ONE OF US! ONE OF US!

I guess I boned a little bit when getting my card blog started. I was familiar with wordpress through my personal website and some other blogging I had done. But within the card-blogosphere, blogger seems to pretty much be the industry standard. To do little things like create a blogroll or even comment on other blogs became a major pain in the ass. So, I've decided to switch over to blogger with a brand new version of my "Summer of '74" blog, before it became too much of a hassle to do so. I will keep the other blog up, just in case anyone wants to look back at it for some reason (oh, the memories of those years that month).

I've got a blogroll up and am now following a bunch of my favorite writers. I'll do a contest post next week sometime to get gin up a little interest and give away something cool. I also have all my wantlists copied and moved over. Everything else, email/addy/twitter remains the same. I will now post a way-wicked-baddass image of Harvey Kuenn below, just to see how one goes about inserting an image on this platform...

 

 

 

"I tell 'em to go out there and swing like hell, what else?"

Hm. Relatively easy. No drag-n-drop. But what can you do?

 

The All-Time Brewers Project

I got back into collecting cards about 10 years ago, trying to build a sort-of master set of Topps flagship Brewers. I ended up expanding that quest to try to build a COMPLETE set of Brewers cards – as in one of everything ever – but I got lost in the 2000s, when a zillion different companies were making a zillion different sets that I really couldn’t care less about. Now that I am trying to refocus my collecting goals create some collecting goals, I’ve gotten away from the completist tendencies that had previously taken a lot of fun of the hobby. I want to rebuild my Topps flagship sets (decimated by my TTM habit) and built some Topps complete sets.

But I’ve still got that ‘collect ’em all’ bug. So, in a compromise with myself, I’ve decided to embark on what I’m calling the “All-Time Brewers Project,” in short, one card of every players who has ever appeared in a game as a Brewer.

I already had a good head start on this project, thanks to a 1994 Miller Beer promotion in which they issued stadium give-away sets of every Brewers player from 1970-1993. And, with a couple of late nights with a few cans of the sponsor’s ice-cold product and a stream of Simpsons eps on the TV, I manged to cobble together a set of about 640 of the roughly 820 players on the Crew’s all-time roster (these are rough estimates).





I also made some cute little year dividers. I’ve arranged them by the year of their debut, according to the all-time roster I found on brewers.com. As you can see, the Miller cards are, to put it mildly, a bit hard on the eyes. I’m in the process of swapping them out with more standard-issues when I come across them. But they are excellent for providing cardboard of obscure or short-term Brewers, like Dick Schofield, who spent about ten minutes of his 18-year career in Milwaukee and appears on no other card as a Brewer.



I’d also like to upgrade the binders I’ve got these beauties in. I stole was given these from an office job that was eventually laid off from.

Aside from the collector’s pride I feel in putting this thing together, it has already proven to be a pretty valuable research tool in getting me to more closely examine in the all-time roster. For example, I’ve learned that in their entire history, the Brewers have only had ONE African-American start a game at catcher. That would be Marcus Jensen, who had two tours with the team, in 1998 and 2002. Sadly, he does not have a Brewers card.



I’ve also transfer my Brewers autograph collection in the all-time binders. Of the 600-some different player I’ve got, maybe 100 are signed. I’d like to work on increasing that number as well.

I have a list of the Brewers I still need on my want lists page. A big chunk of the remainders never had a Brewers card issued, and another big chunk only have team-issue cards with them in Brewers dress. Oddly enough, Pacific – the one card company that I truly loathed as a kid – is a pretty good source of Brewers cards that no one else bothered with in the 1990s and 2000s, including the only card of Julio Franco in a Brewers uniform.



Mark Hoyle, who does not have a blog (at least I don’t think he does), but is on twitter as @markhoyle4, sent me a PWE of vintage Brewers that can in handy for upgrading the Miller cards. Thanks Mark!

There is a card show in the Milwaukee area on the 23rd, where I can hopefully find some more updates and autos and maybe knock a few names off my need list. But, as always, I’m accepting any unsolicited help.