A Lifelong Fascination: The 1982 Milwaukee Brewers

I don't remember a time in my life when I was not a baseball fan. With other sports for me, I can identify when I became a fan and why I stopped being a fan or stopped paying as much attention or started paying tons of attention. 

NBA? I loved watching the Bucks on TV as a kid during the days of Marques Johnson (before he was traded), Sidney Moncrief, Paul Pressey, and Terry Cummings. I grew up listening to Jon McGlocklin as the color guy on the 10-15 games a year that made it to TV. But, all those guys got old at around the same time in the late 1980s, and then the team was marked by draft decisions and ownership choices that made them easy to discard when I went to law school.

NFL? I was a Packers fan by 1980, watching every fall weekend with family. I still follow the Packers...but not as closely. I stopped paying as much attention to the Packers due to fantasy football, and I stopped paying much attention at all to the NFL in 2016 when I quit fantasy football. It's been freeing not to care.

College basketball? I liked Marquette as a kid. That changed when I went to college at Vanderbilt and I became a huge Vandy fan. Then Eddie Fogler left and Jan van breda Kolff ran the program down, and Kevin Stallings settled for good and mediocre. With VBK at Vandy in the mid-1990s and me studying a lot more thanks to law school, college basketball was not something I watched from that point on. And don't even get me started on college baseball -- Vanderbilt only got good well over a decade after I left.

College football? I had moments as a kid when I cared -- the 1981 Garden State Bowl between Wisconsin and Tennessee, for example. Between Wisconsin football under Dave McClain being awful and being a high school debater with debate competitions every Saturday, I really didn't care about college football until I got to college. Then, by the time I left Vanderbilt, I hated college football because Vanderbilt had about 12 fans who were serious fans and came to every game like the rest of the SEC. Then I went to Georgia for law school and I became a serious Georgia fan. But I am still not a big time "collector" when it comes to that part of my sports fandom -- despite some great items I have received.

Finally, professional soccer? I played a little pickup soccer in college, and I even watched highlight shows in 1994-1995 on cable. But I did not start to watch pro soccer until 2003, when I had Fox Soccer Channel show up on my cable system and my dog would wake me up early to go for a walk in the morning. That led to my Manchester United fandom, but, once again, it's not a major collection thing for me.

But baseball has been a constant. It's like the Thomas Mann soliloquy in Field of Dreams. Even as life moved inexorably forward, the one constant in life has been baseball. As a fan, I've attended NL and AL playoff games, a World Series, and an All-Star game. I've been to games in California, Illinois, Georgia, Pennsylvania, New York, Florida, Ohio, and Canada. I have come back to collecting baseball cards after nearly 25 years away.

And yet...current cards are...well, just okay. Perhaps it's my age and that baseball cards are a nostalgia game. What else explains the popularity of Topps Heritage and (to a lesser extent) Topps Archives and the inserts based off old card designs? It brings us collectors back to the days when we collected the original design.

Collecting baseball cards and other memorabilia is something I do as a hobby. It's my pastime. It's fun. Sometimes I start losing the fun, though, and I get cranky. Irritable. Pissed off at Topps for ignoring my favorite team. Unhappy that there are no other options except Topps for properly licensed cards. 

So, my focus here is shifting. Of course, I want to complete team sets. That's why I have tried to put together my Brewers want lists in such meticulous and exhaustive order. What I really want, though, are the players from my youth. 

I find myself inspired by blog commenter extraordinaire Mark Hoyle. His devotion to the 1967 Impossible Dream Boston Red Sox is legendary. While I am not going to say that getting everything for everyone on the 1982 Brewers is where I am going with my collection, I am saying that I really want everything related to the Milwaukee Brewers from the 1980s. 

Matchbooks, schedules, pins, programs, pennants, stickers, oddball cards, police sets, photos inserted from pizza packages -- you name it, I want it. 

And yes, I want the stuff that the Brewers keep putting out to celebrate that wonderful season that is now 36 years ago. Stuff like these cards inserted into the middle of the 1992 Brewers yearbook to celebrate the 10th anniversary, which I just bought this past week on eBay for a few dollars:

It's easy to see how much I really enjoyed the 1982 Brewers -- just look at those cards next to my player collection list. 14 of the 18 cards are of guys that are player collections. Only Rollie Fingers, Don Sutton, Pete Ladd, and Pete Vuckovich are not.

It is difficult to put into context how well that team hit compared to the league and historically. For example, 2017 was a hitter-happy environment; the highest scoring team was the Houston Astros, who averaged 5.53 runs per game. Joining the Astros in scoring over 5 runs per game in 2017 were the Yankees (5.30), the Indians (5.05), the Twins (5.03), the Rockies (5.09), the Cubs (5.07), the Nationals (5.06), and the Diamondbacks (5.01). 

The Brewers averaged 5.47 runs a game in 1982. The only other team in the major leagues to join Milwaukee at over 5.0 runs per game were their ALCS opponents, the California Angels, who averaged 5.02 runs per game. The MLB average runs scored per game per team in 2017 was 4.65; in 1982: 4.30.

That's just one average. In terms of individual performances: Robin Yount had a 10.5 WAR in 1982. That led the majors by 1.9 wins over 2nd place Gary Carter. Looking only at the AL now, the Brewers had 4 of the top 9 players in offensive WAR -- Yount, Molitor, Cooper, and Thomas. Three players -- Molitor, Yount, and Cooper -- scored over 100 runs, with Molitor first at 136 and Yount second at 129. Those three teammates each had over 200 hits that season; no one else in the AL had over 194.

Robin Yount's season was truly unbelievable. He was second in AVG behind Willie Wilson but was 10th in OBP, 1st in SLG, 1st in OPS, 2nd in runs scored, 1st in hits, 1st in Total bases, tied for 1st in doubles, 3rd in triples, 11th in HR at 29 (his teammates Thomas, Oglivie, and Cooper all had over 30 in a league where only 10 players hit 30 or more), and 4th in RBI. Even in advanced stats his season was excellent -- 5.5 Adjusted batting wins, .731 Offensive win percentage, 5th in power/speed number, 1st in base-out runs added (RE24, whatever the hell that means), 5th in win probability added, 1st in situational wins added, 1st in base-out wins added and first in OPS+. He was truly a dominant player that year.

I could go on and on and on. That 1982 team should have won a Championship. There were no missed calls to blame, though -- no Don Denkinger moments on which to rest our complaints. No, the Brewers just couldn't win the four games they needed to win against the Cardinals. It's a shame as a Brewers fan of that era that this team was not a Series winner so as to get the level of respect that such a win would have provided. 

All of this is to say that I don't mind duplicates from the 1980s. This may lead to a "project" and maybe eventually I will have as many projects as Night Owl does. At this point, though, it's just a recognition that I am more focused on the past for my collecting because it makes me happy. Just like Oddballs make me happy, and like knocking cards off my want lists makes me happy, and just like my Warren Spahn and Harvey Kuenn collections make me happy.

Just as I wish current cards could make me happy. But those are just different. Not bad. Just different.

Living in Enemy Territory

Living in Atlanta as a Brewers fan isn't too bad, for the most part. I'm disconnected from the day-to-day crap that can inhabit fans from local news and local sports radio, so it's easier to come to my own conclusions about things going on in Brewerland. At the same time, I am also living in a city that really does not have any strong feelings about the Milwaukee Brewers. Braves fans generally think of Milwaukee as that place that the Brewers came from and that's really it.

On the other hand, living in Chicago -- especially the north side of town -- cannot be easy. Sure, Cubs fans will claim that they really don't care about the Brewers, that their rivals are the Cardinals. Historically, yes, that is accurate. But I would venture to guess that the next few years will make Cubs fans dislike the Brewers more and more.

I bring this up because I recently traded with a fellow Brewers collector, Robb a/k/a Brewers 792 (whether at his blog or on Twitter). I sent Robb a bunch of my early Brewers duplicates, and he filled in some gaps in my collection for me with some old and some more recent. Robb is the man who lives on the north side of Chicago, so he has to live among our enemies. So, let's see what Robb sent me with some appropriate music.

 Let's start with the recent cards:

Scott Podsednik would not have had a baseball career in the major leagues without the Brewers. He was drafted by the Rangers out of high school in 1994. He played a couple of years in their system before being the player to be named later in a trade to bring back prodigal son Bobby Witt to Arlington. Two years later, the Rangers suffered from seller's remorse and grabbed him back through the Rule 5 draft. He struggled to stay healthy and/or play well in reaching Double-A Tulsa in 1999 (a .155/.190/.190 slash line in 123 plate appearances is pretty bad) and the Rangers cut him. 

Seattle signed him, and he played well in a couple of years at Triple-A, but Seattle had enough outfielders in 2000 and 2001, so he only got 31 plate appearances in the majors. So, after his age-26 season, the Brewers plucked him off waivers. He impressed greatly -- .314/.379/.443 in 628 plate appearances led him to finish second in the rookie of the year race in the NL in 2003 behind Marlins phenom Dontrelle Willis. Pods only lasted 2 seasons in Milwaukee before being traded for Carlos Lee to the White Sox, though, so he's just a fan-favorite footnote from a period when fan favorites were tough to come by.

The White Sox...yeah, they used to be big enemies.

The one time I ever attended a White Sox/Brewers game in Milwaukee, the bleachers about a section over from where we were sitting looked pretty similar to the end result of this Shinedown band meeting. Those games in the days when folks could easily get overserved at the game -- it was, after all, the days of the origins of the Two-Fisted Slopper at County Stadium -- led to tons of fights and arrests. It's tough to describe, but Milwaukee people and Chicago people don't always get along all that well.

The late 1990s and early 2000s is a common black hole for many of us who left collecting as younger men or youths and came back in the past 5 to 10 years. So, these UD Choice, a Turnbow SP Authentic, and a random Pacific of Jeromy Burnitz were greatly appreciated. 

As an aside, that same time period featured the worst Brewers uniforms ever. I'm not a huge fan of the current uniforms either, but they were tons better than that weird ass font that the team used then. I'm pretty glad that none of the card companies even bothered showing Milwaukee in that timeframe.

I'm thinking that Butch Vig would agree with me that the Cubs and White Sox are the enemies. As his band Garbage with the lovely Shirley Manson tells us, "Sex Is Not the Enemy." Remember -- Butch Vig and his band mates other that Shirley (Duke Erikson and Steve Marker) are all originally from Madison, Wisconsin. They may not care about baseball, but that's not important here.

The true highlights from this package were these awesome Milwaukee Braves from 1960 (and one thrown in from 1958 too). It's not often you get a 58 year-old card of a Hall of Famer in a trade package, but there's that Red Schoendienst to make that happen. Throw in future manager Chuck Cottier -- whom I would have sworn was much younger than his 48 years old when he took charge of the 1984 Seattle Mariners near the end of that season. Those lines on Chuck's card are on the card too, which I suppose makes it okay that this one here ended up being a second copy of a card for me. 

This was actually the song in my head that got me started on the path of finding songs about enemies. Green Day is total pop punk, which means to me that their version of punk is less nihilistic and more hook-filled and lighter. 

Still, I bet Robb really knows a ton of our enemies living in the midst of them. To be fair, it still seems weird to me to dislike the Cubs since I didn't grow up with them being the focus of boyhood hatred -- that role was reserved for the New York Yankees and, to a lesser extent, the Chicago White Sox. 

Thanks, Robb, for the great cards. Everyone else -- be sure to follow him on Twitter and try to cajole him into blogging again. 

Johnny's Trading Again

Over the four years I've been blogging, I have been the recipient of tons of cards and bobbleheads and all kinds of other stuff from John at Johnny's Trading Spot. He is a megacollector. Not only does he want all the Braves ever -- as he puts it, he only needs "like 108,000 more Braves cards" -- but he also puts sets together too. So, it looks like I definitely need to send him some cards again soon.

This is especially true because he sent me yet another package of cards about a month ago with some fantastic Brewers to add to my collection. Let's start with a short print from 2017:

Eric Thames seemed initially to be a very inspired signing by the Brewers early last year. Of course, he was not that much of a different player than when he went to Korea. It helped him early on that teams did not know whether he could handle what they were serving up to him -- especially the Reds. 

These days, Thames's playing time is getting squeezed a bit by the Brewers surplus of outfielders and corner players -- it's tough to find room for Christian Yelich, Lorenzo Cain, Domingo Santana, Ryan Braun, Brett Phillips, Keon Broxton, Jesus Aguilar, and Eric Thames on the same roster. Of those, Phillips and Broxton have options remaining, and Aguilar was a waiver wire pickup last year who might find himself there this year if the Brewers can't clear that logjam.

We'll see how good David Stearns is in that trading process. So far, he's made me a Believer.

Strangely enough, 1981 Kellogg's seem to elude me. 1982 and 1983 are plentiful, it seems, but 1981...maybe kids just didn't want to remind themselves about the strike by buying baseball cards. Still, these two Brewers stalwarts were both very much needed for my collection. 

The Greatest American Hero was one of my favorite TV shows in 1981. William Katt as the everyman superhero who screwed up and made mistakes but in the end always beat the bad guys was kind of an inspiration to me as a 9-year-old, because I always screwed up and made mistakes. My visual memory of that show tied to this song is the scene where he flies into a billboard and crashes. He was also about as graceful as a rhinoceros high on LSD. Plus, Connie Sellecca was hot.

Now, though, she's just married to John Tesh. That was after being married to Gil Gerard (yeah, Buck Rogers from that three year show at the end of the 1980s).

Gotta love these snowflake/holiday cards from last year. Well, actually, you don't have to love them. To be honest, I'm sort of agnostic. They are cool and all, but I'd prefer them if they weren't a glorified parallel. I guess they are pretty cool. They do put me in a holiday spirit, even though the only holiday really upcoming right now is St. Patrick's Day. Guess I'll have to drink a Guinness.

Sort of like the cards, I'm a bit agnostic on Madonna -- especially her early career. If you didn't live through that era, well, imagine if Taylor Swift spurred on an entire army of teenage wannabes who dressed like her and you have the feel of what it was like when Madonna first got big. This was really one of her first hits, and she became a phenomenon.

John has been sprinkling these Fleer Excel cards throughout the blogosphere. You have to love that El Paso Diablos card of future Brewer and Astro Mark Loretta!

I am still working on putting together my minor league want lists for the Brewers. I'm working on refining my Milwaukee Braves want lists currently, so that's taken more of my time recently. That and listening to tons and tons of different podcasts. 

If you have any podcast recommendations, let me know. 

When I think of 1995, I think of the time when I met Oasis. Speaking of which, I really need to find my signed concert ticket from that day. Of course, they were gobshites then and are gobshites now. Time has certainly revealed that Noel was the more talented of the Gallagher brothers. 

Oh, and f**k Man Citeh, Noel & Liam. 

It might seem weird that my favorite item from this box (which had a ton more things in it!) is a media guide, but I love media guides. Part of me thinks I should go back to my efforts to buy up as many old (but good) baseball books as I could. The other side of me, though, thinks I should stick with the Brewers but buy up every Media Guide in sight of every team. I know I have the Brewers from 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1990, 1991, 1992, and 1993 at a minimum.

And maybe I should do that. I enjoy the background about the players and all, and I also enjoy tidbits like seeing Fred "Chicken" Stanley showing up to work for the Brewers in 1992 -- one of the 1970 Brewers came back home.

John, thank you very much for the cards and ESPECIALLY for the media guide.

Walking on a Thin Line

Most everyone knows Matt from Bob Walk the Plank. He and I started blogging within about 10 days of one another back in 2014. That means that I forgot to celebrate my four-year anniversary of blogging earlier this month. Hey, I remembered my wedding anniversary for the 7th straight year -- cut me some slack. There's only room for one anniversary in my brain, I guess.

At any rate, Matt sent me a couple of cards as maybe a blog birthday gift or just because or since I decided to post more than once a month after college football season finally ended for UGA. And while the envelope Matt sent was small, the cards he sent packed a punch.

Let's start with the card that wasn't serial numbered first:

The man Haderade. Josh Hader is an interesting pitcher for the Brewers this year. He came up through the Orioles, Astros, and Brewers systems mostly as a starter. Sure, both the Orioles and Astros had times where they controlled his innings-pitched by having him work out of the bullpen, such as his first season as a pro back in 2012 and his two seasons in the Astros organization (2014 and 2015). But with Milwaukee, he has been groomed as a starter -- all 44 of his Brewers MiLB appearances have been as a starter.

Then, he makes it to the majors throwing gas out of the bullpen in an Andrew Miller-type role last year. It would be nice to see him get a shot at the rotation this year, but that does not appear to be something that the team is considering right now. Is he more valuable in the pen, or in the rotation? It's a fine line.

Or a Thin Line, even. Huey Lewis and the News were totally among my favorite bands in the mid-1980s. Sports is a great album, and every boy I knew wanted that basement that is pictured on the cover. You can tell this because all the yahoos with "Man Caves" have almost exactly that set up as their "man cave."

Next up is Ben Sheets Fleer Box Score parallel from 2002 serial numbered to 100. Where do you find these cards, Matt? Just trolling on eBay for cheap serial numbered stuff? Picking up an extra card to save on shipping? I guess I don't spend enough time on eBay (despite my recent spree of random items bought there). 

Anyway, this one is a great addition to the Ben Sheets collection. I'm still thinking about where my collecting goes from where it is now and going into the future in large part because Topps these days really isn't about anything but maximizing profits for themselves and for their favored breakers. I mean, they threw their own industry convention last week. Is that normal?

I guess it is and has been for years. I know that baseball cards is not what Kanye is rapping about here, but it really is true that "most of all we at war with ourselves." The divisions are weird and growing. I used to talk by email and on Twitter with Matt all the time, and my falling away from the hobby has made it feel like a division built up there.

There isn't one, mind you, but sometimes it feels like there is. That's what's weird about it.

To prove there isn't a division, how about a clear parallel from 2015 of Adam Lind serial numbered to 10. Lind only spent the 2015 season with Milwaukee, and he put up a pretty good season for the crew. 

Even better is the fact that the Brewers then flipped him to Seattle and got pitcher Freddy Peralta for him. Peralta is a small Dominican -- 5'11", 175 pounds -- who has some issues with control but who strikes out seemingly everyone he faces. Last year in a season split between high-A Carolina and AA Biloxi, he walked 4.7 guys per nine innings but struck out 12.7 guys per nine while giving up just 5.8 hits per nine. That's electric stuff. Peralta struck out 33.4% of the batters he faces last year, trailing only A.J. Puk. And Peralta is a year younger than Puk. Peralta is high risk, high reward -- either a number 2 starter, or bullpen fodder.

I do hope that Lou Reed does not become Peralta's theme song and that Peralta can get his wild side under control. Also, I hope that we're not talking about Peralta coming from Florida and shaving his legs to become a she. 

Matt, thanks for the great cards and the excuse to dive into some Walk songs. 

Throwback Thursdays

Last week, I started the week with a post about cards that I got from JT at The Writer's Journey. 

This week, I'm starting the week with a post about a card that I got from JT at the Writer's Journey.

I'll admit it: I had never heard of Bert Kaempfert before this song. Of course, Kaempfert wrote such standards as "Strangers in the Night" and Wayne Newton's signature song "Danke Schoen." Perhaps I should have heard of him before this song.

Anyway, back to baseball cards. Last year, Topps had a bunch of online exclusives that they sold in sets of anywhere from 5 to 8 cards and which were available only for a week. They were called the "Throwback Thursday" collection. While I promised not to rant as much this year, this one's worth a rant. Topps issued a total of 185 "Throwback" cards last year, with designs ranging from the 1988 Topps Glossy All-Stars Design to 1957-58 Basketball (showing guys like Lou Brock and Satchel Paige but annoyingly talking about the card design instead of the player on the back). 

So, these cards look great, in my opinion. It's fun to see old football card designs used for baseball. In fact, that might be a better use for Topps Archives.

Amongst the 185 Throwback cards, there were SIXTEEN cards that had Aaron Judge on it (and 21 cards with the Yankees). There were, though, three teams that only got featured on 1 card. I'm pretty sure the "most disdained" team has to be the Detroit Tigers. The only representation they got was having Michael Fulmer on a 1997-98 Bowman's Best Basketball "Mirror Image" design with Aaron Judge (they shared being rookies of the year, you see, so that makes them mirror images).

Otherwise, the other two team to get the "one-card" shrift both got their single card in the same "set." 475 people purchased the TBT set featuring the 1968 Topps Baseball Design -- a true cop out set in light of the fact that it was the Heritage design already last year -- and those 475 people got the only cards featuring a Cincinnati Red (Johnny Bench) and the only card featuring a Milwaukee Brewer -- Paul Molitor.

The backs of these cards each note that this set -- "Throwback Thursday Set 5" -- all featured players that did not have their own rookie cards by themselves. All of them (Bench, Molitor, Andre Dawson, Nolan Ryan, Carlton Fisk, and Willie Stargell) had to share.

This kind of money grab is where I'm fine with Topps being completely oblivious to the fact that baseball exists outside of New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Even though this is a really cool looking card -- which I am very thankful to JT for sending to me -- I'm 100% okay with Topps soaking all the Judgeaholics and taking their $20 a pop every single week. 

That's right Topps -- just give them The Judge.

My thanks again to JT for the excellent addition to my Paul Molitor collection!

2018 Eric Thames Inserts from Baseball Every Night

I have met a couple of bloggers in person. For example, I have met up with Dayf/Dave who may still post occasionally at Cardboard Junkie but who really can be found on Twitter as @cardjunk. 

This past fall, I was in Boston for an ABA seminar/meeting for work. I got in a day early to go to meetings, so I had some available time one morning. It allowed me to meet up with a guy who I really respect -- P K a/k/a Peter of Baseball Every Night. We were able to grab coffee at Starbucks and sit like two old men on a park bench across the street from the Boston Public Library for as long as Peter could afford to be missing in action from work and just hang out and talk about everything but cards.

I really enjoyed getting that opportunity. It ended up being a baseball day -- my wife and I walked to Fenway too:



What's even cooler is that Peter still speaks to me even after we met in person. I can be a little much sometimes, and I can drop off the face of the planet for a while too, so that's not always a given.

At any rate, Peter has been opening up some 2018 Topps. He was lucky enough (from my perspective) to pull two inserts that are Brewers. Well, two Eric Thames Inserts to be specific:

On the left, we have an Eric Thames "Opening Day 2018" insert, and on the right we have a "Memorial Day" insert of Thames. The brick thing coming off Thames's chin on the left makes it look like he's smoking a big fat stogie of sorts. The green on the right looks like Panini took over the Topps printing facility for a day to come up with weird, incorrect color combinations.

In all seriousness, I'm glad I got these. I've stopped chasing inserts and parallels for anyone other than my player collections effective starting with the 2018 season in part because it takes forever to catalog them and in part because it's simply not fun trying to find 12 versions of the same card with different color effects for literally everyone on the team. 

But, I will still take the inserts if people are willing to send them my way. 

Now, to thank Peter, let's hear from one of his player collections. Peter collects two guys who seem like they may not enjoy hanging out together. The first is Los Angeles native Darryl Strawberry, and the other is Charleston, West Virginia, native John Kruk. Maybe that's why he likes them. 

Let's focus on Kruk. I enjoyed watching him as a player, and I turn the TV off on him as an analyst. He's a self-professed redneck too, which isn't that big of a deal to me because that's how I grew up. That said, he got together with a group of unknown-to-me country singers and came up with a country-music theme for "Baseball Tonight." Since I don't watch the show, I have no idea how well know this song is, but here goes:

Peter, thank you as always for the cards and for being a cool guy to interact with -- I greatly appreciate your thoughtfulness and watching your beer consumption.

Cards from JT at The Writer's Journey

See, guys and gals? I'm really trying now. I am. I know I need to get better about posting if I want to call myself a blogger, so here I am. 

As a lot of you know, I got lucky in winning a box of 2018 Topps from Steel City Collectibles on Twitter. So, I made it my goal to send as much of that out the door as quickly as possible. One of the beneficiaries was JT at The Writer's Journey. JT sent me cards about two years ago, at which time I confessed that his blog was one of the first ones I'd really ever read. 

Since then, I've been lucky to interact with him on Twitter on a regular basis and have really gotten to like his understated nature. He's a great guy to follow there.

Perhaps thanks to me sending cards to him or him just having too many Brewers lying around his house, I got a package from him. And since his blog just covered that his favor song about memory is Skid Row's "I Remember You" (which I've posted twice here and I won't do it again), I'm going with other great hair bands/songs from that same era.



Let's start off mostly in the late aughts, but with a Donruss thrown in. First off, it's Bill Hall, whose random 35-HR season in 2006 in the context of his career looks more and more suspicious every day...positively Brady Andersonesque. 

In the midst of that 2006 season, a random blogger -- whose blog still exists has not been deleted -- made one of those "Bill Hall is superman" posts. That blogpost included such statements as, "There are no steroids in baseball, only players Bill Hall breathed on."

Um, okay. Even funnier to me, though, is that the post has 20 comments. No kidding -- three legit anonymous posts, one from someone named Jamie (Easterly?), and then 16 spam comments. 

First song out of the box is Alice Cooper's "Poison." I remember hearing this song in my high school band room and thinking it was pretty cool. Like, cool enough that I asked the girl who owned the tape if she would dub it for me (which she was nice enough to do). I later found out that this song was really Alice Cooper trying to take the rough edges off his persona so he could become a member of the celebrity golf tour. Sort of.

Incidentally, the actress who appears in this video is a woman named Rana Kennedy, who is now a masseuse and pilates trainer to the stars in Carlsbad, California. 

I do love me some oddballs. JT's actually been interspersing these Baseball Champion packages around the blogosphere over the past month. For me, though, these two stay packaged. After all, a clear plastic card package with a player collection member on the top is another item to add to my player collections for Ben Oglivie and Cecil Cooper.

Then there is that wannabe 1959 Topps Paul Molitor. Baseball Cards Magazine almost got their font right for it. They messed up the font spacing on the name. Close, though. 

If you were a teenager alive in 1989 and you weren't really into garbage songs by Debbie Gibson and New Kids on the Block, you probably thought that Living Colour was one of the most awesome bands on the face of the planet thanks to their album Vivid. Now, Corey Glover's choice of a bright yellow Body Glove surfing outfit as stage wear is a bit dated, but this song is just as awesome today as it was then. 

For what it's worth, Living Colour just released a new album last year called Shade. I haven't checked it out yet...I will be soon.

While I hate to do scan dumps, I also am trying to focus more on posts that don't go on for 18 pages. So, sometimes, that will mean a scan dump will result. Lots of Bowman, some old school Upper Deck (please let them make cards again, MLB. Please. Limit them to 5 sets and 2 parallels if you're worried about market saturation. Seriously.), and even some Topps too.

One last song:

Please recall that I was 17 and turned 18 in late 1989, so you'll understand when I say that this song, too, reminds me of a girl I knew then. Actually, it was a girl I went out with a few times who was from a different school from me. She was from a good Irish-Catholic family and was a very good student. I was from a non-Catholic family and enjoyed having fun, but I was totally a goody goody too and was a good student. So, we got along well and had fun with each other and our mutual friends. 

She was almost 6' tall, had long, curly black hair, and really long legs too. And I had troubles sometimes describing her eye color because it varied greatly depending on the sunlight. So, this song totally reminds me of her. She is now the CEO of a company based in the Midwest, so she did quite well for herself. 

Me? I'm a baseball card blogger. Again. Finally.

JT, thank you very much for the cards.