Song of the Week - Love and Only Love by Neil Young

With Crazy Horse.

That time Mike Schmidt scored from first on a wild pitch

The Phillies made wholesale changes in the TV broadcast booth, replacing Chris (Wheels) Wheeler and Greg (Sarge) Matthews with former Phillie players Jamie Moyer and Matt Stairs. Tom McCarthy, now in his 6th year, remains the play-by-play guy. Although Moyer and Stairs are not, in my opinion, as good as Wheels and Sarge, I'm starting to like them. Moyer, in fact is very knowledgeable, and adds a lot of insight. Another change they made was to install former Phillie great, and my favorite player of all time, Mike Schmidt, in the TV booth for Sunday games.

In last Sunday's game Schmitd was recounting the time he scored from first base on a wild pitch by David Cone.  He claims to be maybe the only player in baseball to have scored from first on a wild pitch. Although the broadcast staff could not support that claim by the end of the game they did come up with a video.

A Letter Home by Neil Young

Neil Young and Jack White were on the Tonight Show a few weeks ago talking about their new project. White had restored a 1947 Voice-A-Graph recording booth and he and Young had recorded an album using it. The Voice-A-Graph booth, large enough for one person to fit in, was designed for people to be able to record their own 45 RPM records.

Young released a boxed set from the recording session on May 27th, which I understand is already sold out. My daughter had bought me a copy as soon as I had mentioned the Tonight Show appearance and gave it to me for Father's Day.  Here's the package.

The box is made to look like a battered cardboard box that you've been keeping your memories in for the past 50 years. The photograph of Neil in the booth, is actually taped to the box with packing tape.

Inside there are 2 vinyl LPs. These are pressed on heavy vinyl. One of them as the direct feed from the Voice-A-Graph the other has a 'cleaned-up' version. I have a record player but I will probably never actually play these.

There is a 32-page booklet with lyrics, credits and photos of Young and White.

There is a CD and a DVD. The DVD has a video of each song as Young recorded it stuffed into the booth with his guitar and harmonica.  The CD contains all the songs, directly off the machine. Very lo-fi and full of hiss and noise from the turntable motor. In 1947, people were probably amazed at these recordings, but frankly, they are hard to listen to. The box also came with a offer of a digital download of the 'cleaned-up" versions. Much easier on the ears.

And finally,

seven, clear vinyl double-sided discs containing the 14 tracks. These are what the discs recorded on the machine look like.

So, the packaging is great, how is the music?  As anyone who has followed this blog knows, I am a big Neil Young fan. I like this a lot. As mentioned, the recordings are spare. Neil on his guitar and his voice. A little harmonica here and there and some piano. Some backup vocals from Jack White.  The recordings are apparently complete takes. Young misses a chord here and there, sometimes blows a bit too hard on the harmonica, and his voice cracks a bit. It's like he is playing these just for me, in my living room.

 The song are all covers. Neil explained on The Tonight Show that these are all songs that always meant a lot to him. There are some great songs here, some of them not well known. My favorites are "Changes" by Phil Ochs, "Needle of Death" by Burt Jansch, "Girl of the North Country" by Bob Dylan, "Reason to Believe" by Tim Harden and "My Hometown" by Bruce Springsteen.

Neil Young will be 69 years old this November. In my opinion, if this was the last recording he ever made, it would be a good one to go out on.

Top-10 Phillies in Hits

Since Jimmy Rollins became the all time leader in hits for the Phillies, I thought I do a top-10 list.

#1 Jimmy Rollins

Rollins has played his entire 15-year career with the Phillies. He set the record for most hits as a Phillie in last Saturday's 7-3 win over the Cubs. He has 2,235 hits for his career with a career batting average of .268. How does his hit total compare? He is 168th on the all-time hit list. Jimmy is 36 and in good health. He could play another 4 years, but will it be for the Phillies?

#2 Mike Schmidt

Like Rollins, Schmidt spent his entire career, 18 years, with the Phillies. He had 2,234 career hits with a .267 career batting average. Of course, Schmidt was more known as a home run hitter, hitting 548 total. Schmidt was on hand to see his hits record broken on Saturday. I think it will be a long time before we see his home run record broken.

#3 Richie Ashburn

Ashburn had a 15-year career, 12 with the Phillies. He left the Phillies after the 1959 season with 2,217 hits and a .311 bating average. He finished his career with 2,574 hits total. These first three all played during my lifetime. For #4 we have to go a bit further back.

#4 Ed Delahanty

Big Ed played for the Phillies from 1888 to 1901, except for 1890, when he played for the Cleveland Infants of the Player's League. In 13 years with the Phillies he had 2,214 hits and a .348 average. In his 16-year career he had 2,297 hits. He was also a home run hitter, in the days when it was hard to hit a home run, with 101 for his career. He lead the league in homers in 1893 and 1886 with 19 and 13 respectively.

#5 Del Ennis

Ennis played 11 years of his 14-year career for the Phillies, getting 1,183 hits with a batting average of .286.

#6 Larry Bowa

Larry Bowa played 11 years with the Phillies (1970-1981) and had 1,798 hits. He was also in the ball park for Rollins' record breaking hit as he is now the Phillies bench coach.

#7 Chuck Klein

I would have guessed that Chuck Klein was a little higher on this list. He played 15 years of his 17-year career with the Phillies from 1928 to 1944. For part of 1934, all of 1935 and part of 1936 he was with the Cubs. He had 1,705 hits for the Phillies with a .326 batting average.

#8 Sherry Magee

MaGee is one of two players on this list I had never heard of. MaGee played for the Phillies from 1904 to 1914 with 1,647 hits and a .299 average. He played another 5 years for the Boston Braves and Cincinnati Reds.  Sherry was short for Sherwood.

#9 Cy Williams

The other guy I'd never heard of. Williams played for the Cubs from 1912 to 1917 and then the next 13 years with the Phillies. He had 1,553 hits for the Phillies with a .292 average. He was another big home run hitter with 251 for his career. He lead the league in 1923 with 41 homers.

#10 Granny Hamner

This is, by the way, a 1991 Topps Archives card. Hamner played for the Phillies from 1944 to 1959 with 1,529 hits and a .263 BA. Along with Ashburn, he was one of the Phillies Whiz Kids who took the Phillies to the 1950 World Series.

2014 Panini Prizm

I've mentioned it before that I'd like to see Panini get a contract with Major League Baseball to officially produce baseball cards. There are two big obstacles to this that I see, one which Panini doesn't have much leverage, the other in which they do. The biggest obstacle of course is that Topps' exclusive contract runs through 2020, according to Beckett.com. Unless Panini can find some reason for an antitrust suit, that contract will remain in place. The other issue is that I'm finding recent Panini releases to be pretty boring. Which makes me not to want to collect them while waiting for them to get a contract. I did a review on 2014 Donruss a while back. I called it dull.

Now we have Panini Prizm.

Pretty much the same boring photographs Panini used on Donruss. Guys batting, guys pitching and the occasional catcher. In fact, the McCutchen pose on the Prizm card is, while not being the same photo, is exactly the same pose.

Granted the cards are more attractive than Donruss. I didn't buy any Prizm last year but compared to 2012 Prizm, the 2014 cards are better. The cards maintain the same silver borders but the photos now look like early Topps Chrome. It doesn't show in the scans, but when you move the cards to a certain angle you get a kind of highlighted border on parts of the card which I associate with early Topps Chrome.

There are 210 cards in the set (the last 10 being short printed) and many variations. I only bought a 3-pack with 15 total cards, and only got two variations. Variations include: Prizms (that's right, the card is Panini Prizms Prizms);

 I only pulled one of these. In person they look like Topps Chrome Reflectors.

Black (numbered to 1), Blue (42), Blue Mojo (75), Camo, Gold (10), Orange Die-Cut (60), Purple (99), Red (25) and Red White and Blue Pulsar.

In person this looks like an attempt to to a Topps Chrome X-Fractor.  There was one of these in each pack. The cards are pretty expensive, at 76 cents each. The Schmidt card is almost worth the price of admission.

There are a lot of inserts of which I got two. Chasing the Hall.

Actually not a bad looking card.

I also pulled a Intuition insert:

There are 6 other inserts, each coming in 5 variations plus 3 autographed inserts with multiple variations. The autos are apparently all on-card. Oddly there are no relic cards.

One last comment. The cards, as the came out of the packs, had a thin, powdery substance on the fronts. It was easily wiped off but I wonder at the cause. Early Topps Chrome cards have over the years acquired a little bit of tackiness to them. This can be rubbed off as well, with some effort. I wonder if these Panini cards are already showing signs of degradation.

Movie Review - Edge of Tomorrow

If you've heard that "Edge of Tomorrow" is "Groundhog Day" with aliens, you pretty much heard right. In "Groundhog Day" Phil (Bill Murray) finds himself senselessly reliving the same day over and over. He gradually finds a purpose, to win the heart of his producer, Rita (Andie MacDowell). eventually he breaks out of the loop, wins the girl and saves his soul.

In "Edge of Tomorrow", Major Cage (Tom Cruise) cowardly army publicist, finds himself reliving the same day over and over. But, instead of finding himself in a pleasant little Pennsylvania town on Groundhog Day, he finds himself in the middle of the biggest battle of all time as humankind tries to stop the advance of implacable aliens. He never gets to fall asleep at the end of the day, he gets killed within minutes and resets back to the beginning of the day.

But like Phil, Cage gradually finds a purpose, meets up with Rita (Emily Blunt), who once had the same power that Cage now has, to reset time upon his death. Together they figure out how to defeat the aliens, if only Cage can stay alive long enough.

Just like in "Groundhog Day" there are a lot of repetitious scenes, but each is filmed a bit differently and as he lives longer and longer, the earlier parts of the day get skipped. All this is filmed very well, and the movie never drags. In each reset we, and Rita and Cage, learn something new.

Cruise is pretty good as the cowardly and completely at a loss Major Cage,  thrust into a horrifying battle with no preparation. He doesn't even know how to turn off the safety on his battle suit. But slowly, and believably, he turns into a confident and deadly soldier with a world-saving mission.

Emily Blunt is also good as the tough-as-nails Master Sargent Rita Vrataski. She'd been killed over 300 times in a previous battle before she lost the reset power. The movie is a bit murky on how she eventually survived that battle and how she knows she's lost the power. She meets Cage on the big battlefield, when Cage, with several lives worth of experience, rescues her and leads her to safety. She immediately recognizes what he is. You've seen the trailers "Come find me when you wake up!"

The opening box office was not good. It only made $28MM the first weekend. It cost $178MM to make so it's got a long way to go. But I think this is a movie with legs and that word of mouth will save it. So if the comparisons to "Groundhog Day" have made you think you don't need to see this movie, go see it anyway.

2014 Topps Archives

I'm not a real big fan of Archives but I'll buy some every year. Last weekend I bought 3 rack-packs, totaling 54 cards (50 base). If I see a blaster, I may buy it. I've got a bunch of Phillies cards from the set coming from eBay.  I wasn't planning to do a big review of the set and now that Night Owl has published an exhaustive (and exhausting) post on Archive, I'm resolved in my plan.

I found 4 of the 50 base cards to have reused photographs which I'll post later in a reprise of an earlier post.

What I want to do now, is show the 3 cards I got for which the players had an actual card in the original set (and which I own).

2014 Topps Archives #31 Steve Carlton

1973 Topps #300 Steve Carlton

I think the photo on the Archives card is from a later season than 1973. I don't think Carlton had that fu manchu 'statch in 1972-1973.

The catcher in the 1973 card is Tim McCarver. McCarver was traded to the Expos June 14, 1972, so this photo can only be from a handful of games early in 1972. Carlton only won two games at home with McCarver catching in 1972, April 19 and May 7. There aren't enough clues in the photo to narrow it down any further.

How do the designs match up? The type fonts look close but the colors don't match. The pitcher silhouette in the bottom right corner is a bit smaller on the Archives card. The 1973 card does not have a Topps logo on it.

2014 Topps Archives #31 Steve Carlton

1973 Topps #300 Steve Carlton

The colors don't quite match up. I like the 1973 cartoon "Steve likes to play billiards". On the 1973 card he is identified as "Steven Norman Carlton" instead of just "Steve Carlton". Also on the 1973 card his home town is listed as St. Louis. He'd just been traded to the Phillies in February from St. Louis so I guess he hadn't had time to move. Note all the fine print at the bottom of the Archives card compared to the 1973 card.

2014 Topps Archives #102 Goose Gossage

1986 Topps #530 Rich Gossage

The biggest difference is that in 1986, Gossage was a Padre. He had left the Yankees after the 1983 season and joined the Padres in 1984. Also note that on the 1986 card he is Rich Gossage. Looking at the Gossage cards I have scanned from this era, it looks like Fleer, Donruss and Topps weren't very consistent in what they called him. One Fleer card actually had "Goose" Gossage.

 2014 Topps Archives #102 Goose Gossage

 1986 Topps #530 Rich Gossage

 Except for all the fine print at the bottom of the Archives card, the designs match pretty well. Note that on the Gossage cards, they give stats through the 1986 season whereas an actual 1986 card would only have stats through 1985. The Carlton Archives card gives stats through 1979 for some reason.

2014 Topps Archives 1987 All-Stars #87-VC Vince Coleman

1989  Topps Glossy All Stars #17 Vince Coleman

 

This is kind of confusing. The set is called "1987 All-Stars" but the Archives card says 1988 on the top. Coleman wasn't actually an All-Star in 1987, but he was in 1988. The Topps card with "1988 All-Star" actually was released in 1989. Topps released these glossy sets from about 1985 through 1991. They had the same design each year. And they were very glossy. The Archives reproduction isn't glossy. The two cards look pretty similar.  The NL logo is smaller on the Archives card. There's no Topps logo on the 1989 card.

2014 Topps Archives 1987 All-Stars #87-VC Vince Coleman

 1989  Topps Glossy All Stars #17 Vince Coleman

The only comment I want to make is the background color. The original card backs were white when issued but they look yellowed today. I used a Photoshop tool to make the 1989 card look white again. The Archives card backs look more like a 25 year old white card would look.