Twitch Sends Me Cards

Interacting with collectors by way of anything other than face-to-face interaction can have its awkward moments. For instance, when you're way behind on sending out response packages to people, you feel a little awkward interacting with them because you feel like you want to say, "sorry, man, I know, I'm way behind." 

Other times, there is some awkwardness when you can't remember who sent you cards. I have solved that problem for myself by scanning the cards as soon as I get them in and then saving them in a scan folder named for the person who sent them to me.

Then, there is the awkwardness I felt recently. I know Twitch of Twitch Collects Cards. By that, I mean, I interact regularly with him on Twitter, watch his creative process in drawing all kinds of awesome sketch cards, and read his insomnia-filled tweets that make me feel awful inside for him. 

The fact is, though, that I never really knew Twitch's name or address before getting cards in the mail. Well, I probably did know CC is really Twitch (I mean, I did read Gavin's trade post), but still -- I didn't want to give credit for a package based on a hunch.  

To make up for my gaffe, I will first show you some of the fantastic art that Twitch is working on. 

I colored 7 #SketchCards today! Haku, Kitty, Karai, Jason/Lono, Gizmo, Rocketeer, BB-8. #collect #art #commissionme pic.twitter.com/vzacHZs5sl

— #RecallRauner (@TwitchWasHere) June 16, 2016

As the hashtag says, you can commission some of these great sketch cards or other items by contacting Twitch via Twitter. This is just the tip of the iceberg on the great art that Twitch is creating. I wish I had even one-tenth of this artistic ability. As best I can tell, my creativity is limited to words.

And, as you probably know if you've read this blog, that is a pretty limited creative streak for me. 

Twitch was kind enough to send me a ton of Brewers. I admit that I am now at a loss as to what to send back, but I'll figure that out soon.

Here's the highlights:

Liquor-fractors and pizza. Yummy. I Googled "Liquor and Pizza" and it turns out that El Cajon, California must be the best place to live in America. I found that Shinar Pizza there allows you to order a fresh pizza, liquor, beer, or wine, smokes (if you're so inclined), or even groceries all at once and they will deliver.

Sticking with shiny and 2011, how about a few of those diamond anniversary parallels?

Two player collections for me in Jonathan Lucroy (now at 147 Lucroy Cards/items) and Corey Hart (lagging behind at 103).

As best I can tell, Hart is done as a player. He tried to play last year with Pittsburgh, and he just could not get through all of the injuries. 

An interesting sidelight is that there is another baseball playing Corey Hart who is a coach in the Blue Jays organization. He stands 6-feet tall and has a shaved head (as opposed to the 6'7", shaggy haired outfielder).  

That Corey Hart and this Corey Hart both played in the Brewers organization together at Nashville in 2005. Now-Coach Corey Hart's first at-bat in the Brewers organization was to pinch-hit for the tall Corey Hart. Coach Corey Hart also told the story that he was asked to sign a baseball card of the other Corey Hart in 2008 or 2009. The card had the facsimile signature on it, and the card company had screwed up -- they put Coach Corey's signature on OF Corey's card.

Perhaps appropriately for Twitch's art is this story in which Craig Calcaterra talked to OF Corey about his extensive superhero action figure collection!

Next up: A&G Minis!

Another J. Corey Hart card -- a 2009 "Old Planter" back -- and a 2011 Mark Rogers Bazooka parallel hand-serial-numbered 2 out of just 25.

Rogers is the rare Mainer major leaguer. I don't know if he is still pitching now (he tried and failed to catch on with Texas in 2015), but he pitched last year in the Independent Atlantic League for Long Island and Bridgeport with not a whole lot of success (39 innings, 6.23 ERA, 25 walks, 9 HR allowed). At one time very early in his career -- based entirely on being the 5th pick overall in the 2004 draft, almost certainly -- Rogers was the 55th and then the 44th best prospect in baseball according to Baseball America in 2005 and 2006 respectively.

Then injuries caught him. Remember everyone and repeat after Baseball Prospectus: There Is No Such Thing As A Pitching Prospect. 

Rogers was smart and invested his bonus money wisely, according to this Portland Press Herald article. So, he's financially okay. But, Rogers really was a guy who never lived up to his high draft pick status.

On the left is Chris Dennis. Dennis was born in Windsor, Ontario, and was drafted by the Brewers in the 13th round of the 2007 MLB Draft from St. Thomas of Villanova High School in LaSalle, Ontario. He got as high as High-A Brevard County in 2011 before he couldn't keep up enough with his bat (in 96 plate appearances, he slashed .169/.274/.253). I don't know where he went from there -- perhaps he decided to go to college or try something different since, after all, he was 23 at the end of 2011.

On the right is a 1984 Topps Sticker of Larry Bowa. But ignore that. The important guy is the one in the middle -- Birmingham, Alabama, native Charlie Moore. While Moore was pretty much done as a player in 1987, it would have been nice for him to get to stay in Milwaukee for his final season in the majors rather than ending up on Chris Dennis's eventual stomping grounds in Ontario. Moore made it to the majors in 1973 at the age of 20, but he played over 120 games in a season just three times -- 1977, 1982, and 1983.

It's Yovani Gallardo times four -- three shiny cards (two chrome and one "Prizm") and one Turkey Red. Gallardo signed in the offseason with Baltimore to a two-year, $20 million contract with a $13 million team option for 2018 or a $2 million option buy out. Gallardo hasn't pitched much this year for Baltimore thanks to injuries. He'll get every opportunity to claim a rotation spot there, though. 

These cards helped push my Gallardo collection up to 153 cards.

For me, it's always good to add to my ever-burgeoning Ryan Braun collection. The first one is the base "O-Pee-Chee" (put in quotes in deference to the fact that, well, these cards are just Upper Deck in O-Pee-Chee name with a wannabe 1976 Topps look) from 2009. The next actually goes in my 2010 Upper Deck team collection. The "20th Anniversary" card is one I needed too -- even though I have one that looks almost exactly like it already, I still needed it. Finally, that fancy Topps High Tek thing from 2014 is actually a "Spiral Bricks Gold Diffractor" and it is serial numbered as number 22 of 99.

Thanks to this infusion of Brauns, my Ryan collection has now reached 564 different Ryan Braun cards/items.  

Twitch, many thanks for the great package of cards -- to be fair, there were at least 10 more cards I could have included here.

Okay, one more:

Thanks for the cards and thanks for the great art you post, CC!

P-Town Tom's Music

P-Town Tom is a blog world legend when it comes to sending out cards. He's so prolific in sending out cards that I literally had to go back through the posts of cards I've received from him (Here's 1 2 3 4 and 5) to make sure I hadn't used Tom's own profile to mine music for the cards I've gotten from him.

Thankfully, I had not. Also thankfully, I pretty much like the bands Tom feels comfortable enough to share. Indeed, one of those bands is actually a local Atlanta band. So, with no further ado, let's get to the cards and the music!

O.A.R.

O.A.R. is probably my least favorite band on Tom's list. I haven't heard much by one of the other bands, but I've just never been much of an O.A.R. fan. It's a bit too overly emotional -- and not in that emo-style like Bloc Party either. I should like them more, though -- I mean, the band has a saxophonist, after all. 

That said, I did pick the one song by O.A.R. that I distinctly recall hearing on whatever alternative music source that I was listening to back in 2006 -- probably XM Radio's Ethel, if I had to guess. It's all very yearning. I want the overly attractive couple in the video to stop fighting. Maybe that would stop all the weird mold from growing everywhere. I could hope. It just hurts to watch that happen.



Yes, I was kidding about all that earnestness I was feeling. Fleer, though, was not kidding about its emotion-laden set called, appropriately enough, Emotion-XL in 1996. 

I have to argue with this premise, however, in that neither Attack nor Studying nor Towering is actually an emotion. Attack is an action or a noun, but I have never felt "Attack".  Under attack, maybe...but never just "Attack." 

I mean, when is the last time you asked someone, "How do you feel today?" and they responded, "Oh, I'm Attack." Or, even, "I'm Towering today. How about you?" Same goes for studying -- it's something you do, not feel.

Grammarman, to the rescue!

Night Terrors of 1927

Here's the other band I've really never listened to on Tom's list. Now, I've heard of the band's guitarist's previous band (Rilo Kiley), and I've heard of their collaborators Tegan and Sara, but not too much from this band. The collaboration with Tegan and Sara, called "When You Were Mine," is pretty good, though the lead singer sounds a bit like Brandon Flowers of the Killers to me.

I didn't expect to get certified autographs of a Texas Ranger from Tom. He sent these two cards to me in the wake of the Brewers claiming Ramirez off waivers from the Cubs on May 31, 2016. I got this package from Tom the next week. Then, the day after I scanned the cards in and got them into my scan folder, Ramirez was claimed off waivers from the Brewers by the Twins. 

I guess I should pass these along to a Twins collector.

In his Brewer career -- and unless he comes back at some point in the future -- Ramirez threw 1-2/3 innings, allowing 2 hits -- both home runs -- while striking out three. In other words, I have more Neil Ramirez certified autographs than he had innings with Milwaukee. Cool!

Manchester Orchestra

Here's that local Atlanta band that is in Tom's favorite band list. The once-powerful alternative radio station in Atlanta, 99X, played this band all the time back in 2008 and 2009. 99X broke Collective Soul and Butch Walker (and his band, Marvelous 3) back in the 1990s, but with alternative music and radio generally waning in the past decade, 99X fell on hard times.

Thankfully, Manchester Orchestra has found a fairly decent audience worldwide. But, they are about as Mancunian as I am -- both of us like a lot of Manchester's music (and I like Manchester United, though that fact could be a fight-starter amongst Mancunians split between the Red of United and the Blue of Citeh er, City).

Speaking of Red, here's current lefty setup pitcher Will Smith -- who is also, mind you, a Georgian (originally from Newnan). Will came over to the Brewers in exchange for Nori Aoki in the 2013 off-season. Considering the work that Smith has put in since (3.10 ERA in 139-1/3 innings with 58 walks and 184 strikeouts), just imagine how good the Royals bullpen would have been last year having added that arm to the mix. Yikes.

For what it's worth, Smith is in red here because he was drafted by the Angels in 2008 out of community college before being traded with Sean O'Sullivan for Alberto Callaspo.

Imagine Dragons

I might have mentioned before here, and maybe I haven't. But, Imagine Dragons consistently puts out very catchy, lyrically interesting songs. This one, "Radioactive", "Demons," "I Bet My Life" -- all of them get stuck in my head with frightening regularity. This particular video having been "inspired" but an artist is particularly intriguing as well. Clearly a surrealist painter.  

Clearly.

Strangely, the lead singer, Dan Reynolds, looks like Blake Shelton to me.

Nathan Kirby does not look like Blake Shelton, but I'd guess that the Midlothian, Virginia, native sounds a lot more like Blake Shelton than Nevada native Reynolds does. 

Of course, Reynolds didn't have to go through Tommy John Surgery to be able to sing for Imagine Dragons. Kirby, however, blew out his elbow after just five appearances with the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers. His rehab is going well. 

I have mixed feelings about him at this point, since he gave his ulnar collateral ligament to his college baseball team's cause.  That baseball team was the Virginia Cavaliers, and Kirby helped beat my Vanderbilt Commodores in the 2015 College World Series by throwing the final two innings of the third and final game of that World Series.

Still, I hope he ends up healthy and helping the Brewers soon. It's the least he could do in my selfish little world. 

Thankfully, Tom isn't nearly as selfish as I am and sent me this great package of cards. Rest assured, Tom, that I have many, many Conlon cards that will be coming your way.

Word Association Games: A Zippy Zapping

I sometimes think that I have an oddly organized brain. It stores random trivia and song lyrics at a frightening pace, for instance. Weird connections between the two make it so that the song generator in my head kicks off if you say a random word to me. Do that, and pretty soon I can't stop hearing the song "Requiem for a Dying Song" in my head for hours. 

For whatever reason, one of those word associations in my head has attached Pearl Jam's song "Whipping" to the card-collecting-world-famous Zippy Zappings from Kenny, the proprietor of Torren' Up Cards. 

Other than the ending of each word being "pping", I have no idea why my brain ties these two disparate things together. Hell, the song is almost as old as Kenny is. But, that's the way things work for me. 

So, after a long week away in planning meetings and, also, a fair amount of fun too, let's see where my brain goes with this Zapping. 

Kenny sent me a package with four portions: three "packs" of cards, and a "loose" pack. Let's start "loose" and go from there:

These are from a 2008 Upper Deck/Kellogg's promotion from Japan. Ryan from "This Card Is Cool" mentioned this set (along with the related sets from 2007, 2009, and 2010) on his blog in March of 2015. I am not surprised that, as best I can tell, there are not any Milwaukee Brewers in any of these sets. Disappointed, perhaps, but not surprised.

In typing that paragraph up, my brain went to a very dark place. 

Now, let me defend my brain. I spent Wednesday through Saturday this week at a planning retreat for the American Bar Association Forum on Construction Law group. I'm a division chair within that organization, and our planning retreat was held at the Pinehurst Resort in Pinehurst, North Carolina. I'm not a golfer, so on Friday my wife and I headed to the pool -- not to bake in the sun, mind you, but rather to get a beer, hang out, people watch a bit, and generally decompress. 

It didn't suck. Well, until this damn song came on over the music at the pool. So, for the first time in about 8 years, I heard it and it got stuck in my brain for a little while. Then, the dark thoughts about no Brewers come up and there you are.

Next!

This is the 1990 version of the ACE Novelty MVP pin. Like most things that are Robin Yount items, I need not look any further than the Cynical Buddha for more information to share with you. CB's post shows the full packaging in which this pin came. Indeed, I have an unopened package that I purchased somewhere and at some point in the last two years.

Where's this go? 

My wondering where I got the unopened pin leads me here. Someone apparently took a digital video of the movie "An American Tail" as seen through a fishtank and posted this video.

Next?

I love the Sega Card Gen cards, and Kenny sent me two Jonathan Lucroy cards (from 2011 and 2012) along with this K-Rod card. K-Rod features, though, because seeing the card flipped a switch in my head.

If you listen to a bit of the song, you'll know why I couldn't avoid this link. 

This Kraft Singles Superstars is from Canada. I swear that Kenny's mailings might cover the most actual countries of origin than nearly any other trader I've ever met. I'm just waiting for him to unearth some Korean cards.  

Another natural association. Canadian. Kraft Dinners. It's nearly a Pavlovian response in my head. It seems so obvious to me that I'm afraid people will think my head is filled with cliches.



Topps's airbrushing in the 1970s was often clumsy and terrible. This is as opposed to its Photoshopping in its current cards where it's not quite as obvious that the photo has been changed except for the actual facts about the player pictured -- you know, showing game action of a draft pick in the major league uniform, for existence. 

Making the 1970s clumsiness more obvious is that Money is in pinstripes. Milwaukee's uniforms did not have pinstripes until 1978; Money's team in 1972 -- the Phillies -- did. Ken Berry's change on his uniform isn't as obvious (though Milwaukee did not wear gray any year that I can see), but that hat is a clear airbrush job since Berry had not played for Milwaukee when the card was issued in 1974.

The satin hats led my brain to old, old school country music and Jeannie Pruett's signature song, "Satin Sheets." I guess the oddity is that this song is in my head at all in the first place, though it did spend three weeks atop the Country Music charts in 1973. My mom's listening to country music in the 1970s must have put it into my RAM around then.



In prospecting circles, most people recognize 21-year-old Brewers prospect Orlando Arcia as one of the top prospects in the minor leagues. Intriguingly, the Brewers have been playing Orlando at second base in the past week, leading me to wonder if the team might keep Jonathan Villar (currently leading the National League in stolen bases...and also in caught stealing...but generally having an excellent season) at short for a little while and break Arcia in at short. But, in the story about Arcia, Brewers GM David Stearns denied any position change was in the works.

We'll see.

But, where does my head go with that Bowman yellow Orlando staring at me?

Of course. It's Tony Orlando and Dawn with their song about coming home after three years in prison, "Tie a Yellow Ribbon." There's nothing like a good soft-rock song about an ex-con making demands on his girlfriend/family, is there?

After listening to the song and knowing its words, it strikes me as a bit off that this song -- and its yellow ribbons -- got co-opted to become a national symbol for soldiers off at war or even people being held as hostages. As that Library of Congress website explains, its symbolism extends well back into the U.S. Civil War, so it's not quite as obvious or crazy as it first may seem.

Thank you, Kenny, for the great cards -- only a few of which I've shared here. They are excellent!

Contest and Programming Note

Hey guys, there's a contest over at Sports Card Collectors that you need to check out! Great supplies and cards are available there.

Also, I'm going out of town this week starting tomorrow, so I won't be back blogging till perhaps Sunday. Fear not -- I have tons to post coming up!

Thanks for reading, and enjoy your week.

Meet the Brewers #27: Skip Lockwood

In the first six weeks of the 1970 season and as one might expect for a second-year expansion team in the pre-free-agent era, the Brewers had struggled. Attendance was not great -- after all, the team had about 5 days to sell season tickets once the bankruptcy court approved Bud Selig's purchase of the team. On May 5, 1970, the Brewers returned to MIlwaukee after a two-coast, 15-game road trip which featured two doubleheaders. On that road trip, the team went 2-13 and got swept in back-to-back four-game series by the Washington Senators and New York Yankees. 

GM Marvin Milkes met with manager Dave Bristol, the coaching staff, and director of player development and procurement Bobby Mattick (who later managed the Toronto Blue Jays in 1980 and 1981) and decided that a few changes needed to be made. The first change that the team made was to call up young starting pitcher Claude (Skip) Lockwood from Portland and, in a corresponding move, the team put Rich Rollins on waivers for purposes of giving him his unconditional release.

1971 Topps

Skip Lockwood was a bonus baby signed by the Kansas City Athletics directly out of his suburban Boston high school in 1964. In his SABR biography, the story is told that the A's came to his house and said they would match any offer for Lockwood to sign with the team. The Colt .45's were the high bidder, agreeing to give a $35,000 bonus. Lockwood -- then 17-years-old -- wrote in an extra "1" in front of the bonus number and asked the A's scout, Pat Friday, if getting $135,000 was okay. Friday made a call, and the A's agreed to the tripling of the bonus. It was, at the time, the largest bonus ever given.

The A's decided that Lockwood would play third base for them. His first step was to travel to Burlington, Iowa, and play in the Midwest League for a while. But, as a bonus baby and under the rules at the time, Lockwood had to spend all of 1965 on the A's bench. He made a total of 42 appearances that season, starting just two games and appearing in the field at third in just 7 games. It took him until June 13 of that season to get his first major league hit, and he only totaled 4 hits in 33 at bats (41 plate appearances) all season.

1972 Topps

In an effort to hide Lockwood away from the Rule 5 draft after the 1966 season, the A's had Lockwood go to the Arizona Instructional League as a pitcher. That worked poorly -- the Astros took Lockwood as a pitcher in the draft. But, the Astros did not see enough that spring of Lockwood as a pitcher, they returned him to the A's. The A's figured out that, perhaps, Lockwood had more of a future as a pitcher and had him split time between pitching and playing third base in the minors in 1968.

Apparently, the A's lost interest, or thought no one would take a soon-to-be-22-year-old without a true position, so they left Lockwood unprotected in the 1969 Expansion Draft. With little to lose, however, the expansion Seattle Pilots selected Lockwood and sent him to Double-A. Near the end of the 1969 season, the team called Lockwood to the majors. In 6 games, Lockwood started three and finished three.

Lockwood's stay in Milwaukee lasted until the end of the 1973 season. The Brewers used Lockwood mainly as a starter until 1973. In his five seasons in the Brewers/Pilots organization, Lockwood posted a 28-55 record in 132 appearances (103 starts). He threw 729-1/3 innings -- nearly 60% of his career total -- with a 3.75 ERA (3.78 FIP). To tell you how bad the Brewers have been at developing pitchers over their 47-season existence, that 3.75 ERA still ranks ninth in Brewers history, his hits allowed per nine innings of 8.638 ranks eighth, and his home runs allowed per nine innings of 0.728 is third.

1973 Topps

After the 1973 season -- at which point Lockwood was still only 27 years old -- Lockwood found himself on the move. The Brewers packaged Lockwood with Ollie Brown, Joe Lahoud, Ellie Rodriguez, and Gary Ryerson, sending that group to the California Angels in exchange for Steve Barber, Ken Berry, Art Kusnyer, Clyde Wright, and cash.

The Angels deployed Lockwood mostly as a reliever, which is where he would find great success going forward. His time in Anaheim, though, was not as successful. He bounced around a bit after 1974, getting traded to the Yankees for Bill Sudakis. The Yankees promptly released Lockwood after spring training in 1975, so he hooked on again with the Oakland A's. The A's didn't need him, so they sold his contract to the New York Mets in July of 1975.

The move to the Mets was exactly what Lockwood's career needed. He pitched extremely well over the last half of 1975 -- 1-3 record but with a 1.49 ERA (2.48 FIP) and 2 saves over 48-1/3 innings, walking 25 but striking out 61. Over the next three years, Lockwood was the Mets closer -- even finishing 2nd in the National League in 1976 in saves with 19 (and doesn't that say how much times have changed?).

Lockwood spent 5 years with the Mets and played out his option in 1979. As a result, his hometown Boston Red Sox signed him to a two-year, $725,000 contract for the 1980 and 1981 seasons with a no-trade clause -- the Red Sox's first-ever free agent. That included a $250,000 signing bonus, a $200,000 salary, and a $125,000 option-year buyout for a third year. Lockwood was not good with the Red Sox and was released after spring training in 1981. He hooked up with the Expos for the 1981 season, but he spent the entire year at Triple-A Denver. 1981 was Lockwood's last in baseball.

1994 Miller Brewing Commemorative Set

During his career, Lockwood worked regularly in the offseason on his college education, eventually graduating with his B.S. in Speech from Emerson College in Boston. He then graduated from MIT with an MBA in 1983, and he added a master's degree from Fairfield University. His post-baseball career has focused on sports psychology and, in his SABR Biography, he expressed his envy he had not gotten his psychology license while former major-league pitcher Bob Tewksbury had and was working (in 2012) with the Boston Red Sox.

These days, Lockwood has a website through which he can be contacted for speaking gigs and corporate motivational speaking. 

Despite spending most of five seasons with the Brewers, Lockwood has just 9 cards in the Trading Card Database of him with the Milwaukee Brewers. I have the four cards shown here, while I am still looking for the corresponding O-Pee-Chee cards of Lockwood from 1971, 1972, and 1973, the 1971 Dell Today's Team Stamp, and the 1973 Jewel Foods photo card of him.

Binders for Brewers, Part II

Back in February, Dave the Card Junkie and I made a trade where I gave Dave binders and pages from the massive Christmas Horde in exchange for my getting cards. We did the same thing last weekend.

With Roger's one-man show in town on Dave's side of town, I convinced him to drive the twenty minutes to meet me at the hotel where Roger sets up and take more binders and pages off my hands. He then handed me a massive stack of Brewers in a paper bag. It wasn't exactly clandestine or furtive, but it was still exciting for me to get those cards!

So, to thank Dave, I scoured his Twitter feed for songs that he had posted there. After all, doesn't 44 minutes of prog rock featuring a flautist deserve as much publicity as possible?

Of course it does.

I can think of no player better suited with an introduction of a self-indulgently long prog rock song than Jeromy Burnitz. I'm not sure why that seems appropriate, but it does. Burnitz reminds me of an outfielder version of Dan Uggla -- very much a bro -- who would apparently empty out bottles of shampoo in the showers on road trips after the last game of the series and pee in them. 

Oh, you're such a funny guy, Jeromy!

Burnitz was still a very good homerun hitter in his travels around the major leagues playing with seven different teams (four in Flushing, bits of two seasons with Cleveland, a year each with Colorado, Pittsburgh, the Dodgers, and the Cubs, and six in Milwaukee). He was an All-Star once in Milwaukee and actually started the 1999 game in place of the injured Tony Gwynn. He even finished second in the Home Run Contest to Ken Griffey Jr.

A little morning Black Sabbath is a great way to wake up. Geezer Butler on bass really runs every Sabbath song. Yeah, Tony Iommi's lead guitar is really distinctive, but when you hear that underside of each song -- the thumping bass -- you know who is really in charge.

These three guys tended to be the understudies for the Brewers' stars of the time during which they played with the team. Of the three, the only one who ever led any Brewers team in WAR was, perhaps surprisingly, Corey Hart in 2007. Augustine really had only two decent seasons -- his first two in the major leagues -- while Nilsson was always behind Jeff Cirillo, or John Jaha, or Ricky Bones, or Greg Vaughn, or B.J. Surhoff, or all of the above in his years in Milwaukee.

Watching the MLB Draft's first couple of rounds on Thursday night was like watching NBA Draft coverage from about 15 years ago or so. I say that because the random assortment of "experts" that MLB Network compiled engaged in the most obvious of lazy comparisons when talking about players. The tall, African-American centerfielder from Atlanta had to be a Jason Heyward comparison. The good-hitting catcher with questions about his fielding was, of course, Kyle Schwarber's younger twin. If a player was white, he would only be compared to white players. If the player was black, then only black players would be comparable.

If MLB is going to be that way, then I will post Rickie Weeks cards with Robert Johnson's music. To be fair, posting old blues songs and then putting up cards of Ryan Braun just doesn't feel right.

Here's a new one on me. Well, okay, to be fair, I'd never listened to that Jethro Tull song before, but at least I'd heard of the band. I've never heard of the The Avalanches before. This video is just incredibly weird. Perhaps, to appreciate the song, it might be better to read something else and not pay attention to the video at all. 



Sort of like how I pay no attention any more to any of the Ryan Braun haters out there. I could get all worked up and point to the fact that Braun just took steroids rather than beating up his girlfriend or wife, or being a swimmer-rapist with a Stanford scholarship, or being a racist presidential candidate or a lying dissembling presidential candidate, or being any number of far scarier, more morally reprehensible people. 

I'm really excited for when Mets fans have to hold their nose and cheer for him when the Brewers trade Braun and Lucroy to New York for Zack Wheeler, Travis d'Arnaud, Dominic Smith, and a lottery ticket like Jhoan Urena or Andres Gimenez (who are both so far away from the majors at this point that they can be nothing more than a lottery ticket)...or, when the Yankees trade Aaron Judge, Luis Severino, Domingo Acevedo, and Gary Sanchez for the two and turn Lucroy into a first-baseman to replace Teixeira.

Hahahahahahahaha!

WARNING: 

If you have epilepsy, you shouldn't watch this next video. It consists of 3:39 of the photo above repeatedly illuminated by strobe lights.

Les Claypool is another notable bass player, having come to prominence in the 1990s with the band Primus. This song is not going to be everyone's cup of tea, as it features a lot of overdubbed vocals, a fair amount of repetition, lots of self-sampling, and it isn't exactly melodic.

Not exactly melodic describes Milwaukee Brewers baseball perfectly in the time that Ben Sheets was in his pomp. The team did well in 2008 with him -- and that was his last season of making a regular rotation turn. Indeed, that season almost certainly was the death knell of Sheets's career. He threw 198-1/3 innings and got the team to the playoffs, yet he did not get to enjoy pitching in the playoffs due to a torn elbow muscle. After that injury, he threw just 168-2/3 innings over the rest of his career in 29 starts -- 20 in Oakland in 2010 and 9 in Atlanta in 2011.

A little Radiohead to close things out here. This is from Radiohead's newest album, "A Moon Shaped Pool." In typical Radiohead-fashion, it's a bit abstract. The video looks like the old Rudolph shows with stop-motion animation going on, though this is probably done with computers, if I had to guess. 

When Dave handed me the bag of Brewers, he said, "I hope that you like Geoff Jenkins." Now having 170 Geoff Jenkins cards in my PC for him, that answer is "yes, I do indeed." I have to admit, though, that my favorite card amongst these Jenkins cards is that minor league card of Jenkins with the Tucson Toros. 

For whatever reason, I'm starting to get drawn more and more to the minor league cards. It's probably the rebuild that's ongoing in Milwaukee currently that has me scouring the minor leagues. But, even as a kid, I loved reading the old Baseball Digest prospect wrap-ups each year. I'm not a rookie-card chaser, to be fair, but I love reading about and finding out about prospects.

Thanks, Dave, for the great cards. I hope you enjoy those binders.