Meet the Brewers #33: Ray Peters

Not everyone who plays major league baseball has a long career. Of the nearly 19,000 men who have been catalogued as playing major league baseball by Baseball-Reference.com, just over 1,000 players have clocked only one major league game. Now, it's very possible that that number will slip back under one thousand should a few of the 20 players who debuted in the past two years get another at bat, inning in the field, or one-third of an inning on the mound. 

One such player who did not qualify as a single-game wonder but who only got to pitch in two games is Brewers player #33, Ray Peters. Peters was called up to major league club from Triple-A Portland to make his debut start on June 4, 1970. He threw two innings and gave up 6 hits, 4 earned runs, 3 walks, and a strikeout in facing 15 batters before being pulled from the game after giving up a run-scoring single to Ray Fosse.

Four days later, Dave Bristol handed Peters the ball again against the Detroit Tigers. Peters's teammates handed him a 2-run lead in the top of the first inning as well. Peters had a very short leash, however. He gave up a single to Dick McAuliffe followed by walks to Elliott Maddox and Al Kaline. Bristol came out, took the ball and Skip Lockwood came in. Lockwood came in and struck out Norm Cash before giving up a grand slam to Willie Horton -- 1 run to Lockwood's ledger and 3 to Peters's. The walk to Kaline, though, was the last time that Peters would appear in a major-league game.

1994 Miller Commemorative Set

At the time, though, Raymond James Peters probably did not know that walking a Hall of Famer would be his last act as a major leaguer. Or, maybe he did. Peters is a very smart man -- a graduate of Harvard University, in fact -- but I don't think that being smart means one can foretell the future. But, being intelligent like Peters is may have led him to be more willing to give up more quickly on the dream of major league baseball. Of course, like most players whose career ended earlier than anticipated, he blamed injuries a lot for poor performance -- as he asked for being injury free as the one thing he would change about his career when interviewed in 2012 by the Baseball Historian blog.

Thanks to all the various draft phases that were in play in the late 1960s through the 1980s, Peters bears the distinction of having been drafted five times before finally signing a pro baseball contract. The Detroit Tigers drafted him in the 28th round of the 1965 June Draft. 

Then, the Kansas City Athletics picked him in the 5th round of the 1967 June Secondary Draft after his sophomore year at Harvard. The A's liked what they saw and wanted to sign Peters, but Peters wanted his degree and stayed in school. So, the A's picked him again in the 2nd round of the 1968 January Secondary draft. Peters still wasn't interested in signing for whatever money was on offer at that point, so he was available again in the 1968 June Secondary Draft and was selected in the 3rd round by the New York Mets.

Even then, Peters did not sign. Only after the Seattle Pilots selected him in the 1st round of the January Secondary Draft during Peters's senior year did Peters finally sign a professional contract. The Harvard Crimson newspaper lamented the loss of their ace pitcher to pro baseball. His former coach, Norm Shepard, was quoted as saying that Peters's signing was a "tremendous blow to Harvard baseball." 

For his part (from the February 22, 1969 The Sporting News), GM Marvin Milkes was very happy about signing Peters, noting that Peters would complete his senior year of college and get his degree in South American History before reporting. Not coincidentally, the Pilots had hired former A's director of personnel Ray Swallow -- who was responsible for the A's having selected Peters twice before. Peters rose quickly to the majors, yet he faded away just as fast.

After his major league debut, Peters went back to Triple-A Portland and finished out the 1970 season. He stayed in the Milwaukee organization until April of 1971, at which point he was traded along with C/1B Pete Koegel in exchange for a man who became a minor star in a Brewers uniform -- John Briggs.

Peters has embraced his time with the Pilots organization greatly. In 2015, he made a trip from his home in Texas to Cooperstown for his first visit to the Baseball Hall of Fame. For the trip, he was decked out in a Seattle Pilots polo shirt. 

The one thing I don't know is what Peters did with his life after baseball. In hobby circles, though, Peters may be known to you if you read Bobw's blog. Bobw has been friends with Peters for many years, and Peters has helped Bobw to get in touch with Peters's former teammates to get autographs. All Bobw does is make several custom cards for the player, some of which the player can keep and others that the former player will return autographed. Search for Ray Peters on Bobw's website and you'll see what I mean.

The thing about having a two-game career, though, is that you don't have many baseball cards of you issued. That was true for Ray Peters as well -- the 1994 Miller Brewers set featuring everyone ever to wear a Brewers uniform to that date is the only card of Peters that the Trading Card Database has. Bobw has made a number of custom cards, of course, but I don't have any of those of Peters.

An Envelope from Cards on Cards

When last we spoke, I was saying that Just Commons made a couple of mistakes in putting my most recent order from them. Well, unlike the customer service from other card operations....

Unsurprisingly I've received no response from Topps. https://t.co/h8vALnPtYP

— Tony L. (@OffHiatusBBC) September 9, 2016

...Just Commons responded the very next business day, and they made things right. They sent the two cards I was missing in a well-protected PWE nearly immediately and made sure I was okay getting the parallel version of the cards they had missorted from 2001. Kudos to Just Commons for great customer service.

As for Topps....well.....

But I beat that drum like a dead horse, so perhaps, some day, I'll stop. Or Topps will listen.

I'm thinking that I'll stop first.

At any rate, there are more important things in the world than my raging against the machine that is Topps. For instance, Kerry from Cards on Cards sent me a mailer jam packed with Brewers cards. Most of the cards in the envelope came from the 1990s:

Like this gloriously ridiculous (or, depending on your point of view, ridiculously glorious) 1994 Score Rookie & Traded card of eventual Red Sox stalwart Troy O'Leary. O'Leary played 46 games for the Brewers and didn't look bad doing it. 

For whatever blisteringly stupid reason, Sal Bando cut O'Leary outright -- waived him -- at the end of spring training in 1995. O'Leary believed it was to protect a younger player, but from the transactions report it appears that the Brewers wanted David Hulse instead. Hulse lasted a total of 200 games in Milwaukee and in the majors after the Brewers got him, hitting .243/.281/.320 (OPS+ of 53). O'Leary spent another 9 seasons in the majors. Great job, Sal! 

The Red Sox employed Dan Duquette as its GM at the time. Duquette was the Brewers' Director of Scouting when O'Leary was drafted out of high school and was instrumental in the Brewers' decision to draft O'Leary. As the Boston Baseball History website noted, it took Duquette about ten minutes to claim O'Leary and promote him to the majors.

If you ever wondered why the Brewers were so damn bad in the early 2000s, look no further than decisions like this.

Thankfully, most of the cards that Kerry sent to me were either more recent cards or were from the 1980s. Let's see the recent cards:

That Matt Garza card is the first Topps Chrome card that I've added to my collection so far. Part of me thinks that this year's Topps design was meant more for the digital apps and the Chrome design than it was for the flagship set. That's not necessarily a bad thing. 

A lot of folks get themselves in a tizzy whenever people are successful in selling digital cards for a lot of money on eBay. The complaint is, "why the hell would anyone pay money -- any money -- to buy what is nothing more than a JPEG?" There are others, of course, who egg those people on and who view collecting actual cardboard as a dying hobby.

Both of them are correct and incorrect at the same time. Collecting cards in physical form will always be around. Someone will collect them. After all, people still collect stamps, postcards, Depression glass, perfume containers, lamp -- any number of items that make no sense whatsoever to collect and are far more difficult to store, showcase, and sell than cards are. As long as people like baseball, there will be card collectors.

At the same time, people collecting digital cards is probably more of a fad that will fade off into the sunset than collecting cardboard. Digital cards are more of a fad because of their ephemeral nature. Topps could cease to exist tomorrow, or its profit-loss analysis on running the apps could change from positive to negative and the app could be shut down tomorrow. The thing is, no one will ever go into an attic 30 years from now and find a secret stash of digital cards. It's more likely to be the introductory collecting drug for kids than it is to be the final end point for the addiction.

Speaking of addiction, let's look at the cards from the 1980s:

Cards and stickers like these are the addiction. There is something inherently cool about getting miniature cards that were printed 30 years ago by a card company that no longer exists. There's also something inherently cool about 1981's Gorman Thomas sticker featuring his fat sideburns, bushy mustache, two-day stubble, and the painted-on eyeblack that doesn't contain a Bible verse, an area code, a message to mom, or an advertisement for a shoe company. And, there's something inherently cool about getting kids to eat fat-filled snack cakes by throwing baseball cards inside the package.

Kerry, many thanks for the great cards that plugged some big holes in my collection.

Commons for Labor Day

As I've mentioned recently, I have been spending a lot of time lately working on my Bowman collection -- getting complete lists of cards for all the parallels and inserts, ruling out ever trying to collect a complete team set of anything serial numbered under 100 along the way, and, now, getting the parallels and inserts into binders.

Organization is fun. It's not as fun as going to a show and looking for cards I need, but how am I supposed to know what cards I need to look for if I'm not organized?

With today being Labor Day in the United States (and Labour Day in Canada, thanks to that extraneous, unpronounced "u" y'all insist on throwing randomly into certain words), it seems fitting that today I'd be talking about organization and commons. After all, Labor Day is a holiday that the labor unions in the 1880s fought for and which was made an official national holiday in the United States in the wake of the deadly Pullman Strike in 1894 by President Grover Cleveland.

My laboring today will be continued Bowman organization. This post, though, is to show off some Bowman purchases from Just Commons. 

As many of you know, Just Commons is a good cheap way to knock a lot of cards off your want lists at a cheap price. This is especially true if you have needs from the 1990s or the 2000s, since all the hype or expectation for any rookies that might have had a chance to do anything has long since worn off -- we all now know that Erubiel Durazo is not going to be a star of any kind, for example, nor is J.M. Gold. So, those cards are priced accordingly, and if you spend $15 you get free shipping.

The downside to Just Commons is also well known. Their online inventory is often inaccurate, leading to the unfortunate emails that tell you that they are out of one or two or three cards. As I found out from this most recent shipment, another issue are just simple mistakes -- whether it is missorted cards or not sending two cards when two are requested. 

The poster boy for this missorting escapade?

My pal Erubiel Durazo. You see, Durazo's 1999 Bowman card number is 380. I ordered two of card 360, Geoff Jenkins, so I'd have one for my player collection and one for my team collection.  So now, I still need one of the Jenkins cards, and I have an Erubiel Durazo card that I'll probably never be able to rid myself of from my collection.

Oh well.

Another missorting mistake comes with those more subtle parallels from the early 2000s. Back then, Bowman/Topps thought it was enough differentiation between base card and parallel to make the card slightly thicker and to have the facsimile signature and the Bowman logo on the card foiled in gold instead of silver. While I have been able to pick up on that difference quite easily, not everyone can.




Thus, at the price of a regular common, I am now the owner of the 2001 Bowman Gold parallels for Geoff Jenkins, Jeromy Burnitz, and Nick Neugebauer. Apparently, that year's parallels were not differentiated enough, so Topps/Bowman changed the parallels in 2002 to be thicker card stock -- more easily identified. Thus, I got the parallels I wanted and the base cards as well from 2002:



I'm not sure if it says more about the Brewers' minor league system in 2001 or about Bowman that Matt Parker got a card. You see, Parker was not a highly regarded arm. He came over from the St. Louis Cardinals at some point during 2000. He was a 31st round pick the previous year out of Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. Parker's best minor league season was 2001 when, at High Desert, he had a 13-6 record with a 4.30 ERA on a team that had a 5.27 ERA. 

My guess is that it's a little bit of both.

As an aside, there has been an interesting drama playing out this year in Adelanto, California -- a/k/a High Desert -- as that San Bernardino County city decided it no longer wanted to give the baseball team a sweetheart $1 a year deal on its stadium lease. The City declared that its financial situation is so dire that it can't support paying the utilities and upkeep for the stadium. This is a city that willingly took on building a number of prisons and immigrant detention centers -- projects that almost always are the subject of resident protests to keep them out -- and also turned to medical marijuana cultivation. 

Legally, the city is arguing that the rent is an illegal gratuity. Nearly every state has constitutional provisions precluding local governments from giving gifts of public money to individuals or corporations. Usually, every deal like this one is justified against taxpayer challenges by the city pointing to increased economic revenue brought in by concessions, game attendees, and the like. 

Eventually, as this season has turned out, the High Desert Mavericks will be no more after this season. The Mavericks next year will join the Bakersfield Blaze in folding from the California League and having the teams effectively moved to the Carolina League.

Okay, back to baseball cards. 



Now, if Bowman or Topps wanted to resurrect this card design, I'd welcome it in a heartbeat. 1954 and 1955 Bowman (the TV set) designs were two of the best designs in card history. I like this 1954 design thanks to its simplicity. It can showcase photography like these two cards -- giving us nice posed shots to see what the player really looks like -- without the faux aging look that Topps Heritage has gone to in the past several years.

Finally, it wasn't all Bowman that I ordered from Just Commons:



Don't be deceived -- these are much better than just being 1980 Topps cards, because they actually are 1980 O-Pee-Chee cards. Being in the South, I don't find OPC enough for my tastes, so I have to resort to buying them from Just Commons.

Now if they'd just stock up on 1990 Fleer Canadian. And hopefully, they wouldn't see me all Mariners from that set.

My Favorite Time of Year

Many baseball fans will say that spring is the best time of year. It is a great time too -- the earth emerges from the winter slumber, the birds are out (or back, in the North), and the baseball season is starting with spring training and Opening Day when everyone is even. 

It's a good argument, but it does not convince me for two reasons. First, it's the worst time in Atlanta for pollen and allergies. Atlanta regularly puts up pollen counts in the several thousands -- where anything over 90 is considered high and hitting 1500 is "extremely high," it's not uncommon for us to have weeks at a time into that extremely high category.

The other reason for me is that I love college football -- especially Georgia football. I've been a season ticket holder at UGA since 2007, which was about the time I started having enough expendable income to donate sufficiently enough to get tickets. 

The way UGA does its tickets is this: you have to donate money to the athletic fund specifically for the football program. Each dollar given is a "point." Those points accumulate over your life and give you priority for season tickets and to get away-game tickets. Usually, to get season tickets, you'll have to give about $500 to $1000 previously. When I was single and not collecting cards, I gave a pretty sizeable amount of money each year to push my points up quickly so I could start getting tickets for away games. Now, I give enough each year to keep my tickets where they are. 

Georgia football this year is an interesting story. For those of you who don't know or don't pay attention in the way that the obsessives here in Georgia and the South generally do, UGA changed coaches last December despite a 9-win regular season and Mark Richt's 15-year-long tenure at UGA being incredibly successful. Richt was replaced by long-time Alabama defensive coordinator -- and UGA graduate -- Kirby Smart. 

The move was extremely divisive for many months within the fan base, and a number of people are still complaining about it. To those people, they believed either (a) you shouldn't fire a highly successful coach because you don't know if you'll do better; or, (b) you shouldn't fire a successful coach who was a strong Christian. I personally thought both of these reasons were lacking, as even successful coaches can get complacent and get to a point where they think about how to do "enough" rather than doing what was needed to win them all.

That's a long way to saying that I was excited for Kirby's appointment as coach. I remember him as the sort-of skinny safety and special teams player who wore number 16 and came to UGA from Bainbridge, Georgia. I was hopeful that he would bring more discipline to how the players played on the field and that he would be able to continue being a force in recruiting.

The Kirby Smart era opened yesterday at the Georgia Dome here in Atlanta. 

This was during the pregame festivities. The Georgia Redcoat Marching band was running through an abbreviated version of its pregame show. My wife's uncle invited me to go along with him since his older brother is not feeling well enough now to go to the games.

You can see a fair number of empty seats in this photo, but keep in mind that this was over 20 minutes before kickoff.

Georgia played pretty well yesterday against the ACC's runner-up in 2015 to Clemson, the North Carolina Tar Heels. The defense was solid though unspectacular -- it did not force any turnovers and had a couple of crucial breakdowns that allowed UNC to score points. On the other hand, UNC averaged 486.9 yards per game on offense last year but only could total 315 yards yesterday.

On offense, the game was entirely the Nick Chubb show. Last year, Chubb suffered a gruesome knee injury against the University of Tennessee on Tennessee's field made of gum wrappers, baling wire, and stickum. 

Seriously, Tennessee's field has claimed so many knees over the years and, making matters worse, it is poorly maintained. It became such an issue last year that the athletic department actually had to issue a statement about understanding that it is an issue.

There are four knee ligaments -- the ACL (anterior cruciate), the PCL (posterior cruciate), the MCL (medial collateral), and the LCL (lateral collateral). The ACL controls rotation and forward movement of the tibia. The PCL controls backward movement of the tibia. The MCL gives stability to the inner knee, and the LCL gives stability to the outer knee. As most sports fans know, tearing the ACL is the bad one and has the longest rehabilitation period. 

Despite how horrible Chubb's injury looked, he was incredibly lucky as well. While he missed the rest of the season last year due to the injury, he did not tear his ACL. He tore up the rest of his ligaments, though, so he did miss about 8 months of training. But, the guy is such a beast that even in the spring he was running through non-contact drills with the rest of his teammates. By the time the first scrimmage came about in early August, he was ready to take contact.

Also despite the injury, it is pretty clear that Chubb had no limitations against UNC. He had the third-most carries in a game of his career -- 32 -- and he rushed for the second most yards in a game of his career -- 222 yards. That total was punctuated by his final carry of the game (dial it up to the 16:55 mark) -- a 55-yard TD run.




In all, it was a great way to start Kirby Smart's coaching career at Georgia. A win over a ranked opponent with Nick Chubb looking healthy and Jacob Eason looking like the real deal -- yes, please. 

Just give me the Victory Formation!

The next game I'm likely to attend is the game between Georgia and Tennessee in Athens on October 1. After that, I'll go to the Georgia/Florida game in Jacksonville followed by Georgia and Auburn in Athens. I hope I'll close the season out with an SEC Championship game, but that's a long ways away.

I'm just glad that the taste in my mouth today is not bitter.

Meet the Brewers #32: Ken Sanders

With the placement of two pitchers on the DL and Marvin Milkes's incessant chopping and changing of the roster, additional bodies were needed in Milwaukee at the end of May in 1970. Thus, a reliever with a checkered history in major league baseball received the call up to the major leagues -- Ken Sanders. Sanders's first game in Milwaukee came on May 30, 1970. 

The Brewers had raced out to a five-run lead in the first-inning of the game -- thanks in large part to a hit by Brewer #30, Roberto Pena...an inside-the-park grand slam home run (a play on which Al Kaline almost choked on his own tongue and died on the field) -- but starter Lew Krausse faltered and gave up 6 runs and the lead. Thus, in the fifth inning, the call to the bullpen for Sanders came. He pitched okay -- giving up one run in 2-2/3 innings -- and the Brewers came back to win the game after that.

1971 Topps/O-Pee-Chee

Kenneth George Sanders was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on July 8, 1941. He grew up there but signed with the Kansas City Athletics pretty much right after high school in 1960. The A's sent him to the Florida State League and, as an 18-year-old, the A's had him pitch 240-2/3 innings. That year, he lead the FSL in wins (19), innings pitched (by only 9 2/3 innings), and complete games with an incredible 22. Imagine if those numbers got put up now by an 18-year-old kid at any level.

Sanders was not a big man -- standing 5'11" tall and weighing 180 pounds in his heyday with Milwaukee -- and, as a result, he was not a fireballer or ever threatened to lead the league in strikeouts. Indeed, the 22 complete games he threw in the Florida State League represented 44% of all of his career complete games -- all in the minor leagues. He never again threw more than 166 innings in a single season after that, and he never completed more than 8 games in any particular season.

1971 O-Pee-Chee back

Still, Sanders fought his way to the major leagues by 1964. Oddly, between 1960 and his making the major leagues in 1964, he spent only 7 games in Triple-A...and that was in 1962. He didn't stick in the majors in '64, though. In 1964, he spent most of the season in Double-A in Birmingham, Alabama. That team was noteworthy as well -- as being the first integrated sports team in state history thanks to the inclusion of pitcher John "Blue Moon" Odom and outfielder Tommie Reynolds on the team. A book called Southern League was written about the team; oddly enough, Sanders appears to have missed the team photo (probably by being in the majors at the time).

He went back to the minors -- this time to Triple-A -- before being drafted away from the A's by the Red Sox in the Rule 5 draft before the 1966 season. He pitched okay in 24 games in Boston -- 3.61 FIP/3.80 ERA (about league average) in 47-1/3 innings -- before the A's apparently thought, "you know what, we need Sanders back." So, they traded future Seattle Pilot Jim Gosger, pitcher Guido Grilli, and Sanders to the A's for Rollie Sheldon, John Wyatt, and Jose Tartabull. While this was pretty much a trade of spare parts, Tartabull did play 115 games for the Miracle Sox of '67. On the other hand, Sanders pitched the rest of 1966 in Kansas City -- finishing 6th in appearances with 62 -- before spending '67 in the minors.

Dell Today's 1971 Milwaukee Brewers Stamp

Sanders pitched a little bit in 1968 for the A's -- now in Oakland -- but he spent most of 1968 and 1969 at Triple-A. He finally got the break he needed when the still-Seattle Pilots traded for him with Mike Hershberger, Lew Krausse, and Phil Roof in exchange for Ron Clark and Jaybarkerfan favorite Don Mincher. His pitching earned him the nickname in Milwaukee -- perhaps from Bob Uecker -- of "Bulldog" and rightfully so. Brewers manager Dave Bristol stuck Sanders in the bullpen and kept letting him pitch. 

And boy, did Sanders pitch well in 1970. He finished 30 of the 50 games he pitched, throwing 92-1/3 innings. He became the Brewers closer before teams seemed to care about that title. Relying more on pitch movement and location, he still managed to strikeout 6.2 batters per 9 innings while walking only 2.4 and giving up just 1 homer all season.

1972 Topps

By 1971, though, Sanders had become a bona fide stud. He led the American League by appearing in 83 games that season. He threw 136-1/3 innings in relief -- probably burning him out, but what did Milwaukee care, right? -- and had a sparking 1.91 ERA (thought that was a bit of a mirage, since his FIP was 2.97). He also paced the American League in Jerome Holtzman's pet statistic, saves, totaling 31 of them.

Of those 83 games in which he pitched, he finished an incredible 77 of them. That total was, at the time, a major league record by a ways -- by 10 games over the previous record held by Dick Radatz in 1964. It is still good enough for fourth best all-time behind two seasons by Mike Marshall and the 2002 season from Oakland's Billy Koch. To compare, though, Koch's season destroyed him. Koch performed his feat at the age of 27. After that, he pitched in a total of 102 games and was never the same pitcher -- with his walk-rate spiking upward terribly. On the other hand, Sanders -- who was 29 in 1971 -- pitched another five seasons with a 3.50 ERA. It took its toll -- his K-rate dropped propitiously from 6.2/9 in 1970 to 5.3 in 1971 to just 3.8/9 over the rest of its career -- but he still was a lot better than Koch.

1994 Miller Brewing Commemorative

1971 was a tough act to follow, and Sanders struggled some. His ERA went up to where it probably should have been in 1971 -- to 3.12. He appeared in 62 games and threw 92-1/3 innings. After the 1972 season, the Brewers decided to cash in and threw him in a trade to Philadelphia with Ken Brett, Jim Lonborg, and Earl Stephenson in order to get John Vukovich, Bill Champion, and eventual franchise stalwart Don Money.

Sanders never played in Philly, though, as the team flipped him a month later to the Minnesota Twins in a trade. From there, Sanders played just a couple of months in 1973 with the Twins before they waived him and the Indians claimed him. He stuck around in Cleveland for basically a season before being released in June of 1974. 

The California Angels picked him up, and Sanders spent time there and in Triple-A in 1974. In 1975, the Angels traded him to the New York Mets, where he enjoyed something of a late career revival of a 90-inning stretch with a 2.60 ERA (despite 2.4 K/9!). His contract was sold in late 1976 to the Kansas City Royals, who pitched him 3 innings and then released him. He tried to hook on with the Brewers for the 1977 season, but he did not make the team out of spring training. Instead, he spent 30 games in Triple-A Spokane for Milwaukee before finally calling time on his career.

2000 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 1970s All Decades Team

Sanders really was the only real relief ace that the Brewers had before Rollie Fingers joined the team by trade after the 1980 season. He was an easy selection as the relief pitcher on the 1970s Brewers All-Decades Team on the team's 30th anniversary.

Thanks to his Midwestern upbringing, Sanders and his wife Mary Ann felt very comfortable in the Milwaukee area and settled in Hales Corners, Wisconsin, permanently. After his big league career ended, Sanders became a real estate agent. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article from 2013 notes that his claim to fame as a real estate agent was to list and sell the "Field of Dreams" in Dyersville, Iowa.

Again, at least as of 2013, Sanders still golfed every day he could in Wisconsin, which means from late April to early October. He still has the little book he kept on hitters as a pitcher, and, as he correctly notes, his first ever major league strikeout was of Mickey Mantle. When Sanders told Mantle about that fact, Mantle said, "big f**king deal -- you and 1,000 others kid!"

According to the Trading Card Database, Sanders appears on 8 total cards as a Brewer. I have the 6 you see here. I am missing the 1971 Milwaukee Brewers Picture Pack and his 1972 O-Pee-Chee card.

My Card Room

We are a country of self-improvers. A search on Amazon books for "Self-Improvement" tells me that there are 64,077 results in the category, including 48,660 "self-help" books, 10,971 "Motivational Management & Leadership" Books, and 6,557 "Personal Transformation Self-Help" books. 

Practically every facet of our lives is subject to this self-improvement industry. Websites have proliferated as well. Nearly every business website must have an article about good work environments. On Google, a staggering 269 million results for "good work environment" (without the quotes) are returned. The first one gives 5 characteristics of a positive work environment, the next gives 7 keys to creating the best work environment, and then the third result provides 23 ways to create a better work environment.

It's positively astounding to me. But it doesn't stop there. When I search for "good work room," Google provides me with over 1 billion results in under a half a second and gives me "30 ideas for [my] crafts room, home office, or workroom."

I wonder if any of those ideas include Starting Lineup Figures?

Judson over at My Cardboard Habit recently ran a contest that I completely spaced out on and missed in the midst of my red mist over ToppsNow ignoring the Brewers and cutting up bases and selling them for $1,000 inside a card. P-Town Tom was the deserving winner of the contest, though I was disappointed that his man/card room did not include his mole trap.

But, since I have been in a bit of a dry spell in terms of getting new cards, I thought I'd give a look at my card room/home office. I'm very lucky in that I have a large, well-lit room with a decent amount of outside light that comes in as well as having its own full bathroom and closet. 

But, rather than try to describe it, let's go to the photos:



Here's the view as you walk in. I have two computers because I had to buy a Mac for work when I went out on my own as an attorney, and then I didn't need it for work because I joined a firm. So, it's two computers for me. The couch used to be in my wife's house that she rented before we met, and I got it because it's comfortable, has recliner sides, and frankly I like it.



It's also two monitors for me. Ever since I got two at work, I feel lost without a second one. Call me spoiled. #FirstWorldProblems

You will get a better look at these book shelves in a bit.



Here's the view from behind the desk. Those of you with cats will recognize the cat tree on the right side of the room. My buddy Gus sleeps in the upper level when I am home on the weekends. My old Sony plasma TV is still my TV of choice -- 12 years old and still works like a charm.



Here's a better view of the TV, with Gus on the floor hanging out. You can see the bathroom entry at the left and the closet at the right. Yes, I have a lot of books too. 

Inside the closet, you can see my monster boxes set aside for each team. Sadly, they are mostly filled with junk wax/early 1980s cards and a bunch of 2013 series 2 cards (since I bought and broke a case of that back in 2014). Seriously, if you need anything from the 1980s, let me know.

The bookshelf in the corner next to the closet houses most of my soccer books, my pro football and college football books, and a fair number of my baseball books as well. The metal "Play Ball" sign was a $10 purchase at Hobby Lobby, if I recall correctly. That middle row of glassware came mostly from my local Taco Mac restaurant back about 7-8 years ago. They would have glassware giveaways of their featured beer every Thursday night, so I picked up a few.

This photo: The bathroom door, the TV, the Vince Lombardi Successories wall-hanging that I got as a groomsman's gift, the three four boxes of junk wax from my Christmas Haul that I have yet to sort, another Hobby Lobby special in the ESPN College Gameday metal wall hanging, a couple of Georgia football wall items (one of which is a print from the first Blackout against Auburn in 2007, when Verne Lundquist danced to Soulja Boy on national TV) and my three programs from attending three English Premier League games back in 2006 around London (Tottenham, Chelsea, and Charlton, in case you're interested).

The two main book shelves. The one on the top has my team collections in binders sorted by card issuer along with my Robin Yount and Ryan Braun collection. The one on the bottom has my other player collections. Next to this bottom one you can see the stacks of sheets that I still have remaining after my Christmas haul. It's the gift that keeps on giving!

The little bookshelf peaking out next to that bottom one holds my bobbleheads, my Starting Lineup Figures, and other odd stuff that couldn't be stored anywhere else. The signed football features Georgia Football legends David Greene and David Pollack. The black thing on the shelf is my Sonos speaker, which I use almost all the time that I'm in my office to listen to music.

Above my couch. The Brewers pennant was signed by Don Sutton just before he pitched in Game 3 of the American League Championship Series in 1982 against the California Angels. My mom let me skip school that day and took me and my older brother to watch that game because, well, the Brewers had lost the first two games and we had no idea whether we'd get to see any more playoff baseball in Milwaukee that year.

The one in the middle is Brett Favre, of course. It's a certified autograph displayed with two facsimile tickets from the two Super Bowls that he went to with the Packers.

The Milwaukee Braves pennant was my mom's when she was under the age of 10 in the mid-1950s. I used to have it in my work office, but I decided I'd rather have it at home.

And finally, the other corner. There's the Nestle uncut sheet from 1984, and it's next to two Topps-issued items from 2014 that I bought and really like. I guess this is why I complain when Topps leaves the Brewers out -- I mean, I've tried to buy the stuff up when I can!

I hope that you have at least endured the quick tour through my card room/home office. I suppose I should really try to put more stuff on my walls since I have those posters now, but I kind of like the clean, minimalist look I've got going on. 

Thanks, Judson, for the post idea. Too bad I didn't remember to join the contest!

And because this post needs a little music, here's a song I think I've heard every day in the morning for the past week and a half:

A Little More Now

I've strongly criticized ToppsNow on Twitter for the team distribution that we have seen employed by Topps and, more to the point, the double standards that exist for players that get cards versus those who don't. It's crazy, I know, but I actually want to spend my $10 to get a Brewer on a card. 

That said, I also understand well the facts here. The Brewers are a team in transition that are not winning many games. They have only had one walk-off win this year -- and it coincided with Topps's All-Star Topps Now blitz. 

As you may know if you follow me on Twitter, I am tracking the cards issued by team. Up until recently, I've left out those horribly overpriced relics and autographs that have invaded the product. My plan is to let the regular season play out and see where the numbers are. You know Topps will issue a ton of cards during the post-season, but I want to see only the regular season numbers to see how they shake out.

And, at the end of the year, I'll probably do something more global in terms of data crunching. With all the data crunching I do for cards, you would think that I'm not a lawyer but rather an engineer or a scientist of some sort. The numbers in baseball fascinate me, and these are no different.

I'm also going to try to find the top moments that Topps ignored. If you have a nominee, comment below or send me an email or DM on Twitter.

I write all of this to tease the future, but also to celebrate the present. Topps issued two more of the ToppsNow cards that I felt needed to be added to my collection.

With music, maestro?

Of course, ya'll need to come with me NOW. I really have found that this song gets me going in the morning when I need a kickstart. Back in July, I went to my doctor and found that I had hit stratospheric levels of weight that scared me -- I was up at 254 pounds, and I felt worse than that. I finally got serious about getting off my ever-expanding ass and working out and eating right. 

Thanks to a modified Mediterranean diet -- mixed with a very liberal dose of "stop eating every f**king thing you see and want" -- along with doing a walk of at least 30 minutes every morning except Saturdays, I've kicked myself into better shape. I went back today and, fully dressed except for shoes, I weighed in at 233 there. I'm not done by any stretch of the imagination, but losing 21 pounds in 6 weeks is pretty good progress. 

If only Prince Fielder could have found a way to get himself into better shape and avoid all the pounding and beating that his ample body took, perhaps he'd still be playing major league baseball. To be fair, I have no idea what caused the neck problems that ended his career and caused him to have two surgeries to fuse vertebrae. Nor do I know whether he could have done anything to prevent the issue. 

Still, he tried to lose weight through any number of things -- vegetarianism, for instance. I guess he didn't realize that a vegetarian pizza is still a pizza.

For those of you who live in Milwaukee, this song may at least sound a little bit familiar. It's the at-bat song for the #11 prospect in all of baseball -- a guy most of you have heard of. He's made his major league debut, he's gotten his first major league hit, he's stolen his first major league base, and he has even hit his first major league homerun at the young age of 21. He's scuffling a bit right now as he adjusts to the level of his competition -- he is, after all, over 7 years younger than the average National Leaguer.

And ToppsNow? It's pretty much ignored Orlando Arcia.

It irked me a bit, suffice it to say. 

Topps being Topps, though, they found a way to shoehorn him into the Topps Now collection without actually issuing a card for him.

Arcia is #3, greeting the man-giant Chris Carter. This card was issued for the Brewers scoring a run in every single inning in a game against the Braves. That's happened less frequently than a perfect game has been pitched. And yet, I honestly believe it was a close call for Topps as to whether or not to issue this card.

Nonetheless, I'm glad to get to put this one into my collection. At least Arcia has a good chance to be around past 2016 as a Brewer -- unlike the previous three Topps Now Brewer cards of Fielder retiring, Lucroy getting traded, and Aaron Hill hitting three homers before getting shipped to Boston.

Thanks for stopping by, and have a good week.