You Can't Do That to Baseball Memorabilia #2

As usual, your protests are too late. The Base Set umpire has already made the call:

Yes, those highly collectible pieces of baseball memorabilia from Topps have been ruined. They are no longer even PSA grade 1, and can not be sold or traded for a profit.

These particular pieces have been stuck somewhere — my poor neglected Tigers binder. That's what they were designed to do after all. The other day I was coincidentally encouraging another blogger to put a totally different baseball collectible to it's designed use, though I had this project and post planned for a long time. There are a lot of this year's stickers sitting in a pile on my card desk, wanting to head off to your house, and maybe an appropriate surface of some sort there. 

A scissors was even involved (X-acto not yet acquired for another memorabilia deconstruction project) for the logo sticker there on the spine. And yes, I picked up the Scherzer sticker today. Couldn't help going for just a few more 2013 Topps Baseball stickers to stick on things. My travel coffee mug out in the truck has been looking rather bare lately...Paws should brighten the truck cab nicely.

The Tigers played a big, big game tonight, the start of a four game set on the road at the red-hot second-place Indians, who we do not play in September. I had thought to put in some time assembling pages in this binder while I listened in. Instead I lucked into a lot of those Blue Sparkle cards and had to re-configure the Parallel Project, again.

It all worked out in the end. The Tigers newly evolving line-up rallied to beat a tired Indians closer in the top of the 9th, a rare feat for the Tigers this year, who have had trouble scoring runs late. Cabrera seems to need a true stint on the DL to heal up for the stretch run to the playoffs, but I think the Tigers can afford that, though it will be tricky. Victor Martinez is producing at last. Hopefully Prince Fielder can step up and get back into gear as well. The Tiger's new infield of Jose Iglesias and Hernan Perez should complement their excellent starting rotation and newly revived bullpen. Leyland will have a lot of new options with two speedy infielders in the weeks ahead, when runs might be a little more scarce.

Should Cabrera need more time off, Iglesias appears to be as good at 3rd as Short, which would require Ramon Santiago to complement Perez in the middle of the infield. As Santiago's playing time has gone up recently, so has his batting average. Meanwhile Omar Infante is starting a rehab assignment, again, and should be back with the big league club soon.

The binder decoration project also moved forward for me; here is the back:

1982 Topps Stickers don't stick very well any more though, and a bit of clear packing tape was needed to keep Whitaker and Trammel together up there. Too bad I assembled them bass-ackwards sorta.

The card project worked out nicely as well. Another dozen doubles for your set needs were freed up from the active roster and put on the trade block. Several binder slots were filled, though no pages are complete yet.

Assembling 660 colorful parallels is a long project, with another 330 cards in the Update set on the horizon; just as 162 games is a long season, with the Playoffs to follow.

And at least the few Tigers that have made it into the binder won't be living in plain jane card boxes any more. Topps would surely approve; the more I use up their memorabilia products, the more of them I will need....