I don't know about you, but I'm struggling right now. It isn't so much the working from home. I did that for years on a previous job. I think it is the non-stop grim news. I know logically that things are going to get worse before they get better. But, there is something about the situation that makes it hard to not live in the moment.
Though I hate the term, I am trying to exercise some level of self-care. I've stopped drinking alcohol as it degrades the quality of my sleep and, consequently, I tend to be distracted and more susceptible to negativity the next day. I'm still not eating as healthy as I should, but I am trying. The convenience store/gas station/bait shop across the street added a kitchen, so it is hard to not get junk for lunch a couple days a week. Though, to be fair, their Friday fried catfish special lunch is quite excellent.
Since I've cut out hobby spending, I am going to try to spend more time appreciating what is already in my collection. The other day, I just pulled a random binder off my shelf. It was 1976 Topps and the first 6 cards of the set memorialized the record breakers from the previous season. It made me wonder how many of these records still stand. Someone else may have done this, but I am not going to look. I need something to do and this is as good as anything.
Hank Aaron is still the all-time career RBI leader, though he tacked another 35 on to the total in 1976, his final season. I actually am surprised by this. I would have though Barry Bonds would have passed him, but he is actually 301 behind Hammerin' Hank. Speaking of the Bonds family...
It is hard to find statistics on lead off home runs. I am sure there is a way to figure it out in Baseball Reference, but I haven't figured it out. All I can determine is that the all time leadoff homer hitter is Rickey Henderson with 81, followed by Alfonso Soriano with 54 and Craig Biggio with 53. Ian Kinsler is 4th with 48. As near as I can tell, Bonds ended his career with 34. Whether there is anyone between him and Kinsler is unknown to me.
Bobby Bonds is the all-time 30-30 Club co-champion, retiring with 5 such seasons. Who also has five 30-30 seasons? His son Barry Bonds. Keeping it in the family!
Mickey Lolich, currently 20th on the all-time strikeout leaders list, is now only 4th in that category amongst lefthanders. He has been surpassed by Randy Johnson (4875), Steve Carlton (4136), and the recently retired CC Sabathia (3093.)
Lopes no long holds this record. Vince Coleman had 50 in the 1988 and 1989 seasons, Ichiro had 45 between 2006 and 2007, Tim Raines swiped 40 in a row successfully over a three season span (1993-1995), and Jimmy Rollins had 39 successful steals in a row between 2007 and 2008.
Tom Terrific still holds this record. He even managed to extend it to 9 seasons and came 4 strikeouts short of a tenth. Even Nolan Ryan, who had fifteen 200+ K seasons in his career, never managed to string together more than 5 in a row, though he did it twice including once between his age 40 and 44 seasons.
Stennett still holds this record, though he really is tied for it with Wilbert Robinson who did it on June 10, 1892.
What I am listening to: Dig a Hole by Marcel Botempi
The godfather of baseball card blogging, Night Owl, threw down a challenge earlier this week: to name 10 albums that were significant to you and tie it to baseball cards. This is my effort. I've gone a little further and added videos of songs from the albums (with one exception) and tied the cards to the song. So, here we go:
1. Styx - Cornerstone
Why this album: This album changed my musical tastes. Prior to buying Cornerstone, I listened to the worst of 1970s pop music, like The Village People and KC and the Sunshine Band. The song Babe was what drew me in, but it was the rock power anthems on the record that converted me over to rock music.
Why this card: Well, I am nothing if unoriginal. Babe is the song that introduced me to Styx. And what other baseball player to show? Sure, there were many ballplayers with the nickname babe. 32, according to Baseball Reference. But, none are greater than Babe Ruth
2. AC/DC - Back in Black
Why this album: This album, bought at the KMart in Chili Center, NY really led me into the hard rock world and away from the (sometimes forced) theatrics of Styx. A lot of Styx music sounds dated now. Back in Black, at 37 years old, still fits into the modern music landscape. Plus, I remember driving to Buffalo in a blizzard to see AC/DC as a college freshman.
Why this card: What Do You Do For Money, Honey? Don Money? Like I said, I don't pretend to orginality.
3. Sammy Hagar - Standing Hampton
Why this album: The first concert I ever attended was Sammy Hagar (with Aldo Nova opening) at the Rochester Auditorium Theater in my junior year in high school.
Why this card: Well, standing hampton is a NSFW slang. Look it up and you'll understand.
4. Stevie Ray Vaughan - Texas Flood
Why this album: I remember hearing a cut from this album, SRV's debut, on the radio during my senior year in high school and being completely blown away by it. The cassette tape was pretty much on loop for me the summer between high school and college.
Why this card: Well it is Curt *Flood* and he was born in Houston, Texas.
5. R.E.M. - Reckoning
Why this album: I first heard this playing on the store sound system as I wandered about The Record Archive in Rochester during college. It blew me away and I bought it immediately. It was my entrée into alternative rock. The video is a bit of a stretch. I really spent some time thinking about this and never got anywhere. I finally googled "R.E.M. " and "baseball" and found out two members of the band formed a group called The Baseball Project and released two baseball themed albums. So, I went in that direction instead of beating my head on a wall trying to tie Harborcoat to baseball.
Why this card: Well, the song is called Harvey Haddix.
6. Metallica-S&M
Why this album: This brought me back to heavy metal after a long time away. I don't have an extensive metal library, but I do appreciate watching people that are really good at what they do. And Metallica is that.
Why this card: I defy anyone to come up with a different player. Enter Sandman played whenever Mariano Rivera came in from the bullpen at Yankee Stadium and Metallica played at his final game.
7. Pine Valley Cosmonauts - The Majesty of Bob Wills
Why this album: I came across this album in the music section of the late, lamented Borders Bookstore. They had headphones along the rows of CDs that would allow you to listen to selected albums. This album was one such selection. It introduced me to Western Swing music, an amalgam of country and jazz most popular in the 1930s and 1940s. It is still around, most notably by the Austin band Asleep at the Wheel. Bob Wills is in both the Rock and Roll and Country Music Halls of Fame.
Why this card: Well the song above is about the Alamo, which is in San Antonio. Cliff Johnson, a player on the Yankees teams of my youth is from San Antonio.
8. Social Distortion - Social Distortion
Why this album: I really like the SoCal punk sound here. And, when I found out that there was a fair amount of crossover between the SoCal punk scene and the classic country and Bakersfield sounds (typified most recently by Dwight Yoakam), I was hooked.
Why this card: Well, Casey Stengel wrote a book titled "Casey at the Bat: The Story of My Life in Baseball."
9. Slaid Cleaves - Broke Down
Why this album: I don't rightly recall if this was my introduction to Americana music, since that is a fairly broad label that encompasses a number of other genres, like folk and alt-country. I will say that, after hearing this song on a locally produced radio show, I did go right out and get the CD and it did contribute to a new direction in my music listening.
Why this card: Well, what else is the baseball equivalent of one good year other than the one year wonder. And Joe Charboneau falls into that category
10. Metamodern Sounds in Country Music by Sturgill Simpson
Why this album: Sturgill Simpson is the man. Along with Chris Stapleton and Jason Isbell, he is saving country music. Much to the chagrin of Nashville's Music Row. But screw them. They are peddling crappy pop and bro country. If you haven't seen his performance on Saturday Night Live recently, you should. Go here and here. While I expect that Beyonce's "Lemonade" will win, I'd love Simpson's "A Sailor's Guide to Earth" to win the Record of the Year Grammy.
Why this card: Okay, this is a stretch. I admit it. But, I do need to show some faint glimmer of originality. Turtles all the way down is a colloquial expression of the infinite regress problem in cosmology. It is also considered an example of the Anavastha concept in Indian philosophy. So, here is a card of two Indian natives who joined the Pirates minor league organization in 2009 as part of the reality show, Million Dollar Arm. Dinesh Patel only hung on for two years, both in Rookie ball. Rinku Singh made it 4 years, getting as high as A ball. He resigned with the Pirates in November 2015 and managed to pitch one scoreless inning in rookie ball during the 2016 season.
I sent this card off to Chris Potter Sports back in January, but Gamble's signing was postponed until the May/June signing. I finally got this back earlier in the week, along with another 1963 Fleer card that I'll show off tomorrow.
I sometimes wonder if Gamble sees a lot of these cards when he does signings. I hope he enjoys the fact that he has one of the most iconic baseball cards of the last 40 years.
Ken Sanders career day (WPA of 0.775) was an April 18, 1971 contest in Milwaukee between the home town Brewers and the Kansas City Royals. His day started in the top of the 8th inning with one out and two on and the teams locked in a tie with 2 runs apiece. It should be noted that Ken's entrance was as part of a double switch, in which he actually replaced catcher Ellie Rodriquez and Phil Roof entered in replacement of pitcher Marcelino Lopez, who had previously relieved starter Lew Krausse in the sixth, and took up station behind the plate.
Lopez had started the inning off well enough, getting Amos Otis to fly out to right. However, after a walk to Jerry May and a single to Bob Oliver, Lopez's day was done. Sanders entered and promptly gave up a single to Cookie Rojas, but the batted ball hit lead runner May for the second out. Ken induced Lou Piniella to ground out to end the frame. He retired the side 1-2-3 in the ninth, allowed a lead off single to Dennis Paepke in the 10th, but retired the next three batters to escape unharmed.
Similarly, he gave a leadoff single to Cookie Rojas to start the 11th, but Cookie was caught stealing. Two ground outs( the second a 1-3 putout,) surrounded a single by Royal third baseman Paul Schaal, and the 11th ended without any runs. Sanders again allowed single baserunners in the 12th and 13th innings, but closed out the frames without allowing any runs. After 5 2/3 innings pitching, Sanders was due to be the second batter in the bottom of the 13th. Brewers manager Dave Bristol sent Ted Savage up in his stead. Savage drew a walk, moved to second when Roberto Pena also walked, stole third, and scored the game winning run on a single by Tommy Harper.
Sanders final line: 5.2 innings, 5 hits, 1 BB, 6 SO, and no runs for the win. The win was his first of the season. Over the whole season, Sanders went 7-12 with 31 saves in 83 appearances as the Brewers main closer. He had a 1.91 ERA, 1.064 WHIP and finished 16th in the voting for AL MVP (though he garnered no votes for that season's Cy Young.)
As I mentioned previously, I had traded with Cory over at Rectangle Men. I sent off my 1976 Topps duplicates and he sent back a large stack of cards from 2003 Topps All-Time Fan Favorites, a set that I have wanted to put together. Indeed, he sent me around 50 cards, a third of the set. So, I am pretty far along with one bubble mailer.
I am not sure when I will get to working on the rest of the set. I recently bought a 5 acre lot next to me and I have to do a large amount of work to make it safe to use a pasture. So, a fair amount of dinero will be going towards that for most of the rest of the year. What little I have left for cards will probably go towards the vintage sets I have in process. Hopefully, this coming winter, I will loop back around and work on this.
In any case, I was trying to decide which cards to show (cuz that is what we do) and I decided to show those where I have the actual vintage card it is based on and determine which I liked better. But first there is something I want to get out of the way.
I understand that they don't want to issue an exact duplicate card. Thus, different pictures on the front. But, I am not down with the way they chose to put career statistics on the back. Specifically, I don't like that they chose to only show the players statistics with one team. I would have preferred full career statistics. Maybe it is just me, but I prefer to study the great players entire career. But, that minor quibble aside, let's get to the cards!
In this case, I prefer the actual vintage card, the 1974 Hank Aaron Home Run King card, although it wasn't a fair comparison. The 1974 version was probably the most valuable card I owned as a child collector and, thus, is still among my favorite cards of all time. Sorry, modern Hank.
Two posed fake batting pictures. Not a lot to diffferentiate them. I guess I prefer the fake swing picture of the 2003 version to the fake waiting for a pitch picture of the 1977 version.
Toss up. Ole Bert is looking pretty creepy in both pictures, although the 2003 Bert is 1-2% less creepy.
I prefer the 2003 Mickey Rivers as he is wearing the home pinstripes and the photo os taken at Yankee Stadium rather than at Spring Training.
Have to give the nod to 1976 Fred Lynn since it is an action shot.
2003 Craig Nettles wins versus 1976 although it was close. The action shot is better than a posed shot in the home uniform.
Is it just me or does 1978 Jack Clark look a little bit like Tim Lincecum? Anyways, 78 Clark gets the win here. Posed batting pictures are kinda cliche, whereas posed fielding are somewhat novel.
So, I hope no one has been waiting a week in anticipation for this post. It is pretty poor. Certainly, Cory's generosity deserves a better effort, but I am busier than a one armed paper hanger. Work has been crazy and spring has finally arrived in force here and the yard work has multiplied exponentially since last weekend. I am off to change the oil, filter, and blades on my lawnower.
Last week, I spent a little time (and money) at COMC. My goal was two fold: finish my 1976 set and cheaply make progress on a couple others.
I got two 2010 Obak Short Prints , including the one above, which is sort of a reprint of a real 1911 Obak Buck Weaver. This card is standard size for a modern card, while the original is a mini. But, I suspect this is as close as I will get to owning one, since a 1911 original in rough shape sold for $650 on EBay recently. This gets me down to needing only six more to complete the set. Sure, I still need 28 out of 30 of the T4 cabinet cards, but they don't seem to come available all that often and usually are being offered for $4 or more each. So, when I finish the base set, I am going to call it done.
I picked up 24 cards towards my 2011 Topps Heritage (both MLB and MiLB) set. All of the other cards I needed to complete the MLB set were available, but the asking price was too high. But, I was quite happy knocking off a huge chunk of my needs with this order. I am now down to needing 19 cards to complete the MLB set (all SP or inserts) and 29 cards (all SPs) to complete the Minor League run.
I didn't realize it at the time, but one of the cards I ordered was the Tyler Matzek above. I actually got an auto card of his in one of the Obak boxes I have busted. I am hoping he pans out. He had a rough year last year, but seems to be doing real well in high A this year with Modesto.
And finally, the last 11 cards I needed to complete my 1976 Topps set. I probably overpaid on a few of the 76s, but I just wanted to finish the set so I can focus my vintage efforts on 1971 for the next few months. And, yes, as a set collector, I do want the checklists. I think my favorite of the lot is the Guidry rookie card, although there is some weird satisfaction with getting clean checklists. I can't explain it, I just like them.
So, that is about it. Not sure I will have much to say over the next week. I'll be staying on top of any trades that are in the works, but will mainly be biding my time until next weekend, which is the bi-monthly card show up in OKC.
As I may have mentioned before, my approach to building sets is to get as many cards as I can from local card shops (there are 3, although one has limited vintage inventory), then work local card shows, then go to sale sites like COMC and Sportlots. These sale sites each have advantages and disadvantages
The advantages of COMC that you can see the specific card you are buying and, because COMC physically holds all the cards and acts as an agent for many sellers you can get cards from many different sellers in the same order. The downside of COMC is that shipping charges add up quickly.
I tend to like Sporlots better, but that site doesn't hold the cards. It mainly acts as a front end ordering interface into multiple sellers. So, shipping costs can be a lot less if you only order from one seller. To that end, I tend to order as many cards as I can from one seller to make my order worth their while. On the downside, you can't actually see the cards you are ordering.
Recently, I launched an order for about $30 at a Sportlots seller and managed to knock of cards from the want lists of 6 different sets all at once. I got a handful of cards each for 2001, 2002, and 2011 Heritage to keep chipping away at those sets.
I ordered four cards from the insert sets of 2004 Fleer Greats of the Game set. I am slowly approaching completion for 2004 GOTG.
This is the sixth (of 10 total) of the Battery Mates card I have.
I also got three cards from the Forever. The Forever subset is made up of 29 cards of players from the Dodgers, Red Sox, Cubs, Mets, and Cardinals. Currently, I only have 13, so still a ways to go.
There is also a 35 card subset known as Glory of Their Time and I need 13 cards to finish that . I didn't get any of those in this order. So, for the 2004 Greats set, I am down to 33 cards to finish. I had thought about chasing after the serialized blue parallels for the 145 card main set, but I only have 9 and I haven't seen any large lots come up on EBay, and have never seen one in a dollar box so I am going to drop that goal for now. If an opportunity comes up to get a pile of them all at once, I may revive the goal. But, right now, I'd rather just close the book on this set. So, 33 cards it is.
I also got 4 cards from 1976 Topps, including this league leaders card. I am now down to needing 11 cards to complete that set.
Finally, I got 4 cards from 1971 Topps. The seller had a lot more 1971s I needed, but this was mainly an experiment. I will admit to being a bit picky about condition on the 1970s sets I've been working. Since I can't see the cards on Sportlots, there is always a concern that how the seller grades is different than how I would. So, I ordered two cards each in EX/NM and NRMT condition from this specific seller to get a gauge how he grades. These first to were listed as NRMT.
The following two cards were listed as EX/NM.
I couldn't really tell the difference. This is important since the cost difference between these two grades for 1971 semi-high and high numbers can be significant. My assessment is that this seller is a conservative grader, so I could feel comfortable ordering in the EX/NM range from him and getting cards that I will like. Further, given how nice these cards are, I may just very well order cards from him that he lists as EX and EX+. That ought to save me a lot of coin and help me complete this set a lot sooner.
So that was my Sportlots order. I've got a few new additions to my player collections that I will post soon. But, tomorrow is the first day on my new job and the first time I have to commute into an office in close to 5 years. I have no idea how much time, or energy, I will have available for blogging for a while.
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