A Mini Zapping

Whenever a Zapping shows up in my mailbox, I know I can expect great cards. For the uninitiated, my pal Kenny a/k/a Zippy Zappy a/k/a disnalldat on Twitter a/k/a the World's Ultimate Luis Torrens supercollector will, from time to time, send out fat packs of cards that he calls Zippy Zappings. They are always densely packed with cards and, befitting Kenny's nature of being a fan of minor league baseball rather than the major leagues, they usually feature a significant amount of Bowman cards.

This mini-Zapping from Kenny was not very different. It did feature a couple of random Topps inserts of *gasp* major leaguers, but I'll forgive him for that.

Powered by music provided in Kenny's "What I've Been Listening To... (Pt. 2)" post from earlier this week, let's dive into the Mini Zapping!

The Wombats -- "Emoticons"

My musical tastes since the early 1990s have tended to angle toward Anglophilia very frequently. As a result, it should not be a surprise that I have heard of the scousers known as The Wombats before, and I've listened to them some about 10 years ago. 

Even then, I hadn't listened to them much, and I have not paid attention to them lately. By lately, I mean, "since about 2010." This song, "Emoticons," appeared on Glitterbug, the band's third album. It's a pretty cool song -- very much in the Britpop lexicon. 

Here are those major leaguers that really threw me for a loop coming from a Zippy Zapping -- mini or otherwise. Now, the Fielder is at least in the vein of a Kenny collectible -- what with its rookie leanings and all -- but to get a K-Rod, a Braun/Koufax, or a Jason Kendall card that isn't a Japanese SEGA card is a rare day. It feels almost like a limited edition of some sort. 

It's pretty cool.

The Founders 15: "I Can't Be Satisfied"

It's not often that a song gets me digging into general articles about life in a particular country to try to figure out where it came from, how it came to be, and what its context is. This song did that, though. It started just by listening to the song -- which, to be honest, is a fairly unremarkable funk tune with some guitars thrown in and vocals that would not be out of place had someone said that the song came from Jamaica. But it came from Nigeria.

I admit that I don't know anything about Nigerian pop music of any time period. Wait....I'm reading an article on Pitchfork now (reviewing a 2.5-hour magnum reissue album from 2009 called Nigeria 70: The Definitive Story of the 1970's Funky Lagos) and it mentions a name I've heard: Fela Kuti. Okay. At least I've heard a name before. 

But I've never heard of The Founders 15, and there's very little available online about this band. 

If I'm guessing about this song's meaning, it might have something to do with the whole Biafran secession in the late 1960s and the Nigerian Civil War that followed to get Biafra back into the country. Biafra had support from France, and, odd in that Cold War context, the federal government of Nigeria had support from the Soviet Union and Great Britain. 

The war was fought -- perhaps unsurprisingly -- over oil as much as it was fought over people, independence, or self-determination. Nigeria had fairly significant oil reserves, and Biafra and Nigeria were fighting for dominion over the BP-Shell oil fields and the right to the royalties being paid. Because the French were on one side and the British on the other, the US declared themselves neutral (though, in reality, their support was mostly for the Nigerian government).

The war led to a massive humanitarian crisis in Biafra as well. Millions were close to starvation. Adding to the crisis's receiving coverage was the fact that the Biafrans tended to be Christians while the Nigerians tended to be Muslim. The Nigerians blockaded ports bringing food for the Biafrans, resulting in starvation, and the Nigerian army literally murdered Biafran civilians. Arising out of this conflagration, however, came one good thing: Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders).

Wow. Tough to come back to baseball cards after learning about all that.

Depressing stories of Civil War and famine followed by depressingly boring cards of guys in generic blue uniforms. It's depression on a far different level, of course, and I'm not trying to draw a direct parallel. 

Tyrone Taylor was the Brewers top prospect or second-best prospect at the beginning of the 2015 season -- but only #93 overall. Since then, his star has faded. He's only 23 years old, but he's about to go into his third season at Double-A Biloxi after hitting .232/.303/.327 last year in 134 games there. Add in the fact that he pulled a hamstring in spring training so that his season won't begin until May, and there has to be genuine concern about him. Call him trade bait?

Speaking of Biloxi, Angel Ortega has started both games for the Shuckers at third base. He's still only 23 years old, but he too needs to show something this year. He doesn't have any power (minor league slugging percentage of .296 in slash line of .235/.270/.296....) or all that much speed and he doesn't have great plate discipline either. He's been a shortstop mainly before this year, but he's at third base at Biloxi thanks to the presences of Mauricio Dubon. Third base won't help him either, what with the very rapidly approaching Lucas Erceg -- who is at High-A Carolina -- and Ortega needs to develop very fast or find himself looking for a new organization or line of work.

Anthony Banda is a great highlight here. He's a very intriguing starting pitching prospect who has developed fantastically in the past couple of years. Unfortunately for Brewers fans, he's done that developing in the Diamondbacks system -- he was traded there in exchange for Gerardo Parra in 2014. 

Finally, there's Zach Quintana. He was traded after the 2014 season to the Atlanta Braves in exchange for spare OF Kyle Wren. He made it to the Carolina League last year in the Braves system -- with the Carolina Mudcats -- before being released at the end of last season. An interesting sidelight: the Brewers and Braves swapped High-A outposts after last season. The Brewers got the Mudcats, and the Braves got the Brevard County Manatees -- which promptly moved to Osceola County and changed its name to the Florida Fire Frogs.

Balance and Composure: "Quake"

It's odd how some bands that got bigger in the "modern rock"/alternative scene in the past decade have eluded me. It seems especially to apply to American bands that sound like this band, Balance and Composure. Perhaps it's just the radio stations -- whether created by Pandora, Spotify, or Amazon or actual radio stations -- that I listen to seem to focus as much on 1990's alternative as they do more recent songs. I don't know.

This song, "Quake," reminds me of any number of bands from that mid-2000s timeframe that sort of emulated Nirvana while mixing in attempts at being "harder" or just yelling/screaming more while singing. It's not bad, but it's not anything unique either. I'd give this song a 5/10 -- I wouldn't skip it if it came on one of those curated stations.  I probably would react with apathy.

I reacted much more positively to these two Bowman Chrome cards. Even more so than the usual Bowman offering putting minor leaguers into the big-league team's uniform, these two cards look very photoshopped. The Nottingham card would not look out of place in that Elite Extra Edition set, other than having a realistic background and actual team colors. The easy reason why these two look the way they do is that both Hader and Nottingham were either completely new (Nottingham) or still pretty new (Hader) to the Brewers organization last spring.

Nottingham was the key part of the Khris Davis trade with the Oakland Athletics before last season. GM David Stearns was familiar with him thanks to Nottingham having been drafted by the Astros in 2013 out of high school. He went to Oakland in exchange for Scott Kazmir during the trade deadline in 2015 before coming to Milwaukee just before spring training in 2016. The jury is still out on Jacob, though. He struggled to hit in Double-A Biloxi last year -- .234/.295/.347 -- and then flopped in the Arizona Fall League (.203/.221/.284). I mean, his OPS in the Arizona Fall League was below Tim Tebow for crying out loud. That's bad.

Hader, of course, was named MLB Pipeline's top left-handed pitching prospect during the 2016-2017 offseason. He's starting the year in Triple-A Colorado Springs at the age of 23. He needs to work on controlling his walks -- that's always been his bugaboo -- but I would anticipate that he will make his big-league debut this year in Milwaukee after the All-Star Break if he looks decent during the first half of the year in the thin air.

Napalm Death: "You Suffer"

It took me longer to copy and paste this into this blogpost than it does to listen to this song.  So, here's another Napalm Death song:

"Unchallenged Hate"

I've said before that I'm a lyrics guy. I like to hear the lyrics to a song and get their message. "Unchallenged Hate" is the opposite of that. To be fair, if you look up the lyrics for this song, they are really deep. I challenge you to find those lyrics in this song.

Napalm Death is thrash metal taken to its nth degree. It's hardcore, dense, thick, and even a little sludgy in terms of its sound. Those issues are probably why the band isn't bigger or why it never turned into Metallica or something. There are better bands that do this same genre better too -- Megadeth, for example. 

The final group of cards that Kenny sent my way are all Asia Black Refractors from the 2015 Bowman Chrome Draft set. 

These cards highlight the farm system before the big trades in 2015 and 2016 that added prospects numbered 1, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 12, 14, and 16 to the Brewers Top 20 on MLB Pipeline (and #11 Marcos Diplan came over in 2014 from Texas as part of the Yovani Gallardo trade). Of the guys here, though, we have #26 (Nathan Kirby), #15 (Cody Ponce), #25 (Jake Gatewood), #22 (Monte Harrison), #6 (Trent Clark) and #13 Jorge Lopez.  

We've talked about Tyrone Taylor already, so let's talk about Tyler Wager. Wagner made it to the majors with Milwaukee in 2015 and got hit around some. He then was traded with Jean Segura to Arizona for Chase Anderson, Aaron Hill, and rising prospect MIL #5/MLB #63 Isan Diaz. Wagner pitched a little for Arizona in 2016 but then was waived after the season. The Rangers -- who apparently only scout the Milwaukee Brewers -- then signed him.

Kenny, thanks for the great bunch of cards. I'm going to use the rest of your songs for a post tomorrow, so don't worry -- you'll get my take on them too!

Quick Walk Down the Plank

One of my fellow 2014 rookies in the blog world, Matthew Scott of Bob Walk the Plank, is much more on top of getting trade packages out to people than I am. He reached out to me recently and told me he had an incredible Jeromy Burnitz parallel to send my way, so I was immediately excited.

It took a week or so to arrive after he told me about it. Or maybe it didn't. I can't recall -- it's been 6 weeks now. I'm terrible. I know.  

At least The Murmurs put out a song about me.

That's the clean version. Be glad for that. 

At any rate, I owe everyone who has sent me cards recently that big apology -- that I suck and have slacked at posting lately. I've been enjoying my time away from daily blogging the past couple of weeks by getting my Topps inserts organized. I'm all the way up to 2010 right now. It feels good to get those finally into a book and for me to know what I am actually missing.

Back to Matt, though. I hope soon to send him some beer soon, or to have the opportunity to grab a beer in person together. 

But, until then, trading baseball cards will have to suffice. And while Matt teased Jeromy Burnitz, he actually topped himself when he sent me cards. 

How? 

Well, let's start with the least impressive of the cards I got from him:

I've written about Michael Reed before, in particular that he is has a good batting eye but not much power. Reed has had the misfortune of being in the wrong organization in 2017. In both 2015 and 2016, Reed spent a little time with the Brewers in the major leagues. This spring, however, he found himself getting optioned all the way down to Double-A Biloxi. He's been passed by a host of OFs, included Domingo Santana, Keon Broxton, Lewis Brinson, Ryan Cordell, and Brett Phillips, among others. 

Rather than plant Reed in Colorado Springs behind that last trio, he finds himself in Double-A. Since he was drafted 6 years ago this year, I would not be surprised to see Michael Reed coming soon to a waiver wire or Rule 5 draft near you -- unless Slingin' David Stearns can turn him into a pitching prospect.

Speaking of Brett Phillips...this one totally blows Reed away. The only thing that would make this card better would be if it had a multi-color patch in it.  Or maybe logos. Either one.

This has quickly become one of my favorite Panini cards, though. 

Phillips does need to show that his 2016 was a fluke and that he can make sufficient contact to be a major leaguer. He had problems with that in Double-A, but the Brewers still moved him up anyway. He slipped down the prospect list some this year due to that.

Okay, now, onto the Burnitz card Matt promised:

Okay, this one is well worth the hype. It is a 1999 Skybox Premium Rubies serial numbered 2 of 50. Seriously, to get a card of that rarity from 18 years ago is pretty damn cool -- and to be a guy that I collect just makes it better.

Matt, many thanks to you for the great cards! And everyone else -- please forgive me. I know I suck.

Then *poof* he was gone

For Brewers fans who troll around on eBay looking for items -- and especially for Robin Yount collectors -- a usual stop used to always be wfbookmen's page. Thanks to WF, I have added numerous Robin Yount relics and autographs to my collection -- sometimes at high prices, sometimes at cheap prices. From time to time, he might be a little slow in shipping for unknown reasons, but most of the time he's a solid eBay seller.

I'd stopped buying from him for a while to focus on picking up more team sets rather than the individual player cards. Plus, I'd often have to stop myself from bidding on far too many items. Then, I got one of his emails saying he had a bunch of stuff on sale with short deadlines for purchase. So, I looked at the stuff and, back at the end of January, I bought a whole raft of items from him (which I'm going to show below). It was a weird sale -- I was able to pick up many of the items by putting in a last minute opening bid on each, which usually doesn't happen.

But a weirder thing happened. Shortly after I left feedback, I went back to see what else he might have for sale, and a strange sight appeared:

Say what? Just like Kaiser Soze -- though hopefully without the international terrorist/bad guy overtones -- it seems like it was just *poof* gone. I hope he is okay -- as you can see, he's been a seller for over 19 years. Perhaps it was just a reaction to the continually increasing eBay fees.

At any rate, thanks to the big sale, I got a bunch of nice items. 

First off, we have two media guides from the Brewers early days. I eventually would like to get a complete run of the media guides in good shape like these two -- as opposed to the well-worn versions of my youth, which were my bedtime reading as a kid as if I would be tested on what Robin Yount's middle name is...which, oddly enough, is listed as "R." but many sources (including the late Bob Lemke) say that his real middle name was Rachel...leading me to believe that I too would use just the R and that his parents really wanted a girl when he was born -- but I digress.

Anyway, I don't have many of them currently, but I do like them. The 1973 one featuring Del Crandall and George Scott is particularly nice.

Another group of items that were available featured some of those Topps buyback cards with those wonderful foil stamps to "update" them. 

As you can see, other than the 1976 Topps Team card for the Brewers (with Hank Aaron placed in the center of the standing players), the rest all fit neatly into player collections -- Moore, Money, Cooper, and Oglivie are all core players from the Brewers teams of my childhood. I don't think I paid more than $1 for any one of these cards. These were, in fact, the items that were lingering without bids late on, so I snapped them up for the $0.99 open.

Something WF always seemed to have were the "higher end" sets like Triple Threads. He also seemed to have all the cool inserts and box toppers. I snapped up a couple of these as well:

I especially like the 2010 Heritage team stamps box topper with Braun and Fielder. I wish that Topps had done actual stamps for the new generation, as opposed to printing them on the box topper. Still, it's a pretty cool item to add to my Braun collection. I'm not sure that I'll find two more for both the Fielder and the team collections, though. I think this is the only one I've found (though I haven't looked all that hard).

Going deeper into the oddball side of things, this time around there were two team-issued photos and a couple of large oddballs for sale. 

In order:

The top one is probably from about 1978 or 1979 or maybe 1980. But, I think it's earlier because by 1980 Gorman Thomas was already on his way to covering up with the full beard look that would make him fit in well with Jayson Werth and Charlie Blackmon these days -- the halfway-to-homeless look.  

The next one has to be from 1983 (or it was a reprint from 1982) since it lists Harvey Kuenn as being "Manager." Harvey was the manager from May of 1982 through the end of 1983. Harry Dalton decided to fire Harvey at the end of the 1983 season after what appeared to be a disappointing finish -- losing 18 of 24 games in September of 1983 featuring a 10-game losing streak to blow the division title. Considering that Rene Lachemann came in the next year and led the team to a 67-94 record (featuring Paul Molitor missing most of the season due to Tommy John surgery), perhaps the chinks in the armor were simply displaying themselves a bit earlier.

The next item is a Cecil Cooper Mr. Z's pizza 5 x 7 photo. I have one of these already, but I kept this one unopened. 

Finally, there is the Jeff Cirillo black & white 5x7 photo issued by The Ohio Casualty Group. I really am confused by these because I'm just not sure if this is a giveaway or if Ohio Casualty just sponsored the team-issued set. I know that OCG issued a set of similarly sized photos featuring Braves and Brewers in 1999 for what was supposed to be County Stadium's final season (before the "Big Blue" crane collapse). But I don't know much more than that.

For the final items, well, it would not be a purchase from WFBookmen without some Robin Yount stuff infiltrating it.

The top item is one of those "Diamondmark" bookmarks issued in the early 1990s, when everyone was putting baseball players on everything. Skipping down, we have two serial numbered items -- one of Yount by himself serial numbered to 399 and one with Paul Molitor serial numbered to 1999.

The second item is an unused ticket stub from the 2010 game featuring a Robin Yount bobblehead for the team's 40th anniversary. It's incredible how many times the Brewers seem to feature that 1982 team and its players on bobbleheads, ticket stubs, and other stadium giveaways. This year, for instance, there is a Robin bobblehead being issued to commemorate his ride into County Stadium on his motorbike -- which was immortalized by Gavin on a Cardsphere Heroes card in 2015:

I will use any excuse I can to show that photo. 

At any rate, I'm hopeful that wfbookmen's exile from eBay will end eventually, or that he will surface on another auction site. My Yount collection hopes so too.

The 30-Day Baseball Card Challenge

As I mentioned in my post about the cards from Night Owl, a lot of us on Twitter have been engaging in the 30-Day music challenge. It's a list of categories that you're supposed to run through on a fairly daily basis to identify various songs that come to mind. Day 1, for example is "A song you like with a color in the title." Others get more personal, like, "A song that breaks your heart."

Since I threw the idea out at the end of that post, I thought I'd take a first cut at putting together a similar list for baseball cards. I personally am going to use this list as blog fodder when I am lacking in trade posts -- which will come soon, based on my own lack of time lately to put packages together -- and when I'm not feeling up to a full research post for "Meet the Brewers." The Meet the Brewers posts will begin again soon, but it may be a month or so before I start them up again, so I need a little bit of other stuff to post about.

So, here goes -- here's the list.

For what it's worth, I gave it a background of a photo found through a Google Image Search of the old Milwaukee County Stadium -- the stadium against which all others are measured in my book.

Feel free to share it on Twitter, use it in your blog posts (with or without attribution -- I don't care), tweak it further to improve it, change categories to fit your sport -- whatever makes you happy. If you do decide to use it on your blog, would you be so kind as to leave a message below, though? I'm thinking that there are, again, a whole host of new blogs that I'm missing out on so any new ones I can add to my list will be appreciated.

In some respects, I hope that this encourages more interaction via the blogs than at least I have had in recent months. Much of that is my own fault -- being too busy does that. But I have seen folks lament the old days of the "blog bat arounds" and thought this might be an idea to that end as well.

Day 1

Day 1 on the list is "A card from the current year with a photo you like."

Because I have only really seen a very limited number of cards -- the Brewers cards from Series 1 Flagship and from Heritage in particular -- I have a limited number to choose from at this point. As I said on Twitter, I went with the future.

This is the 2017 Topps Gold Orlando Arcia card, serial numbered and all. I'm itching to start another player collection soon, and Arcia is in the mix for that "honor." As he continues to develop this year, we will see if he starts to solidify a position in that mix or if, instead, he needs to start looking over his shoulder for Mauricio Dubon and Isan Diaz.

For what it's worth, the guys I view as possible new player collections for me are:

1. Brett Phillips

2. Orlando Arcia

3. Jonathan Villar

4. Lewis Brinson

5. Isan Diaz

6. Josh Hader

7. Wily Peralta (he's still hanging around, after all)

8. Zach Davies

9. Lucas Erceg

Erceg, in particular, is a guy who I think could move up quickly through the Brewers system and make an impact in the major leagues sooner than might otherwise be expected. Not that I'm a prospect guru, mind you, but as long as he can avoid trouble and adjust as needed, he just looks the part.

At any rate, I hope y'all will take part at your leisure in the 30-Day baseball challenge. Thanks for stopping by.

Night Owl Sent Me Cards

During my recent work-imposed blogging break, I've still been able to sneak on Twitter for a few minutes here and there. About the only thing I have had time for doing other than liking and retweeting some posts here and there has been to try to remember to post a song for the 30 Day Music Challenge, which came to my attention thanks to erstwhile baseball card blogger Marcus:

As you can see, these categories provide a way for us musicophiles to dig into the recesses of our brains for songs that we may have forgotten, or which may be in the front of our minds or, even for songs on Google that we have no idea came out during the year of our birth. As an aside, that last category provided a strange confluence for me in that I had no idea that The Doors "Riders on the Storm" came out the same year as Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven". The Doors seem so very 1960s, and Zeppelin is the epitome of 70s metal to me...for them to overlap in 1971 is interesting.

Every so often, Night Owl will reply to my post with a song of his own. Since I could use some good music today, let's look at the cards that Night Owl sent me around the beginning of February highlighted by his musical responses.

1.  A Song that is a cover by another artist: 
"Take Me to the River" by the Talking Heads

I have to admit that I did not realize that this was a cover song. In fact, until now, I did not have the opportunity to look for the original song that the Talking Heads were covering. Then, thanks to YouTube, I found it:

Thing is, both versions are just excellent in their own ways. Al Green's version is a horn-driven funk tune that I almost certainly would have enjoyed playing in jazz ensemble back in high school. 

The Talking Heads version is slower and is driven more by the bass line and keyboards. It is the same and yet entirely different. Add in David Byrne's completely different vocal interpretation, and you get a classic of an entirely different breed.

Speaking of classics of an entirely different breed, Night Owl sent me some great cards from the early and mid-1970s. Those days in Brewers history were pivotal in that the drafts from those years helped build the teams of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and some of the players on those teams started showing up in the big leagues -- such as the 21-year-old Jim Slaton on that high-number 1972 Topps card that is impossible to find at a reasonable price anywhere...unless, of course, Night Owl happens to have an extra and sends it to you.

All of these were cards that were significant upgrades on condition to the ones I had in my collection already. More importantly, these cards are an excellent reminder that porkchop sideburns rocked in the 1970s.

2. A song to play at one's wedding: 

"Groove is in the Heart" by Deee-Lite

This probably gives us more insight as to the date that Night Owl was married more than it tells us what music he'd prefer to hear. At least that is what I am guessing. This song was literally ubiquitous in 1990. You could not go to a dance club or turn on Top 40 radio without hearing this song and having every woman/girl in earshot digging in and dancing their hearts out.

For my song, I selected "Chasing Cars" by Snow Patrol because that was my wife and my first dance song at our wedding. We cut it off at the part where it got more upbeat than would otherwise support a slower dance, but it still is "our" song.

That Ben Sheets card took me a bit by surprise. Again, since I was not collecting at the time when it was issued, I did not realize that Topps's folks apparently decided to trade Sheets to the Padres without the Brewers or the Padres having any knowledge of such a trade taking place. As best I can tell, this also was not one of those situations where Topps was echoing an error that actually occurred in the original set being mimicked (here the 1958 Topps, which has tons of variations). Nope, just a straight up "small markets don't care" as best I can tell.

Boy, if I had been collecting in 2007, I'd have been as upset about that as I get about the Brewers having three cards in the Opening Day set.

3. Name a Favorite 70s song: 

"Signed, Sealed, Delivered" by Stevie Wonder

Night Owl is a few years older than me. Not many, mind you, but when it comes to memories of pop culture, those years get to be important. I'm a child of the 1980s for sure -- I turned 9 years old in 1980 and graduated high school in 1990. Night Owl is a child of the 1970s. No doubt about it. 

I say that because my favorite 1970s songs tend to be songs that I did not hear until much later after they were released. I don't have a ton of contemporary knowledge. Night Owl, on the other hand, replied to my choice of "Clash City Rockers" by saying he could pick a different 70s song for literally every day of the year but settled on this one. 

I hate to admit it, but this is the first time I have listed to this song. It's a solid, straight ahead Stevie Wonder song. My memories of Stevie revolve around the soft-rock pablum of "I Just Called To Say I Love You." That song got overplayed so badly that I just can't listen to it anymore. 

On the other hand, this melange of 2016 Archives Gary Carter (wrong logo, Topps...it was just the team name in 1991...), 1989 O-Pee-Chee of Dale Sveum (whose career was inexorably altered in 1989 by a collision on a popup which broke his leg), a 2008 Topps Update Salomon Torres (who finished his career in MIlwaukee with 80 decent innings in 2008), and two 2008 Topps Chrome cards. 

As was the case with the Warren Spahn card yesterday, I always appreciate it when someone sends me a Gary Carter card. Carter was my first real player collection in the 1980s, and I still enjoy getting his cards for my collection.

4. A Song from Night Owl's Preteen Years

"Afternoon Delight" by Starland Vocal Band

I selected "Blue Bayou" by Linda Ronstadt, but this one was right up there for me too. The song was released in April 1976, and it was still getting airplay well into 1977 in Wisconsin. That, or its catchy chorus got stuck in my head as a 4-year-old. That's possible too.

It took many years after that for me to realize what this song is really about. One commenter on YouTube wrapped it up well, though: as Melo Fran said, "At the time we thought this song was soooo racy lol!!!!! Now it looks like a bunch of nerds ..."

These cards are kind of nerdy too. But I like them anyway. 

Someday soon, after I get done putting my Topps parallels, inserts, and oddballs binders together (I've made it to 2004...only 13 more years to go!), I'll get started with the cataloguing and bindering of the Brewers minor league sets. 

Before that, though, I can tell you that Mike Grayson, unfortunately, passed away in May of 2016 in Tampa at the age of just 48 years old. His obituary said his passions were baseball and music -- playing in 1988 and 1989 in the Brewers system and being a wedding DJ. He died from a brain aneurysm, so that allowed his organs to be removed to help others get a second chance at life. The outpouring of love on his Legacy.com page really touched me too. Guys like him are common throughout the minor leagues, yet each has a life that goes beyond baseball.

Maybe we should crowd source a "30-day baseball card challenge"...