One More Bonus Box

At the same time that I bought the Heritage Minors box from Blowout, I looked for another box to buy as well. I wanted to spend a total of $100 to treat myself for a job well done this year in developing business as a lawyer (which led to the bonus I got, which led to the money I spent). Yeah, it was more than $100, but bills come first, of course.

Still, I was treating myself. But I still wanted to get cards I needed. So, I looked at my want lists for a set that I needed a lot of cards for, found a box from over a decade ago where I had a significant list, and hit the purchase button.

I chose 2004 SP Prospects. It's a colorful set -- lots of blues and reds and golds and reflective stuff going on. The box promised five autographs on average and one or two relic cards. I looked at the autograph list and knew I wouldn't be pulling anything special, so I went into it looking for fun.

It wasn't too bad. It wasn't as fun as I had hoped, though. 

The obvious reason as to why it was a Stooge box: One single Brewer card.

One. Jeff Bennett, from Donelson, Tennessee. Bennett was a 19th round pick of the Pittsburgh Pirates out of high school. The Brewers picked him up in the Rule 5 draft after a 2003 season where Bennett pitched pretty well for Double-A Altoona before getting bombarded at Triple-A Nashville. He stuck for the whole year in 2004 with the Brewers. In 2005, he was back at Triple-A Nashville but with the Brewers organization. He missed 2006, and the Brewers cut him after that.

His odyssey did not end there, however. He pitched in 2007 in the Braves organization and with the Braves before making 72 appearances -- including 4 starts and racking up 3 saves -- in Atlanta in 2008. 2009 was a nightmare, though. Though he pitched pretty well for the Braves superficially (3.18 ERA), he walked 21 in 34 innings and found himself first in Triple-A and then on waivers. The Rays picked him up, and he made his last appearance in the majors in the 2009 season.

But, he kept plugging away. He was back in the Brewers system in 2010 after getting cut. He absolutely sucked in 2010, though -- 15 games, 21 innings, 11.14 ERA, 21 walks, 15 Ks, 26 earned runs. So, in 2011 at the age of 31, he pitches in the Atlantic League. The Diamondbacks pick him up for Triple-A insurance midway through June and cut him in August. He goes to Venezuela and Mexico for the winter, and then back to the Atlantic League in 2012. 

2013 -- more of the same. He gets an NRI with Colorado, but it leads back to the Atlantic League again, and then to the Mexican League with Tabasco and the Mexican Winter League. 

The next year, he starts with Reynosa in Mexico and pitches well in 7 starts. That gets him a Triple-A gig with the Dodgers -- 21 starts in Albuquerque. In the end, though, and at the age of 34, he can't find anywhere to hook on for the 2015 season and perhaps finally called it a career.

They won't all be this long. I promise.

So, my autographs? Well, I got them.

These four were just the pedestrian, run-of-the-mill draft pick autographs. Swarzak actually pitched in the major leagues last year with the New York Yankees and has made 217 appearances in the bigs. He was the Twins 2nd round pick out of Nova High School in Davie, Florida. He, too, has gotten to travel around a bit, though he spent all of 2012 through 2014 in the majors. He washed out in 2015 after the first few months of the season in Cleveland and ended up with Doosan in Korea for 20 starts. The Yankees picked him up, and he split time between Scranton and the Bronx last season.

Speaking of Yankees, Brett Smith was the Yanks second round pick in 2004 out of UC-Irvine. He got as far as Trenton in the Eastern League before he lost a season to injury in 2008. He came back in 2009 and pitched 6 games in the independent Golden Baseball League in 2010, but that was it.

John Anthony Raglani was the Dodgers 5th round pick out of noted baseball hotbed George Washington University. He played from 2004 through 2007 for the Dodger organization as an outfielder with some pop. His last year in Double-A Jacksonville was not bad -- .248/.369/.461, 21 HR, 85 BB, 139 K in a league that hit .259/.334/.392 as a whole -- but Raglani decided that his future would require his brain rather than his braun. He went back to GW, finished his undergrad degree, worked for a couple of years in insurance, and then went to law school. He's now an associate at Arnold & Porter in DC (and yes, those of us in the legal world call that firm A&P like the old grocery stores).

Finally, Sean Gamble was a sixth round pick in 2004 for the Philadelphia Phillies out of Auburn University. He only lasted 3 years in the minors before playing two seasons of independent baseball. By the way, yes, his dad is Oscar Gamble. Sean now lives in Atlanta and serves as a scout for the Rockies. His Facebook profile photo is a picture of him under a banner showing his dad. Spitting image.

Okay, one more autograph -- and I bet back in 2004 this one would have been a pretty decent pull:

Bill Bray AND Collin Balester! Bray didn't get to pitch in Montreal, though he was the 13th overall pick and the final first round pick for the Montreal Expos in 2004. The Expos could have selected Billy Butler, Stephen Drew, Gio Gonzalez, or Yovani Gallardo, among others. Bray last pitched in the majors in 2012 and now is in law school at William & Mary.

Balester was the Expos 4th round pick in 2004. He made it to the major leagues in 2008 with the Nationals, and stayed there through 2011. In 2012, he pitched 11 games for the Tigers. He spent 2013 in the Texas organization, but I'm guessing he was hurt -- only 6 appearances. In 2014 and 2015, he spent time in the Pirates organization, but never made the majors. Midway through the year, the Reds bought his contract from the Pirates and gave him a shot to play a bit. He ended up in Korea for three games in 2016 and got hammered there -- 12-1/3 innings, 20 hits, 12 walks, 5 strikeouts. Now, it appears that he is a Pac-12 troll on Twitter.

The other two cards worth showing are my relic cards. The SP Prospect relics were from Team USA Baseball. Who did I get?

Clement was the Mariners first round pick -- third overall -- in 2005 and he got a $3.4 million bonus. The video at this link has him saying that he threw that money into the stock market and watched it evaporate in the Great Recession. At least my 401(k) wasn't the only one taking a hit. Like all scrub catchers are required to do, he spent time in Pittsburgh, and it was in 2012 with the Pirates that he played his final major league game. In 2015, he served as a volunteer assistant with the Iowa Hawkeyes baseball team.

Last one was at least someone whose name was instantly recognizable:

Gordon was drafted one slot before Clement in 2005 -- the Royals took him 2nd overall out of the University of Nebraska. Dude is making serious coin now -- he signed a free agent contract after the 2015 season of four years for $72 million. The Royals may have fallen victim to overvaluing their own players when they did that -- his first year's return was to hit 17 homers with a .220/.312/.380 slash line -- an OPS+ of 84. Yeah. Not so good.

In the end, this box was not all that bad. It was fun getting to see early cards of guys like Gordon and "Benjamin" Zobrist, among others. I was not following the American League for much of the time I was out of collecting, so it was cool to see names I should know but don't pop up as well.

Would I buy another box? Probably not. But it was a fun rip. 

As always, if you need something from this post or from that set, let me know and I'll see if I can help.

Christmas with All Trade Bait All The Time

Here amongst the baseball card blogorati -- which is sort of like the Illuminati but with bubble gum stains-- discussions often turn from baseball cards and baseball to discussions on beer and bourbon and other similar vices. Since we are all collectors, a lot of us like to collect experiences on tops of our cards.

One of the guys with whom I interact regularly is Oscar from All Trade Bait, All the Time. Oscar is a unique dude. He is a Dodger fan -- which is as unique as sand at a beach in Florida in the blog world -- but he is studying Buddhism on the way to getting a Masters degree in Buddhist Psychology. Oscar also is one of the beer guys, as he gets together with buddies and samples beer and cigars.

Oscar is just a all-around good dude.

He confirmed that with his "club PWE" mailings recently. Here's what he sent to me:

This card is a subtly terrible photo. The way the lighting hits Brock's mouth makes it appear that he's missing a tooth or two up front in his mouth.  He also looks a bit hungover. 

Oscar, is Brock a member of your beer club?

This photo looks like Vaughn was in a photo studio in front of a green screen and the background was photoshopped in. In fact, I'd bet dollars to donuts that is what happened here. I don't think that lighting behind him occurs naturally.

Is Gary Sheffield a Hall of Famer? The answer to that question has to start with the elephant in the room: his steroid use is admitted and well known.  He gave an interview saying that Barry Bonds introduced him to the BALCO labs. He claimed he did not know that BALCO supplied him with steroids. 

I tend to give very little weight to such claims of a lack of knowledge.

The more relevant question relates to his overall numbers. On some levels, he should be a Hall of Famer. The Bill James Hall of Fame Monitor puts him #78 overall with a 158 score (likely HOFer is around 100). The Hall of Fame standards test is a Baseball-Reference creation that puts him at 61, with the average HOFer around 50. 

On the other hand, looking at JAWS and WAR, though, and comparing him to right fielders, his career WAR is below the average HOF RF, his 7-year peak is below average, and his JAWS is below average. And, the black ink and grey ink standards there also say he is not a Hall member. 

I think that's right. Just because he went over the 500-homer mark does not make him a HOFer. He doesn't get there without steroids, either. Sorry Gary.

Not sorry.

The Brewers paid Franklin Stubbs $4 million over 2 years, yet lowballed Paul Molitor after the 1992 season and offered less than $1 million a year. 

I don't get it either.

Minis! These UK Minis were never on my radar screen in the late 1980s. Apparently enough of them were printed then, however, that they are typical filler in repacks. The "Tiffany" version is pretty cool though.

This is what it would look like if a baseball player were also a stalker. Probably.

Another mini! I keep putting off buying the 12-pocket sheets for these cards, and yet with GQ and A&G pushing out more and more minis, I am probably going to have to break down and buy them. Zach Davies had a good year last year -- he's a solid mid-rotation starter for the Brewers. Hopefully, going forward, he will end up lower in the rotation thanks to others jumping him rather than him sinking down without being passed.

And, finally:

Thanks to all the random parallels that infect Topps sets like the Zika virus migrating into Miami, I feel like I have or should have this card already. But, it's a high number in Heritage, meaning it's a short print. Why is it that I have about three or four of those chrome parallels for it, but this is the first copy of this card in my collection? 

Are the chrome parallels more readily available than the regular base set cards? If so, that's ridiculous. Base set cards should be more plentiful than parallels. They should -- if set collectors meant anything to Topps, that is. 

Well, at least I like beer.

Thanks, Oscar, for the PWE, the beer recommendations, and the fact that you are just a good dude!

Dollar Stores 101 #SuperTraders

For a while in November -- while everyone was still shocked that the Earth kept rotating on its slightly tilted axis despite the fact that the Chicago Cubs won the World Series -- I was getting concerned about my collecting. Trade packages had dried up. That was entirely my fault, since I have been very blasé about collecting generally lately. The time I have available for collecting had dried up too, as the real world of work and Thanksgiving and wanting to spend time with my wife all came together to make my card time limited.

Then, just after Thanksgiving or thereabouts, packages just started rolling in. My desk is a mess now of cards needing to be cataloged, sorted, scanned, marked off want lists, and added to player collection lists and binders. I have at least six or seven packages waiting to be scanned right now.

I do have one package that I scanned a while back and which I just haven't gotten around to posting. Probably two or three weeks ago now, I got a package in from Sportscards From the Dollar Store. It was an eclectic mass of Brewers cards, but I only scanned a few of them. Now, whatever else was in the envelope is somewhere on my desk...gah....

In honor -- or should I say, in honour -- of the envelope from the Dollar Store, I thought about dollar stores generally. There seem to be different stores of this nature all over the place. So, here's a few I know of being around where i live.

1.  Family Dollar

Dollar stores often have good deals on items that you buy every day. It's just that most of those stores tend not to be places you go every day. For instance, the Family Dollar near me has $1 rolls of wrapping paper, 88-cent 2-liter bottles of Canada Dry Ginger Ale, and $3 tubes of Colgate toothpaste. Not bad prices. Maybe I should shop at this dollar store?

Appropriately slow in starting out here -- because, well, I'm slow starting today anyway after a 3.5 mile run/walk in 37 degree weather (I know -- I've gotten weak having lived in Georgia for 21 years) -- let's go to 2010 Upper Deck. It's too bad Upper Deck had its license stripped by MLB. Cards like this -- even if it is a typical pitcher-grimacing photo -- remind me how good a simple design can be...unlike pretty much anything Topps has done since it got an exclusive license.

2.  Dollar Tree

I just realized that I have three Dollar Tree stores within three miles of my house and 21 stores within 10 miles of me. Crazy. D

Dollar Tree has the same kinds of deals as Family Dollar -- $1 rolls of wrapping paper seem to be a dollar store staple. Dollar Tree also has the always good 4.5-oz. bag of Cheez-Its for $1. Mmmmm....Cheez-its...

I feel like stores like Dollar Tree have taken over from what Sears and JC Penney used to be -- the local department store where people did all their shopping, including everything from tires to appliances. The reason that they have taken over is that Sears and JC Penney have floundered about trying to position themselves as better than Wal-Mart or as equivalent to a mall department store like Macy's.



Within my Dollar Store package, I got a Topps Chrome and a Topps Update of two pitchers who should be available at a dollar store. The two Italians did not cover themselves in glory in 2016. Capuano came back to the Brewers as a sort of elder statesman innings sponge, but he failed in that role when he got hurt after just 16 appearances and 24 innings in the first two months of the year.

Garza signed for a four-year, $50 million contract after the 2013 season. He's got one year left on that albatross...er, deal. Garza started the year on the DL and did not make his debut until two weeks after Capuano was done for the year. Garza pitched acceptably on occasion -- his first two starts over 10 innings yielded just one earned run, and his last six starts (33-1/3 innings) provided a good run of results as well (2.97 ERA, Opponent's BABIP of .299 means that was right on too). The problem was that those 8 starts bookended an 11-start stretch (58-1/3 innings) of a 6.02 ERA (opponent BABIP: .309...again, nothing out of the ordinary there).

Between Garza and Ryan Braun, the Brewers will spend over half their payroll on two players. Together, they may have a WAR of 0, with Braun's positive negated by Garza.

3.  Dollar General

I have to admit -- I get confused by all these different stores. With these names, you can see why. Unlike Dollar Tree and more like Family Dollar, Dollar General tends to have more items that cost more than $1 a piece or don't cost exactly a dollar. For instance, looking to my favorite gin mixer of ginger ale, two twelve packs of cans of Canada Dry Ginger Ale cost $5 here. Like the other stores, wrapping paper starts at a buck. But, you can also get a Star Wars coloring book here for $1. Can you do that at Family Dollar?

Well, probably. I don't know.

Speaking of Ryan Braun, here's an orange parallel from 2011 Bowman. This reminds me that the reason I have stacks of cards on my desk to sort is also caused by the fact that I got bogged down in 2013 Bowman parallels and ran out of steam on cataloging. 

I guess I should try to get my police cards into sheets instead.

4. five Below

I've gone into this store once about a year ago. I had to stop at the Office Depot next door to pick up some supplies for one of my wife's charity activities. I found some packs of 2015 Topps Series 1 in what might have been a retail or hobby box -- I didn't take a close look. The problem was that half the packages had actually been opened and rifled through. If there were any inserts in it, they were long gone. 

There's pack searching, and there is outright thievery. That was clearly the second.




Putting Molitor and O'Leary together may seem to be a weird thing. But it makes sense here because, under Sal Bando's management as general manager and in Bud Selig's eminent ass-hattery, both O'Leary and Molitor were simply discarded like those commons in the packs at Five Below. And, just like those commons, Bando and Selig made no effort to stop the thievery -- they just watched it happen as their pockets were picked.

This O'Leary card, though, reminds me that I am going to put together a real want list for all Brewers minor league teams. The first step is identifying them. Sort of like admitting that I have a problem.

5.  Ollie's Bargain Outlet

While Ollie's does not have that magic "dollar" word in their name, Ollie's is a big-time closeout store. They buy up huge lots of random things that other retailers can't sell or that the manufacturers or middlemen get overstocked and then sell them at cut prices. Thing is, though, that most of their deals are ones that you just have to go to the store to see. 

I wouldn't be surprised to see them start selling those awful 2013 Panini Triple Play cards soon. I mean, if Dave and Adam can't get rid of cases of them for $44.95 (suggested retail price: $475.20) or a 24-pack box for $3.95 (suggested: $23.76), it would seem that Ollie's is the next step.

Michael Reed played most of his 2016 season at the age of 23 in Triple-A Colorado Springs. He has appeared in 159 games at Triple-A, and in 640 plate appearances, he's slashing at .248/.363/.369. He is a singles-hitting outfielder who, as a prospect, is the equivalent of putting along in the right lane on the interstate driving five miles per hour under the speed limit while the Porsches and Maseratis and Lamborghinis in the left lane (model names: Lewis Brinson, Brett Phillips, Corey Ray, and Trent Clark) go blowing by him so fast that all he feels is breeze. 

I mean, Reed is still listed as the 27th best prospect in the Brewers organization. It's just that there are eight other outfielders ahead of him (add in Monte Harrison, Ryan Cordell, Demi Orimoloye, and Tyrone Taylor to those other guys) just on the prospect list and Domingo Santana and Keon Broxton in the majors. 

So, maybe someday soon, you too can find a Michael Reed blowout sale at your local dollar store.

Many thanks go out for the great cards.

Chasing Kids

My wife and I do not have children, and we probably never will for a number of reasons. Not the least of those reasons relate to the fact that we rather like peace and quiet around our house. I'll admit, as well, that I'd rather not be 63 years old and sending a kid off to college -- which would be the case if we had a newborn show up in our lives in the next 12 months (I turn 45 in a couple of weeks).

There are times I would like to have a child, though. I enjoy working with kids. I've tutored one of the boys from across the street in, of all things, math. I coached high school debate one year, and even helped coach a little league baseball team. I like doing those things.

I feel like I'd probably enjoy going to minor league baseball games more with a kid as well. Here in the Atlanta area, we have the Atlanta Braves, of course, but also the Class A Rome Braves are just an hour and a half away and the Triple-A Gwinnett Braves are 35 minutes away -- or about 7 minutes further than the Atlanta Braves new stadium (for reference, getting to Turner Field would take about 45 minutes...).

With both the local Atlanta Braves and my Milwaukee Brewers both in mid-rebuild, my attention turns more regularly to minor league action. I have started getting more interested in Bowman lately -- even buying in for Crackin' Wax's Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects case break. I also decided to buy a hobby box of 2016 Topps Heritage Minors from Blowout Cards to feed this new interest.

This box seemed fated to come my way. This was the first card out of the first pack I opened:

Vanderbilt's own Dansby Swanson in his Mississippi Braves outfit looks suspiciously like he plays for the Milwaukee Braves. You know, except for that whole Atlanta stealing the Braves after the 1965 season and all. 

All in all, it wasn't a bad box. It could have been better, of course -- they always could be better and, say, have a hot pack of all the printing plates for all the Brewers farmhands in the set. But let's take a look at the highlights of the box that were not Brewers.

First, each box contains one autograph. Here's the one I got:

Braves hot box! Braves Hot Box! Allard made it to Rome last season at the tender age of 18 -- he was born August 13, 1997. I think most of us card collectors probably have t-shirts older than Kolby. Allard was the Braves 1st round pick out of San Clemente High School in 2015. I've never been to San Clemente, but I have been to Dana Point, which is only a few miles away north on the Coast Highway.

I also got one relic:

A freaking Cardinal? That's not cool.

But wait -- this one made it to the majors last season and, in 12 games (5 starts) put up a 1.57 ERA in 46 innings while striking out 52 (though walking 23). Not bad for a 21-year-old kid who turned 22 on August 29. And, not bad to get the #7 prospect (Baseball America) or #10 (Baseball Prospectus) or #7 post-season (MLB Pipeline) as a relic. Though I have to admit that this Topps photo makes Reyes look much more Caucasian that every other photo around:

Yeah, are we sure that's Reyes?

Okay, moving on to the short-prints and serial numbered cards:

The Innings Pitched Leaders card -- also known as, "guys who their team thinks very little of" -- is serial numbered to 25, or 3 less than the number of years that Pat Dean will have been on this earth on his next birthday in May. Both Dean and Rogers pitched for the Twins last year, with Rogers proving to be a decent bullpen arm and Dean looking like he was throwing batting practice (13 HRs allowed in 67-1/3 innings...not good). Bleier pitched reasonably well in limited work out of the Yankee pen last year as well -- though, of course, he turns thirty this coming year.

Jacob Faria's card is serial numbered out of 99. He's a Tampa Bay Rays pitcher who made it to Durham for half the year last year at the tender age of 22. He could probably use a bit more seasoning in Durham this year, which the Rays may give him through June to keep him from arbitration for an extra year.

The other three, including new White Sox star-in-waiting Yoan Moncada, are short prints.

So, what Brewers did I get?

Yes, I'm cheating a bit to have Mauricio Dubon in this group since he just joined the organization from Boston in the Tyler Thornburg trade. Dubon is likely to start the year in Biloxi with the Shuckers, though his advanced hitting ability he displayed last year could push him to Colorado. With Dubon being just a month older than Arcia, it is possible that the Brewers could push Dubon a bit to get him to start playing some second base rather than shortstop so as to get Dubon ready to play next to Arcia for the next 18 years. 

That's being very hopeful, of course. That also would mean that Jonathan Villar would move positions -- probably to third or centerfield from second base, where the team is saying currently that Villar will be the starter. 

The guy here I am really, really rooting for -- okay, I'm really rooting for all of these guys...they are Brewers, but this guy is really a favorite -- is Oluwademilade Oluwadamilola "Demi" Orimoloye. Demi was born on January 6, 1997, in Nigeria. His dad is an architect, so he could afford to move his family out of Nigeria if he chose. They did so when Demi was just eighteen months old and moved to Orléans, Ontario -- just outside Ottawa and just across the Ottawa river from Québec. 

If he makes it to the majors, he'll be the first Nigerian-born -- and perhaps the first African-born -- major leaguer. He's got a long way to go -- he struggled last year in Rookie ball in Helena, slashing just .205/.293/.324 in 247 plate appearances. Of course, he is only 19 years old.

Finally, there's David Denson. For what it's worth, he started out like a house of fire in 2016. In his first 38 games, he had 3 HRs and was slashing .306/.388/.455. That was built, though, on an unsustainable BABIP of .409. In his next 55 games at Wisconsin, he hit .178/.285/.325 on a BABIP of .225. He's 21 years old and, in his four minor league seasons -- only one of which has been spent above rookie ball -- Denson has hit .229/.338/.368. He's a good story, and the team's treatment of him as just another player rather than being "the guy who came out" is commendable. Still, at this point, Denson probably is nothing more than organizational filler -- even at the relatively barren position in the organization of first base.

In the end, I find myself liking the Heritage Minors product. That's probably because of the eternal optimism and the analytical attempts in my head at projecting who will be good and who will not that springs with the youth of the minor leaguers. I'm not a big prospect hound by any stretch of the imagination -- and, by that, I mean I'm not looking to turn a profit on these cards by hoarding some player's cards -- but I really enjoyed opening these.

I guess the minor leagues is probably the counter to the cynicism I feel for Topps and its efforts in producing cards of major leaguers. I mean, I don't love the set enough to collect it as a set, but it whets my appetite for more minor league sets.

A One-Card Wonder Post

Over the past few months, I've kept up an email correspondence -- and even spoken on the phone one time when I had a spare few minutes -- with former Brewers pitcher Ray Peters. Ray is a wonderful gentleman. He's been very forgiving of me when I go missing for several days and don't have the chance to respond reasonably quickly.  

He is also a font of incredible information about the early days of the Milwaukee Brewers. I haven't done so yet, but I will be sharing soon some minor league team photos he scanned and sent to me. He's also been kind to me with his time and energy in reading and giving me more information about my "Meet the Brewers" series. I'm looking forward to bringing that knowledge into my series.

Recently, he topped himself. I got home from work late last week and found a package from Ray waiting for me. I was not expecting anything from him, so it was a surprise. 

Now, if you have read about Ray, you know that he is a graduate of Harvard University. His major at Harvard was Latin American History -- unlike what this otherwise good biography from author Chris Zantow said, where it tried to limit Ray to studying only South America. I was going to ask Ray his position on the thesis I wrote in college -- specifically, whether Brazilian populist Getulio Vargas's policies of trying to play the US and the Allied Powers and Germany and the Axis powers off one another in the 1930s and early 1940s was a good policy or whether Vargas could have done better by siding with one earlier in the war. But I keep forgetting to ask.

I bring up Ray's historian side, though, to emphasize the fact that he knows how to research. Certainly, it does not take much digging on my blog to find that I like oddballs, but it takes at least a bit of reading. As an oddball lover, though, I greatly appreciated and enjoyed opening the envelope from Ray. It contained just one card -- but it is a doozy:

This is one of the Dayton Daily News "Bubble-Gumless Cards" that the newspaper issued in 1970 and 1971. Like all good oddball things, the Dayton Daily News cards have had things written about them elsewhere before. The blog "Uncataloged Baseball Cards" features a post from 2010 (just highlight the text so you can read it, since the black text on black background does not really work too well) which mentions that the author SSchauer spent a significant amount of time going through microfilm to document the whole set -- all 357 cards (other than card 196, since his library was missing that microfilm roll).

My research also led me to the frequently excellent Net54Baseball Forum, which posed the question I had: why is this considered a "card"? Hobby icon and Big-Book compiler Bob Lemke responded by saying that:

Back in the day' when the Standard Catalog had two people working full-time, virtually unlimited page counts and the notion of building up a database for non-card baseball player memorabilia for future catalogs, we routinely sought out this type of item. Today, not so much. If the need arises to cut back vintage pages on the print edition in the future, this type of listing would be among the first to go onto some sort of rotational publishing basis.

And that kind of thing is a shame. As our hobby has changed and become more corporate in nature -- with profit motives outweighing hobbyist enjoyment for many and for the corporations issuing the cards and cataloging them on websites (like Beckett) -- these types of cards will fall by the wayside or will become relics of a foreign history that, perhaps, our children may never know.

It's thanks to historians like Ray and Bob Lemke and the folks at Net54, though, that we hopefully will not lose our hobby's past.

My thanks to Ray for this awesome piece of Milwaukee history. I don't think I've ever seen one of these before, so it's truly a pleasure to have it.

Highly Arbitrary and Completely Subjective

I have gotten cards on numerous occasions from Brian at Highly Subjective and Completely Arbitrary. Weirdly enough, despite my penchant for music posts, I have never done a Minneapolis music post to thank Brian for cards. 

First things first -- this post will not contain any Prince songs. Even in death, the Purple One and his lawyers kept nearly all of his music off the internet, and any music on the net gets removed very quickly. 

So, some of you may wonder what is left once you take the Prince out of the equation. The answer: a TON. Perhaps it's the need to be indoors all the time, but Minneapolis has produced many, many top bands. 

Like, say, this one:

Semisonic was a great alt-rock/power pop band from the late 1990s from Minneapolis. Their one big hit was this song, "Closing Time," which was apparently written by Dan Wilson about the birth of his second child and not about a bar's closing time. Weird. 

Wilson is now known almost as much or more for producing Adele's album 21, which won a Grammy for Album of the Year in 2012.

To go with this big 1990s hit are three big 1990s cards. With each passing day of seeing Topps caring less and less about Brewers fans and me looking for ways to get reinvigorated about collecting in the face of this, I find myself actually thinking that cards from the 1990s are cooler and better than what we have now. Yes, card companies had parallels and inserts, but they didn't swallow up the main set. The base cards in the 1990s were still collectible and companies tried hard to make them interesting as opposed to being an excuse to make 70 different versions of the same damn card.

It was a simpler time. It was a better time because there was competition. And, it was a worse time because some cards had to carry warnings that kids with epilepsy should not buy the cards thanks to the flashy mirrored stuff on them -- like these three cards.

I'm cheating a little bit here because Hüsker Dü is actually from St. Paul rather than Minneapolis, but it's my blog so I'm cheating. Hüsker Dü featured noted alternative rocker and recluse Bob Mould as its singer. Mould was a freshman at Macalester College when he got the band together, and the group formed because Mould and drummer Grant Hart bonded over a shared love of the Ramones.

They got the name of the band from a board game of the same name that means "Do you Remember?" in both Dutch and Norwegian. They gigged around Minneapolis for a while and became hardcore punkers -- attracting the attention of the Dead Kennedys Jello Biafra, who then signed them for his label Alternative Tentacles.



Baseball these days can be a cruel business. Even though Chris Carter tied for the National League lead in home runs in 2016, the Brewers chose to non-tender him. The move makes a ton of sense in many respects: the team tried to trade him, designated him for assignment, tried trading him again, and then signed Eric Thames out of the Korean league for about half or less what Carter would have made. Carter is going to land on his feet somewhere, but it is a strange thing to see a guy with 41 homers cut.

Nelson and Broxton are still Brewers as of this writing. I feel like I need to say that about everyone on the roster with Slingin' David Stearns as the GM. 

As I think about it, it really makes sense that Minneapolis/St. Paul would churn out incredible music -- especially alternative music. You have a huge city that is cold -- turning people slightly off kilter. Add in a major university with tens of thousands of students who need entertainment. Throw in the artistry and imagination that universities tend to draw as well, and you have the recipe for all kinds of great stuff.

Like The Replacements, who were sort of an early incarnation of a cross between grunge and emo. They were very heart-on-sleeve -- as "I'll Be You" shows. Westerberg went solo after the band broke up and wrote a couple of songs for the 1992 Cameron Crowe movie Singles -- the biggest one probably being "Dyslexic Heart."

Both of these cards are from the 2016 Topps Update set. It's Lucroy's swansong card, essentially, as a Brewer player thanks to his appearance as an All-Star. The Boyer is one of those foil parallel things that scan nearly indistinguishably from the base cards. 

As this year has gone by, this design has grown on me like a weird mold growing on cheddar cheese. It's not attractive. It's kind of greenish. You know it is something you probably should just throw out. Eventually, someone else probably will throw them out. No one will miss it, and once you realize it's gone, you end up buying another.

I am very surprised that Information Society is from Minneapolis. They just felt and sounded so damn British. Maybe it was just that I was listening to a lot of Depeche Mode in 1988 when this song, "What's on Your Mind (Pure Energy)" came out. A lot of folks call it "pure energy" only -- and what with Leonard Nimoy saying that phrase over and over, why not?

Lead singer Kurt Harland has scored numerous video games outside of his work with Information Society. I don't know any of the games, but he worked with Crystal Dynamics and Electronic Arts.

I have yet to catalog all of the cards I need from insert sets from all the years that Topps has issued them. Eventually I will. Maybe I will. Hell, I don't know. Maybe I never will. I just know that I have not seen this Record Breakers card before. At least I don't think I have.

Lyle Overbay. Yup. That's him. Good guy. At Wrigley. Looking confused as to why anyone wanted to take his photo. 

Good guy though. Smashing bloke.

No, I have no idea where that line of thinking came from either. Just went with it.

Some people think that Courtney Love was in the band Babes In Toyland. In a March 2015 interview, the band confirmed that Love was never in the band. As drummer Lori Barbero stated, "[Love] lived in my house, and one time I think when we were rehearsing she came down and probably picked up something and tried to play and we were just like, 'get out of here.'"

Babes in Toyland never got as big as Hole did, though you can definitely see why people think the two are related outside of the whole coincidence of Love living with the band's drummer. Babes in Toyland had much more of an impact in the UK thanks to John Peel's love for the band. When Peel loved your band, you got known. Seriously, just find anything as a "Peel session" on whatever music streaming source/iTunes/YouTube and you will hear fantastic music. 

Michael Ratterree never had a chance, really. He was a 10th round pick in 2013 out of Rice University. As a 22-year-old when drafted, he had to show a lot quickly. He did play very well in Helena in the Pioneer League -- but he was old for the league so he should have destroyed it. Then, he moved up to the Midwest league and, for a brief stint, Double-A Huntsville in 2014. It did not go well -- .228/.344/.442 slashline. 

It went even worse in 2015. As a 24-year-old in the Florida State League, he slashed .150/.260/.221 in 282 plate appearances and, then, retired with a broken hamate bone problem in his hand. He's now a construction superintendent in Houston and he is a 3rd degree connection for me on LinkedIn. Hey Michael, if you ever find that you need a good construction lawyer, you know how to find me here. 

Many thanks go out to Brian for these cards.