Pollard Throws No-Hitter May 11, 1978.

    There are a few of you raising your eyebrows right now trying to remember a major league pitcher named Pollard who threw a no-no 42 years ago today.  Well, that's not quite the headline I am angling toward here.  The Pollard in question here is Robert, the ultimate lo-fi pioneer, lead singer of Guided By Voices (along with a couple dozen other off-shoots), Uncle Bob to a bunch of us music nerds. One of the things that made me want to start blogging again is that Goodwin Champions included him in their set last year and I went a little crazy...

I have a 1/1 printing plate waiting for me in COMC to join these colorful wonders.

Okay, how do I explain Robert Pollard and GBV in baseball terms?  Well, if the Beatles are Mickey Mantle (or Willie Mays?) and Nirvana is Bo Jackson (or Sandy Koufax?), then Bob would be Rocky Colavito (or Eddie Yost?) - the under the radar, out of the ordinary but similarly brilliant superstar for which there is a small but intensely devoted following.  Maybe Tim Raines would also work here or perhaps Tony Mullane (or even Ichiro?).  You get the idea.  His music is classic rock but somewhat alien.  It is timeless yet also fixed permanently in the British Invasion vibe and the DIY punk ethic of the early 80s.  Bob once defined his vision for the band as if the Beatles never stopped making music and what it would sound like.  He knocks out dense melodic songs by the score and most of them are under 2 minutes (though they have gotten a little longer as he's gotten older).  He puts out 2-3 albums a year with GbV and half a dozen EPs and side efforts and it is dizzying to keep up with but ultimately very rewarding.  The fans are also insanely devoted and encyclopedic in their knowledge.   Baseball fans and music fans are a mostly round Venn diagram that way when you think about it.  To me, these cards are the wonderful overlap of those two classic obsessions of mine. 

Last year I bought a huge lot of the base card, made a page, and then sent the rest to the fans.

Bob Pollard is a fascinating dude with an outrageous story.  He was a regular guy who went to college, played baseball and basketball, became a teacher, and seemed like your normal law-abiding citizen from Dayton OH.  But he always loved music and one day in the early 80s he just decided he was going to be in a band and make rock music and he didn't care what anyone thought of him. So he and his buddies started recording songs in his garage on a boombox and they just kept doing it.  They would play local shows and they became this eclectic local oddity but when people listened to the songs, they realized this guy was actually pretty good.  They were the underest of underground the indiest of indie. But word spread and legends grew and by the mid-90s when this dude was going to college, he discovered their music through a friend who saw I loved the Beatles and thought I should give them a listen.  I have been a fanatic ever since.  And even with a retirement 15 years ago (like most premature sports retirements, it didn't stick), they have come back and are still going very strong. I was looking forward to seeing them  for the seventh time this year, but, well, you know. GbV usually does epic 3 hour shows with a 40+ song set list (they do 100 songs on New Years) but mind you, Bob also comes out with a cooler of beer and drinks and sings until he can't the lyrics so it's usually a glorious train wreck.

My favorite legend of the man, though, is the no-hitter he threw in college - 42 years ago today.  It is just a strange wrench thrown in the machine of a quirky rock and roll story.  If you go to one of their shows, you will see plenty of t-shirts that commemorate this perfectly non-historic but wonderfully odd phenomenon. 

Did Bono or Sting ever throw a no hitter (or the UK equivalent?) I doubt it. Jon Bon Jovi never scored four touchdowns in a game and I am certain Bob Dylan never scored 100 points in a basketball game.  But my ultimate rock hero once pitched a no-hitter in college.

So here are not the five "best" songs but the most indicative.  If you like any or all of these, you have a fighting chance to join the club and be a Guided By Voices covert.  One of these songs is even responsible for my eBay screen name.  Give them a shot, go on, I'll wait. Or don't, I'm not a cop.

If any of you took the time to listen, let me know what you think. And even if you didn't, I know the crazed nature we all collect cards with and for me it definitely is similar with music and I figure if anyone can understand the excitement when two of those worlds collide, it's you guys. Seeing trading cards of the front man of your favorite band (when 98% of folks have never even heard of your your favorite band) was the absolute highlight of my 2019 collecting. Plus the man is a sports legend, he threw a no-hitter!

Mail Call: Dog Sitters Aren't Supposed To Sit On The Dog.

       I recently spent a week dog sitting my brother's dog Stella.  You have seen her here before as this is certainly not the first time I have done the staycation thing with my favorite canine.  A lot of people think this is not a good way to spend your off time but I honestly cannot think of a better way.  I am not big on travel and adventure; the notion of going to Rome to see the Colosseum or to Tokyo to try to figure out a language that is way over my head sound like more trouble than they're worth.  Plus, going to Disney World with two small children, like my brother did this time around, sounds like pure unadulterated torture.  But spending a week of solitude in a large mostly secluded house with a very low maintenance and adorable yellow lab?  Pure heaven.  In fact, part of my motivation to reignite the blog came from my memories of writing curled up on a couch with the dog sleeping at my feet.

       The only really good part about coming home to real life is the big pile of mail waiting for you. Specifically the cards, the bills can go get fucked.

So let's take a look at the goodies inside these envelopes and packages.

       There is one Listia seller that I really enjoy buying from (he also has a dog as his profile pic. Coincidence? I think not...).  When I order a lot of 6 cards from him, there is always 9 or 10 in the envelope.  I like this both for the surprise and for the maximum efficiency of his mailing as this is about as many cards as you can get into a PWE before you have to add extra stamps.

Can you guess which card I bought this lot for?  Hint, it is not the Bobby Bonilla.  Oddly, it is also not the amusingly named Pete LaCock, who has a wonderful family history.  X for the center square if you knew the answer without clicking.

       There were some players I collect in that pile too.  That is a Frank Thomas I needed as well as a couple of Big Papis. Saints vs. Colts? I always like how that turns out. Also, that's Ron Meyer (no relation).

Joe Flacco has officially been categorized, the verdict is not elite.  But also, still not the worst QB to lead the Ravens to a Super Bowl victory. So he has that going for him, which is nice.

This year is an Olympic year so when I saw this lot, I had to have it to make a page.

These are 1996 Collect-A-Card Centennial Olympic Collection cards and I'd be lying if I said I had ever heard of them before.  The photography is nifty but you would expect that since the Olympics are pretty much the Olympics for sports photographers too.

       Speaking of collections, these are from the famous (and infamously overproduced) 1992 Sporting News Conlon Collection.

While this batch seems to make a tidy page, they are actually destined for other things.  A few name collections, a couple photo collections, and one is going with my Babe Ruth cards.  Your rudimentary knowledge of baseball history should tell you which.

       Okay, now things get a little more random.  That 1960 Joe Cunningham All Star card is bound for a small collection of cards that I will reveal, well, around the All Star Break (I bought that one on eBay).  That Rocky IV card is one from a set I never knew existed and captures one of the more ridiculous moments in a most ridiculous movie. Apollo Creed deserved better, dammit, and Rock should have thrown the damn towel.  I got that lot of Piazza cards for the MLB Debut insert that I didn't have but it included that UD Masterpieces which might be my favorite non-Met Piazza card. 

Lastly, I bought a set of cards on eBay that I ran into by accident looking for something else, but seeing it, I just had to have it.

        I am sure they are going for a Where's Waldo thing here, just another example of manufactured whimsy from Topps Opening Day.  While nine card sets are ideal, I don't mind ten when I can pluck one of the cards for a player collection - in this case, David Wright - and use the rest for the page (even if it includes a Chipper Jones card). 

I do love how busy this page looks and it will find a place of honor in my weird insert collection binder.  There was also a 2020 Topps blaster waiting for me, but that will have to be another post.  I needed something to cheer me up from missing that cute damn dog.

First Things First.

       Ah, Opening Day.  There is nothing else like it.  Except, well, it is now stretched out over a few days so I guess MLB should just trademark Opening Few Days and get it over with.  But enough with the awful march of commerce, let us embrace the wonderful march of time.  The sun is up, the sky is blue (etc.) and the Mets are out in Flushing adding to baseball's best record on Opening Day.

This year at CitiField, the ceremonial First Pitch was very emotional.

My favorite meaningless statistic is that the Mets are now 36-20 on opening day, the best percentage in baseball history.  Also quirky - and often pointed out - is that they won a World Series (1969) before they actually won on opening day (1970) which means they are 36-12 since that Miracle happened.  Fascinating and stupid.

On a more card related point, this is what the 2017 Topps page ended up looking like:

I am still not crazy about the design and it has yet to grow on me.  That along with this year's Heritage being the burlap abortion that is 1968 Topps, I am not in a collecting happy place right now (and let's not even bring up that Panini decided that the 1990 Donruss design needed to be brought back, ugh).

I did, however, follow through on my threat to tweak the Salute inserts into a better looking base design:

My photoshop skills are weak at best, but I think by making the photo a tad larger by dragging out the half-border and replacing the insert title with the position, you have at least a good starting point for a much better and cleaner design than the inception angle boxes Topps gave us this year.  With a little more skill and time, I am sure the gold stripe could match the team colors and the city name in that right border could be something else as well (though I kinda like the half-font thing going on there).  But this is what I was driving at when I critiqued the 2017 base design and in a rare instance, I don't think I am crazy or wrong here.  What do you think? Has anyone else done something similar recently?  Let me know since this is the first year I have been that turned off by the Topps design since I started the blog.

Mail Call: COMC Cyber Monday.

       I trust all of you enjoyed your Christmas.  I trust Santa Claus brought you everything your heart desired.  Me? I got a nice big lump of coal, but hey, free coal!  Anyway, as a certified (if not quite bonafide) "grown up" I really don't exchange presents much anymore.  Oh, I will bring something if I go to a party, and of course the kids in my life got something, but my attitude towards the whole gift-giving component of the holidays can be summed up in this little exchange between my sister and I the other day at lunch:

Sis: Oh, by the way, I didn't get you anything for Christmas.

Me: Don't worry, I didn't get you anything, either.

Sis: Well, you did just buy me lunch at McDonalds...

Me: Woohoo! Big Macs for Christmas!

All this does not mean I do not take advantage of the retail Armageddon that takes place every year around this time.  One of my favorite sites, COMC.com, always has a big Black Friday sale and then a Cyber Monday shipping special.  I used the latter to get a bunch of cards I had accumulated over the last many months to my house for free.  Freedom!  Let's take a look at what the gods of commerce have wrought:

 Those Iooss' make for one hell of a nice page.  The Jimmy Deans?  Well, they look okay, too. These cards finished off two half pages I started at a show over the summer.  It's nice to see the seasons come together so well.  That last vertical Met also finishes a page started at that same show, alas, it did not get a scanning opportunity.

The second batch here is not quite as cut and dry as it is all over the place.  You have a rookie cup addition and some wonderful Mars Attacks inserts to complete a page.  Then it gets even more obscure with a Chico Resch box bottom card that I accidentally discovered while doing the COMC challenge and immediately gobbled up. There is also an obligatory Gary Carter and a Pinnacle Trophy Collection card to fix a page that I had somehow screwed up while building (it happens). Then on the bottom row there is a NASCAR(?) driver and a 1964 Donruss Addams Family card, a must for any non-sports collection. 

But wait, what is that last card?  What's that name?

Buzz Nutter!


BUZZ NUTTER!!!


BUZZ fucking NUTTER!!!!!!!

Look at that, it's glorious.  I might never recover knowing there was once a professional football player, hell, that there was once a human being that went by the name Buzz Nutter.

Allen vs. Ginter: The War To Settle The Score.

       I have not given up completely on Allen and Ginter, but let's just say the bloom is off the rose.  I, like most, fell head-over-heals in love with the stuff in 2006.  I bought 2 0r 3 boxes the first two years and built the set and sold the inserts and just couldn't get enough.  I think I only bought one box in 2008 and 2009 and didn't even get around to completing the set.  Then in 2010, I didn't buy any.  No hobby boxes, no spare packs, no blasters.  Somehow, the world kept turning.  I think I have given you a similar rant about Topps Heritage if I recall correctly.  The last few years, I have been content to pick up some here and there, usually an impulsive blaster or rack pack or two.  Now, don't get me wrong, I still love the stuff - I just get my fix in different ways. 

This year I made a slightly modified plan; I was gonna pick up my usual four pages worth via Just Commons (a website I recommend wholeheartedly).  I am a Topps completest after all, so I figured I would pick up 40 or so cards to make a page of current, vintage, sports, and non-sports.  This was an excellent plan that I had every intent to follow through on, then I found myself in the card aisle of Target.  I wasn't even looking for packs, I was looking for cheapo pages and yet somehow, a value pack of 2014 Topps Allen and Ginter found its way into my little red basket.

On the same day I bought this pack, my huge package of 134 cards arrived from Just Commons which contained my haul of 44 individually selected Allen and Ginter cards.  So let's do a slightly modified version of the ever popular Gint-a-cuffs, one where I fight with only myself and my own sad dichotomy of level-headed pragmatism and hopeless impulsive consumerism. 

The Value pack you see above contained three regular 6-card packs and a bonus pack of three exclusive mini cards, as you can see here:

I believe the exclusive minis have a different border, Topps' version of a new hat. 

Here is the page of current players I chose from Just Commons:

All of these were chosen for their color and properly aesthetic photos.  They all cost .15 cents each.

Here is the first pack from the Target Value Pack:

Okay, I guess getting inserts, SPs, and minis is certainly a plus for the packs.  Not to mention this pack has my new hero Bartolo Colon - as I have mentioned before, he has reached this status due to the fact that he is older than me, he is fatter than me, and he is pitching in the major leagues (this line never gets old).  The Donaldson here is a high number SP.  The Ford is not a vintage star I chose for their page, but the Riess is a double.  I might decide to start collecting Car-Go cards early, just in case all those Mets-Rockies trade rumors turn out to be true eventually.  The value pack cost ~$10 (with tax) so I am assigning a cost of $3 each to the packs and $1 to the bonus.  At .50 cents per card here, no matter how interesting they may be, I have to give the win to the JC selected page. 

This is the Just Commons selected page of vintage/retired players. 

I was excited when I found out the Dusty Baker card was a retired player card and not a manager card.  I snapped that one up immediately since he is not one of the usual suspects Topps uses.  Same with the Maris and the Newhouser.  The rest are definitely of the been-there-done-that variety, but it is always nice to get a Jim Palmer on the page since I usually send off my O's cards.  And I really like that picture on that Bob Feller card.  Six of these cards cost .15 cents and three of them cost .20 cents.  This page is not perfect, but I think it turned out all right.

This is pack two of the Value Pack:

There is the aforementioned Cargo again.  I was originally going to include him on my current players page but opted for Michael Cuddyer instead - a wise move it turns out.  Some people have been complaining about the write-ups on the Pastime's Pastimes cards but personally, I think they look so nice, who cares?  I will eventually be making a page of those.   That bottom three is a clean sweep of wonderfulness.  Mark Twain is an all-time favorite of mine.  Mike Piazza is my second favorite baseball player of all-time.  And Felicia Day is just too damn adorable for words, though it is odd to see her in an evening gown.  I always think of her as slightly more come-as-you-are and down to earth.  Mark, Mike, and Felicia win this one, even though as you will soon see, Ms Day is a double. 

The sports themed page from Just Commons:

Bowler, golfer, weightlifter, swimmer, CrossFit champion, wrestler, race car driver, batting stance imitator, blogger.  Okay, the last row sort of stretches to be "sporting" but I will call them "sports related" for the purposes of this page.  I am pretty enamored with that Samantha Briggs card in the middle.  Not to reveal too much about myself, but I find the idea of a woman who could throw me over her shoulder and carry me and/or throw me to be quite the turn-on.  And on the David Portnoy card, they left off the word "douche-bag" from their oddly beaming description of his career as a blogger.  Of course, I look forward to someone calling me names when I am included in the 2020 edition of Allen and Ginter.  All of these cards set me back .15 cents each.

Third and final traditional pack from the Value Pack:

Yawn.  Yawn.  Yawn.  I am certain I reject all three of those top cards for my current player page, although I can never be too bored by a dude named Jurickson Profar.  The bottom three are a little better, The World Capitals insert has a lovely picture and there is a bit of irony in a Babe Ruth mini card.  I might use that Hellickson to exchange with my created page to break up the red.  As nice as the Ruth and Rome cards are, though, I have to give the win to the created page. 

Here is the created page of non-sports personalities and such:

This one I had a ball making.  The top three Personalities are Chuck Klosterman, who wrote a great book and a bunch of good ones, Ryan Riess, who's card was chosen because of the photo, and Kevin Clancy, another blogger from Barstool who was also chosen because of the appearance of what seems to be a Ding Dong on his card (does this make it an unofficial Hostess card?).  The middle three Entertainers are The Iron Sheik, who needs no introduction to anyone who grew up in the 1980's, Kevin Smith, Jersey based film auteur who peaked early with Clerks, and Snoop Dogg - I just can't bring myself to call him Snoop Lion - heck, I just stopped calling him Snoop Doggy Dogg.  The bottom three has a combo breaker - hey it's my page - The Newsworthy are Helen Keller (whose card should be in braillle) and Buffalo Bill Cody, who has been part of Ginter before but when you are as cool as Buffalo Bill, who cares?  The combo breaker is Anthony Bourdain, because I didn't like the other Newsworthy old-timey cards I had to choose from and I like his show.  All of these cards except for one was .15 cents.  Snoop Lion set me back two dimes. 

This is the bonus pack of mini cards:

Madison Bumgarner did not have me very excited when I saw him on top, but I now see he was covering up a double dose of tremendous disappointment.  With that Wilin Rosario card along with the two Carlos Gonzalezes, somewhere in Colorado is someone who should have gotten this pack.  At .33 1/3 cents each, even with a fancy "exclusive" border, it wouldn't take much to beat this trio - the Iron Sheik could have done it all by himself.  Any of the cards from the Value Pack are available for trade if you need them.

Let's look real quick to see if I beat the odds:

The full size inserts are 1:2 so I came out ahead there at a cool three for three.  The Pastime's Pastimes and SPs are also 1:2 so I guess I'll call that even there.  Alas, no other interesting pull was in the packs, but the black bordered Piazza was a 1:10 pull however so that was a minor upset.  A mini framed oddity relic would have been both miraculous and fun to say over and over again. 

Ah, but the final nail in the coffin for the Value Pack is the "leftover" cards I picked up from Just Commons for various collections:

Part of the fun of A&G is you might happen upon a lovely lady.  Here you see three.  The middle row were all picked up for player collections, including the Mike Piazza base card and a Blue Dickey.  The bottom two are Orlando Cepeda, who is getting a hall of fame page, and a leftover from the current player page.  Since Didi Gregorius was in the same pose, the choice between him and Nick Franklin was pretty clear.  All of these except for the Piazza were only .15 a pop. 

With the 44 cards from Just Commons costing me just $6.95 and the 21 cards from the Target Value Pack costing $10.15, it is obvious my level-headed pragmatic plan was a much better idea than my impulsive consumerist pick up.  I sort of equate it with sex with your wife vs. a one night stand sex with a drunk stranger.  Lesson learned (and I won't even need a divorce lawyer*).
 

Just Check Out My (Not So) Common Birthday Present To Myself.

       Tuesday was my birthday; I hit the immortal Jack Benny number.  Much as 29 sounded much older to me than 30, 39 seems to be bumming me out much more than I imagine 40 will.  My mood increased tremendously, though, when I went to the mailbox and found not one but two fat jiffy packs waiting for me - one from COMC.com and one from Just Commons.  Granted, I didn't actually plan for them to arrive on my birthday but I'll take a thin slice of serendipity any time. 

The stuff I ordered from COMC was pure frivolity.  Like many of you I'm sure, I have plucked away at their Challenge to help reassemble their database.  Over the last few weeks, I've used my insomnia time to squirrel away $42 worth of found money for cardboard.  The next couple of scans show the bounty of my superfluous harvest:

Shiny Mets.  Shiny Mets everywhere.  Normally, these Fan Favorites refractors are overpriced but with a fistful of loose dollars, I made offers on as many as I could.  I got the four you see for between 2 and 3 bucks each.  Speaking of shiny, those Tribute cards finish off a set I started making 11 years ago.  Well, I started making it a couple months ago with some cards I found in a long forgotten box from 11 years ago.  Funny how that works.  Nolan and Roberto there weren't cheap but in my world, they were free.  Those bottom three Finest cards are pre-production models that finish off a page that has had six of them for as long as I have been making pages of sets.  Of course, now I have to figure out what to do with the 3 1994 Bowman promos that have been occupying that page for a while.

Following that trend, I finished off a few other pages that have long eluded completion.  This buying spree was like finding two $20 bills in a winter coat:

Those 1996 Playoff Pennant football cards are not just die cut triangles, they are made of felt, so they are all fuzzy and touchable.  I have had seven of them laying around forever.  Now they have the required nine.  The Donruss Champions sent from 2005 was not a favorite, but I liked the award winners subset and now there is a page of that too.  I had Legends pages of 2002 and 2003 Diamond Kings, so for completistism's sake, I now have 2004.  Half of them are in color and half are in black and white.  I am not certain if that is part of the design or if they are variations or something but I like the B&W ones better.  Lastly, I bought one each of the Heritage buybacks I didn't have so they can hang out on my Topps pages.  I picked those up for $2 pretend dollars each. 

My other spree from mid-May was on Just Commons.  Once again, I blame my current bought of insomnia.  Over three or four nights, I filled up my shopping cart with about 100 cards and $20 worth of stuff.  Sadly, these cost me a real Andrew Jackson.  Happily, Just Commons is a wonderful site to pick up random cards you never thought you'd find and/or refuse to buy for $3 each on ebay.  Aside from the first card on the first scan, nothing was more than 37 cents.

I discovered that Brooks Robinson and David Wright card while I was obsession of one of the same players of a slightly different caliber.  While going through my HOF binder, I noticed I didn't have a Lou Brock card of him on the Cubs, so I rectified that issue.  I recently decided to make a Gregg Jefferies page of cards of him not on the Mets, since that was when he was most successful.  My last package of JC cards had boatloads of Rookie Cup needs, this time, it only has three but it does complete the 1997 team.  The bottom three are some Sandy Koufax cards for his page and a Jim Bunning card to start his page.  I wrote about this year's Gypsy Queen on A Pack to be Named Later; I might have been too kind.

I finished off a lot of player pages, here they are in condensed pile form:

Jimmie Foxx, Joe Torre, Starlin Castro, Luis Tiant, and Bobby Murcer are now all completed (I underestimated my needs and still need one Walt Alston).  I was born a bit too young to have seen Luis Tiant pitch but from everything I have seen about him, I am absolutely convinced he would have been my favorite pitcher.  He's like the best parts of Hideo Nomo, Fernando Valenzuela, and Pedro Martinez all thrown together.  I think we all should worship at the alter of El Tiante.  Right in the middle there is Matt Harvey, I mean, how could go on a spree and not buy some Harvey cards?  The last two piles are of cards with a particular number (527) and of players named Max.  I couldn't think of anything more appropriate to get on my birthday. 

Thick.

Help!

I am reaching out to the Card Blogosphere for some advice and perspective.  As most of you who read this blog with any regularity know, one of the areas where I am stubbornly completist is Topps All Star Rookies.  As luck would have it, this year's flagship set has a few inserts sets devoted to this corner of the Topps Universe.  One of them is a Relic collection with manufactured rookie cups embedded in them numbered to /99.  I got a look at these cards and decided they are quite handsome and while it is cost prohibitive for me to complete an entire set of these, I made the decision to at least make a nine pocket page of them.  This weekend, I got bored and went on a little eBay spending spree and bought a good six of them at, on average, about $15 a pop.  The first of those cards arrived today and, well, there is a problem.  They are thick.  Really thick.  I am talking Kim Kardashian twerking at an ice cream social thick. Here, take a look:

The left is obviously NOMAH! but the card on the right providing thickness perspective is Rod Carew.  Yeah, like I said, thick.

There is no way they will fit in a standard nine pocket page.  I tried and tried and no dice.  I even tried a few different kinds of nine pocket pages with absolutely no luck.  I did have a little brain storm; since the issue is size, I tried to slide the cards into a standard 8-card page and while it is certainly not ideal, as you can see, they did fit.





































Here is what I would like some input on...what should I do here? 

a) go with the eight pocket page set up.

b) hold out hope that there is a nine pocket page out there that will fit these.  In fact, if any of you own or know of anything like this that will fit these gargantuanly thick beasts, I will gladly compensate you with cards, cash, or love to obtain one.

c) suck it up and just collect the whole set and give in to my completist instincts.

d) give it up and sell off the ones I bought - keeping the Gary Carter, of course.

e) something else I haven't thought of, but one of you brilliant homo sapiens has.

So there it all is.  Any and all opinions are greatly appreciated.  I mean, this isn't binding arbitration or anything, but my brain is broken from the initial disappointment and I would like to hear what you have to say.  Thanks in advance.