Ansgar, Sydner, Brickowski, and Mokeski: The Four Dorksmen of the Apocalypse

Still going through that box of random cards and finding things to write about. If Tom Robbins can write Still Life With Woodpecker while staring at a pack of Camels, surely a box of cards has to be worth a couple thousand more words.

One of the best back-to-the-future developments of the handful o’landfill era was the re-addition of middle names to the backs of trading cards. It seems so old-hat now, so 20th century that you couldn’t have Thabo Sefolosha’s middle name[1] within a couple of clicks, but even with the lens of retrospection affixed firmly to our unibrow it’s hard to imagine the thrill of a ‘90s child to learn Christian Welp’s middle name, and upon learning, to reflect that it’s so much more powerful than the middle names of all the other clumsy white seven-foot centers. Paul Mokeski cowered before the awesome name of Ansgar. Somewhere Richard Wagner is nodding his blond-pigtailed head in approval.[2]

“University of Hawaii slotback Jeff Sydner offers all the versatility of Keith Byars in a smaller package,” the back of this 1990 Upper Deck football card reads. The problem with that is that no one wanted all the versatility of Keith Byars in a smaller package in 1990. They wanted all the versatility of Keith Byars in a Keith Byars-sized package, minimum. In fact, the main attraction of Keith Byars was the, ahem, size of the package.

The Upper Deck folks never took this statement to its logical conclusion[3]. Imagine if someone offered all the versatility of B.J. Raji in a smaller package. If B.J. Raji was 5-11 and 170, the fact that he had could play inside and outside on the defensive line would be far overshadowed by the fact that he was the size of Pinball Clemons yet slower than Ted Washington.

Now, if Jeff Sydner had been a car, things might have been different. He could have been the Mini Cooper to Byars’ Dodge Challenger. But there’s no upside in smaller football players being able to do things bigger football players can do. It eventually gets them crushed.

Horses for courses, they say, and it is absolutely true that the No. 1 thing collectors of bowling cards wanted on a bowling card was a picture of a bowler staring at an End of the Trail statue while standing next to his wife, who is holding his young child while looking remarkably like Tracy Austin, and waiting to be interviewed by Chris Schenkel. Considering the alternatives – armpit follow-through, pre-roll pondering, over-the-hand-dryer hovering – they’re probably right. The fact that this is the antithesis of what would make a great Topps WCW Nitro card[4] or a Yo! MTV Raps card is one of the things that makes this era of trading cards so reminiscent of a cluster migraine.

Darrell Sherman is so obviously hiding something under his hat … but what? My guess is Jose Altuve.

Every team has a player or player that so obviously embodies that team that it makes you wonder whether a negatively transmogrified version of the player somehow begat the team, and not the other way around.

You can prove this to yourself. Close your eyes. Imagine a team, and then picture an archetypal player in the uniform of that team.

The first team I think of is the Boston Celtics and the first player I think of is Kevin McHale. The absurd way he stuck out his chest says “Celtics” to me more than a million floppy Rajon Rondo drives or Bill Russell hook shots. Then it’s Red Sox: Ted Williams edges out Dustin Pedroia. Twins: Rod Carew over Kirby Puckett. 49ers: Joe Montana over Steve Young. Packers: Forrest Gregg, in the mud. Astros: Jeff Bagwell, wearing the terminal section of the Keystone XL pipeline on his elbow. Oilers: Tie between Warren Moon and Earl Campbell. I could do this all day.

The unfortunate thing for the Bucks is that when I work my way down to the Cream City I see the embodiment of Milwaukee basketball in Brad Lohaus, the whitest of all the pale pivots ever to wear the home green-and-various-unattractive-shades[5]. These large white shadows shared several essential qualities: They had a Big Ten (or at least a Midwestern) upbringing, their Nike Air Assaults had soles of lead, they were blond or buzz-cut, they had a European surname, and given the choice between hip-checking Moses Malone and jump-shooting, they planted themselves behind the arc every damn time.

The line started with Dick Cunningham and included Kent Benson, Randy Breuer, Jack Sikma, Paul Mokeski, Frank Brickowski, Joe Wolf, Joel Pryzbilla, Jamie Feick, Jon Leuer, Jared Reiner, and Lohaus[6]. But Lohaus was the most blond, corn-fed, and contact-shy of the bunch.[7]

Other teams have this problem. The archetypal Tampa Bay Buccaneer is Vinny Testaverde -- and not just Vinny Testaverde, but Vinny Testaverde trying to escape a collapsing pocket while wearing a uni the color of Sunny D. It's just that I have this feeling that Brad Lohaus is not only the Bucks' past but its future. Miles Plumlee and Tyler Zeller may not have been drafted by the green-and-various-unattractive-shades last night, but that doesn't mean they won't eventually be wearing Milwaukee colors.

Instead of blaming Bud Selig for his problems, Pete Rose needs to put the pile-driver on Swede Risberg. The Black Sox really scotched it for gambling in baseball.

I’m not saying that baseball players ought to gamble on games, nor am I saying it’s all right for Michael Jordan to run a sports book the size of Harrah’s Tahoe. The fact that more than any other game baseball is about individual performances aggregated into a team score means there are more ways for a player to influence a baseball game, especially if that player happens to be a pitcher. A starting pitcher looking to dump a game can be counted on for six runs minimum before the hook comes. A cleanup-hitting first baseman can let in a couple for the other team and strand a couple for his own team without breaking a sweat. A manager can pinch-hit the .180 hitter and leave the .280 guy on the bench. But I really don’t think that’s what motivates baseball’s raging anti-gambling attitude. I think it’s the fact that gambling queered a World Series at least once … and here is where I’m supposed to say, “and it took baseball years to recover fans’ trust,” only it didn’t happen that way, because Babe Ruth started hitting home runs and the fans were back, bringing friends, within three years.

It’s like John Edwards, who slept and swaggered his way through the New South and now feels he has to spend the rest of his life trying to convince people that he really is an uptight dude. Because gamblers got to some baseball players 100 years ago baseball is by-god determined it should never happen again, so it keeps moles on both sides of the dollar while putting its players through drug testing less rigorous than what they give the parcel-tossers at the South Philadelphia post office.

Baseball was burned on gambling so it’s draconian on gambling[8]. Football was never traumatized as a child, so it suspended Paul Hornung and Alex Karras for a year for doing essentially what Pete Rose did, then elected Hornung to the Hall of Fame right on time, though Karras was arguably the more qualified candidate.[9]

The unfortunate thing for Pete Rose is that the will-they-ever-let-a-gambler-in question has been supplanted by the will-they-ever-let-a-juicer-in question, though last I checked, Rose is still cranking out autographed baseballs for $75 a pop in Vegas.

All this time I thought Super Laguna was an obscure-yet-influential proto-ska-punk band. Shows you how wrong a guy can be.


[1] Patrick, silly.
[2] I also find it fascinating that Welp was traded for Uwe Blab. I had always wondered where the inspiration for the Nazr Mohammed-for-Primoz Brezsec trade came from.
[3] And why should they? It was just a Jeff Sydnar card.
[4] Of Lex Luger, preferably.
[5] Including red, which made Toby Kimball look like a Christmas tree topped with a cantaloupe, and purple, which made Larry Krystkowiak look like Sheena Easton, minus the leg-warmers.
[6] The 1988 Milwaukee Bucks roster included Breuer, Sikma, Mokeski, and Dave Hoppen, and finished 19th in the league in rebounding, though they were 11th in three-pointers made. Ah, but they remedied this situation in 1989: They got Fred Roberts.
[7] Near-qualifiers: Roberts, Keith Van Horn, David Meyers, Zaza Pachulia, Richard Washington, Swen Nater, Jake Voskuhl, and Dan Gadzuric. Curiously, four of the eight are from UCLA. If only Li Jianlian had gone to Northwestern!
[8] It kicked Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle out of baseball for a year – a punishment that’s always perplexed me, since they were retired Hall of Famers at the time – for being greeters at a casino, a job no less illegal – or degrading – than being a greeter at Walmart.
[9] If there was any fallout from the Karras-Hornung gambling scandal, it was the effective end of Karras as a Hall of Fame candidate. Karras was a four-time Pro Bowler and a three-time first-team All-Pro (and he went into the stands and talked to girls at the halftime of Canadian Football League games); Hornung was all-pro twice and a Pro Bowler twice. I’ve often wondered how Hornung could have been one of the least productive offensive Hall of Famers of the postwar era and be voted in on the first ballot. My guess is that he had something on Pete Rozelle.

Straw Dogs

Aw, to heck with it. I can't find this week's card. But here's the post anyway.


As I’ve mentioned several times on these electronic pages, when it comes to sports collectibles I have the world’s largest collection of worthless rarities. I am the person you call upon to fill out your Comic Ball 3 set, to score that elusive Pro Line Portraits autographed card of Aaron Cox, to hold in your hands the glory that is a Star Company Sam Horn set.

But what does that mean exactly? Does that mean I am the world’s greatest pure collector of sports memorabilia in the same unbearable, unlistenable way that Ornette Coleman was the world’s greatest pure musician, because I do not allow the joy of collecting to be sullied by the ogre of value?

I hope not. I wouldn’t wish that on BP. Besides, I have kids to put through college.

But to continue, grasshopper, what makes a worthless rarity outside of its lack of value, which is self-evident?

I guess to do that you need to know what makes a valuable rarity.

The valuable rarities I’ve seen have a couple of things going for them. First, they have a story. The Wagner card is the Wagner card in part because of the story, apocryphal or not, that it was pulled from circulation because Honus Wagner did not want his visage associated with tobacco products, Henry Reccius cigar cards notwithstanding.

Second, they need to be associated with a mainstream card set. There are baking issues and candy cards from the 1910s that are much rarer than the Honus Wagner card, but they’re also from obscure regional sets. It’s much more newsworthy when a T206 Honus Wagner showed up in a Maine farmhouse than when the aforementioned Reccius card appeared in a Louisville cigar box.

Then there’s star value and eye appeal, and after that is perhaps the most important thing: quantity. Having the only example of a collectible is not the road to the fortunes of Kubla Khan. Ideally you need somewhere between 10 and 25 examples of a collectible for it to be actively sought-after. Fewer than that and the known examples don’t show up frequently enough to keep the fervor bubbling along. More than that and the rarity deteriorates and takes the value along with it.

That’s why owners of one of 24 known valuable cards root with the fervor of a drunken Scottish soccer fan the existence of No. 25. They don’t want to spend $500,000 for a picture on cardboard and wake up one morning and discover it’s been replaced by a Kia Rio.

Here’s how this wickedness works. About 20 years ago an auction-house proprietor named Joshua Evans turned up what he claimed to be the most valuable card in existence: A U.S. Caramel card from 1932 showing Hall of Fame shortstop Freddie Lindstrom. The Lindstrom was the one card necessary to complete one of the toughest sets from the ‘30s and at that point was the only known example of that card.

This card has star value after a fashion, if you believe Lindstrom qualifies for Cooperstown on his accomplishments and not because Ted Williams got the Veterans’ Committee smashed on grain alcohol and Lithia water and what they wrote sure looks like “Lindstrom” from here.

It has a story. The Lindstrom card was withheld from circulation because kids who got a complete set of U.S. Caramel cards could redeem them for a baseball glove and U.S. Caramel wanted to keep the glove expenditures to a minimum. As in zero.

It wasn’t the best-looking card of the era, even before someone cancelled it. And while the U.S. Caramel set was national after a fashion, U.S. Caramel did not have the zillion slimy tentacles of the tobacco trust. So compared to the Wagner card the Lindstrom card was definitely minor-league.

But Joshua Evans laughs at such hindrances. He dubbed the Lindstrom card “The Million-Dollar Card” and took it on a barnstorming tour that made what C.C. Pyle did with Red Grange look like REO Speedwagon’s summer schedule.

And then he sold it. For less than a million. For less than $100,000 even. For around $90,000, if reports can be believed.

Again we ask, wha’ happen? The easy answer: not enough star power and too much scarcity. One card cannot make a market. Two cards, which is currently the number of known Lindstrom cards, cannot make a market, even if the owners of these cards, once they get them home, realize that $90,000 in the raw is far better-looking, even if it’s in pennies salvaged from automobile upholstery.

(Let this be a lesson to all those Fleer Flair and Stadium Club collectors waiting for the right moment to cash out their one-of-one Terry Puhl cards. Amen.)

So to bring things ‘round again, a worthless rarity has to lack star power, eye appeal, national scope, a marketable quantity, and a story. In short, it needs to be one of nothing.

Meet the 1989 Saranac Glove Darryl Strawberry card.

Let’s dispense with the story, such as it is. Green Bay-based Saranac Glove wanted to package a baseball card with its batting gloves and didn’t think a photo would properly showcase its product, so it commissioned Green Bay artist Dan Gardiner to paint Darryl Strawberry wearing a Metsish uniform and sporting Saranac gloves. It came off fine except for one thing: the Straw Man didn’t like his nose.

Now, Darryl Strawberry resembles nothing so much as a resident of the planet Zorg. For him to complain that they got his nose wrong is like Clint Eastwood complaining that they missed a wrinkle.

And it’s not like Gardiner missed Strawberry’s nose by much. Maybe he was thinking Darryl “Sausage Nose” Hamilton and painting Darryl Strawberry, but it’s close. And, hey, whatever happened to artist’s license?

Still, Saranac Glove would rather pull a perfectly good card off of the market than pay millions to a large-nosed, baseball-playing space alien. So the Saranac Glove card was history. Gardiner got a few, and the company ostensibly kept some, and the rest were destroyed.

Twenty years ago this would have been the perfect collectible storm: Hot player, legitimately scarce card, national distribution, not too ugly, interesting story. But between then and now Strawberry’s career came up short of Cooperstown, which in the card market meant he had the baseball career of a raisin. And no one pays extra for a picture on cardboard of a raisin, no matter how scarce.

So if you were looking for the quintessential worthless rarity, here's your answer. Though a Fleer Flair Terry Puhl sure looks like it qualifies from here.