When people move houses, it is often one of the few times in their lives where they strongly consider whether some particular item, box, or piece of furniture is worth keeping. My wife and I moved into our house three years ago. Even though we were moving into a larger house, we still made choices on what to bring along and what to let the vultures that were our neighbors pick through. Brad of Brad's Phillies Blog is moving this weekend. To aid in his move, he asked the blogworld to help him out by taking cards off his hands. Many of us -- all in the interest of helping a fellow blogger, of course, and not from any selfish desire to get more cards...of course -- signed on to help. I was the recipient of a fantastic load of cards mostly from my Achilles' heel of collecting: the late 1990s. There were other, more recent cards too, though. In fact, let's start with cards from this year:
I'm still playing catch-up with some of the run-of-the-mill sets from Topps from 2015. I picked up a case break and box break of Heritage, so I'm good there. And, I have most of the Topps flagship set covered other than short prints and needing one more copy of the Brewers Team card. Now, I'm starting to get closer on Ginter. By the way, farewell to Adam Lind, who was traded today to the Seattle Mariners for three teenaged pitchers. Basically, the Brewers picked up Marco Estrada off waivers, flipped him to the Jays for Lind (where Estrada suddenly became a competent pitcher again), and now flipped Lind for three international-signing pitchers. I mean, it's not the Braves stealing ex-Vanderbilt Commodore Dansby Swanson, but it's a pretty good trade for a rebuilding Brewers team. Now the Brewers need a first baseman. Rumor has it that they might sign their bench coach's son-in-law -- former Vanderbilt Commodore Pedro Alvarez. Damn, if that happens, I kinda hope Alvarez tears it up and forces the Brewers to re-sign him. I kinda want a Vandy guy to collect. Okay, we need music:
That is "Twist" by a late '90s/early '00s Atlanta band called Ultrababyfat. The blond you see playing bass in that video is Britta Phillips. Her claim to fame is that she was the singing voice for Jem in the original cartoon series in the late 1980s in addition to later being in the bands Luna and Dean & Britta (with her husband Dean Wareham). The lead singer is Shonali Bhowmik. Shonali is both a fellow Vanderbilt graduate and a fellow law school grad. She went to Emory, and I went to Georgia (though I started at Georgia the year she graduated, and she probably graduated college before I started there too). And, she also hosted the NPR show "Ask Me Another" before current host Ophira Eisenberg. ... Wow, that was a digression. I always wondered why Ultrababyfat never got bigger than they did -- which was being a really good local band. I saw them a couple of times here in town and loved their sound. Anyway, I'd better show y'all some cards before you leave.
How about a couple of prospects? Or, perhaps non-prospects. Giacalone was a 16th round pick in 2012 out of Neosho County Community College. He hit very well in the Pioneer League in both 2012 and 2013, but struggled a bit in the Midwest League to start 2013. When you're a 16th round pick, you don't get second chances, and the team just discarded him. Now, he's 23 and just finished his second season in the independent Frontier League in Joliet, and he's trying to pitch. Nicky Delmonico started with Baltimore in 2012. He came to the Brewers in 2013 in the trade that sent Francisco Rodriguez to Baltimore for a half season. Delmonico missed time in 2014 for some personal issues, then got spanked with a 50-game suspension for amphetamine use (Adderall, in fact). The Brewers then cut him because, as then-farm director Reid Nichols said, "We couldn't contact him. He wouldn't return calls. We couldn't find him." Delmonico now has clearance to use the Adderall for his ADD, and he played in the White Sox organization last year. Now, how about the 1990s? How about THAT mid-1990s goodness? Everything from 1996 Circa to 1995 Score Gold Rush to 1994 Score to those Topps knockoffs of Kellogg's cards that Topps called "IIID". These are awesome and awful and cool and car crashes all at once. Just like the mid-1990s really were.
I mean, I had to put a song from Brad here, right? Everyone's heard of Brad, right? You know, the Stone Gossard/Jeff Ament side project? I saw them play in a basement club here in Atlanta on a Wednesday night in 2001 before about 50 people. It was a great show -- well worth it. Brad, thank you very much for all the great cards and good luck with the move. One hint: make yourself and your wife empty all the boxes and get them out of the house and THEN figure out where stuff goes. Seriously -- it works!
It's been a busy week. On top of being busy, my mental capacities with respect to sports have been focused more on the selection of the first new football coach for the Georgia Bulldogs in fifteen years than anywhere else. Granted, it didn't take much more than a third-grade education to figure out who would be the Georgia head coach (so long as Kirby Smart wanted the job, it would be his). Still, with Georgia, there's always an element of thinking that they could still screw this up somehow -- and that nagging suspicion will continue until Kirby signs on the dotted line. At any rate, my mother and younger brother came to Atlanta for Thanksgiving. They brought with them a few things that I didn't know I had remaining at my mom's house -- in large part because, well, the stuff mostly wasn't mine to begin with but really belonged to my younger brother. Such as, for example, a complete set of 1999 Milwaukee Brewers police cards issued by the Village of Jackson Police and Volunteer Fire Department.
And, hey, thanks, Blogger for the update that allows me to drag and drop scans into my blog posts over the three-step system of having to click the little photo icon, select the cards I want to use, wait for them to upload, then rearrange them in the post! Now, perhaps they will work out a way next to embed videos by using a URL rather than having to find them on YouTube. Then again, why would they do that, since Google owns YouTube and Blogger? But, I digress. I like these 1999 cards for their backgrounds. Using photos from old Milwaukee County Stadium as the background in what was supposed to be the old Stadium's final year (before the Big Blue Crane fell and killed people and damaged the work in place) was a nice touch. Also found in the box from Wisconsin were some of those Dover Reprints. For my interests specifically, I got a couple of great perforated oddballs from the early 1980s books on which Bert Sugar put his name:
Reprints of Warren Spahn's 1950 Bowman card and of Lew Burdette's 1952 Bowman card. I'm disappointed that the book didn't include a 1952 Topps Eddie Mathews. With the cost of that card being what it is, a reprint may be as close as I'll ever come to owning it barring some sort of lottery-like windfall in my future. My next find came in the form of a 1989 Milwaukee Brewers yearbook. In 1988, 1989, and 1992 (I think this is true for 1992), the Brewers inserted pages of perforated cards that are slightly larger than the regulation size cards we are all used to. I decided "to hell with it" and pulled all the cards from this yearbook apart. Here are the pages in their unperforated glory:
I like how there are only 18 cards that they issued. Imagine being one of the eight guys on the 25-man roster (since one of these cards is manager Tom Trebelhorn) from the year prior who was still on the roster who didn't get a card issued. "Yes, we love your skills. You've got a spot on this roster. It's just that, well, none of our fans really like you or care about you or know who you are. No, we're not planning on cutting you for that non-roster invite guy! Not right now, anyway..." One last Brewers item, and then one last oddball. First the Brewers item. Back in 1984, the major-league minimum salary was $30,000 a year. According to this inflation calculator, that salary today would be just shy of $70,000. For comparison purposes, the minimum salary in 2015 was $507,500 -- the equivalent of $218,940 in 1984. Baseball players are doing a lot better these days financially than they did in the 1980s for sure. But, does it excuse dressing like you shopped with Macklemore at the thrift shop?
Former Brewers reliever Tom Tellmann is captured in this night photo in action, signing a card for me or some other kid. You can tell it's from the mid-1980s because he still thought a bubble perm and massive mustache was a good fashion idea. Then again, the way he looks in this photo, perhaps he was a hipster before his time with the track pants and tavern t-shirt. Even more humorous is the fact that, at some point in my life, I thought it was a great idea to have him autograph this photo. Finally, the box from Wisconsin yielded one more Baseball Cards Magazine complete with the baseball cards inserted:
Other than the Cardinals Rookies card complete with Brian Jordan and Dmitri Young, this was clearly from the Closers Edition. What great early 1990s names we have here -- Lee Smith, John Franco, Brian Harvey, Tom Henke, Bobby Thigpen, Dennis Eckersley, and Jeff Reardon. It's a Who's Who of the early 1990s fascination with Jerome Holtzman's pet statistic, the save. I feel assured that these oddballs will find their way into a few trade packages soon. I just know it.
I haven't the foggiest idea what the hell anyone is saying in this video other than "Oddball Song." But hey, I couldn't figure out what Barenaked Ladies said in "One Week" either.
Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I had a lot to be thankful for. My family made a safe drive to my house from Wisconsin and back. My wife let me work in my card room/office for much of the time I was away from work. We even had a fun excursion to the local international market that was featured a couple of years ago in an Anthony Bourdain trip to Atlanta. Even better, I had a couple of packed envelopes show up in my mailbox. One of them was from now-retired(?) blogger Jim from Garvey Cey Russell Lopes. Jim's blog used to be one of the blogs I read regularly in the morning each day. I hardly ever commented -- not sure why, to be fair...I could have just said, "Interesting post" or "I didn't know that" about literally every post. At any rate, Jim e-mailed me about two weeks ago and told me he had some cards for me. I have put together a return envelope already, though it hasn't made its way to the post office quite yet. What did Jim send me?
Lots and lots of Jeromy.
That's a ton of Burnitz right there. This big batch of Burnitz brings my burgeoning bundle of Burnitz baseball billets to 131. I do enjoy alliteration. Anyway, being at 131 cards for Burnitz is especially excellent considering that, when I started two years ago back in collecting, I think I had 1. Or 2. But I think it was 1. And it definitely was not more than two. Jim also sent some other cards for a few other collections:
I haven't the foggiest idea who those guys are. In fact, I haven't even listened to The Ryan Song.
Maybe I should to honor my first Ryan Braun update card. I've made a lot of additions to the Braun collection this year and not just from 2015 cards. Yes, there are 55 cards from 2015 that I have of Braun, but total I am now at 517 -- second only to Yount in terms of number of cards/items. Jim also sent me a lot of cards I needed for my team collection.
Man, there is a ton of good stuff in there -- especially the JJ Hardy Relic, the Brad Nelson 2009 Finest Blue Refractor, and the two Leaf Authentic Signature cards. I never realized Mike Fetters had such good penmanship. Okay, a couple more cards for the player collections: Jeff Cirillo
This embossed thing on the SPx card was wholly unnecessary, but it is still kinda cool. I will note one thing -- it appears like the late 1990s (when everyone was going out of business) was the end of the time where the card companies sent photographers to get photos individual to the card companies. We start seeing the stock "in action" photos for everyone. If the photo isn't an action shot, it's a posed photo taken one day during spring training. Call me old school, but I kind of miss the batting cage shots that predominated in the 1970s and 1980s. Geoff Jenkins
This card is a platinum parallel serial numbered to just 201! And finally...the highlight of the package for the oddball Brewer collector that I am...
If you have a box full of letters, you'll probably have some stamps in there too. I doubt you'll have this one though:
That may be the sweetest 30c stamp in my collection. Also the only one, but it's pretty damn cool! Jim, thank you very much for the great cards. Hopefully you'll need some of the cards I'm sending your way soon.
