Order for this fantastic, massive stack of cards!  And guess what? There are still more stacks to come!

Thanks for reading.