A card for tonight.

I like repacks more each time I find some.

But I've certainly never wanted one of the above. No matter how much I can enjoy unwanted junk baseball cards, I'm not going to pay 16¢ each for them. 

Until today:

Not seeing the connection?

I've been enjoying the new crew on Fox this World Series, and have started to want a Harold Reynolds card. And Dollar Tree came through for me, although I can't for the life of me figure out why anyone buys those 6 card packs when they sit right next to 20 and 30 card packs for the same price.

And yes that means I have some other cheap goodies to play with soon too.

In the meantime check out the back of this 87 Fleer:

A bit short of two decades before The Shift changed the game of baseball (and a few years before Stadium Club went with wonky data card backs), someone was laying the groundwork - collecting the data. 

And Fleer probably purchased it, as it is copyrighted from "Mountain Lion", something I'll have to explore from the comforts of home some time, rather than the cab of my truck, where this post is coming from. 

My other question of the day is - who will make the first Tom Verducci card?

See HOME RUN DERBY on TV!

So is a reprint of an oddball still an oddball?

I'd say Yes.

This is another fun little piece I picked up at the LCS a few days ago. It was even a freebie, as I had already committed to relieving the owner of some other items by giving him real money for stuff no one else hardly wants - junk wax. It might be awhile before you see that junk, because I have a fun construction project to complete before showing it off.

The other reason it was free was the fine print there along the lower left corner of the image, which reads "C.C.C. Reprint - 1988", which was certainly nice enough of the reprint company to include, back in the 80s.

Of course, perhaps this isn't a true oddball, as eBay searches for these items work better if you use the word "Postcard." But this is is still a baseball picture card then, methinks, even if not issued by T.C.G. Co.

Originals will set you back hundreds of dollars, but these reprints are just a buck or so, before shipping. Or free at your Friendly Local Card Shop, perhaps.

This item came with one other helpful item I had thought to work into a post along with it, but when I learned tonight that the first game of the World Series won't be played until next Tuesday - over 100 hours away! - I figured I'd better get on the wire and drum up some baseball entertainment to tide you (and me) over. So the bonus item will have to wait.

OK, OK, now let's get to the subject at hand here on this promotional type postcard: HOME RUN DERBY.

It's the 21st century now, and any product of all of human creativity, ever, can be summoned in seconds:

This was a delightful find for me. I don't live with a super-deluxe Cable TV package. In fact I hardly watch TV at all, which is especially true now that baseball has completely disappeared from broadcast TV, as it has moved to Fox Sport1 rather than regular over-the-air Fox stations. No more Game of the Week. Boo!

Thus even at home baseball is mostly an audio experience for me. Tonight I listened to the final NLCS game on the San Francisco station, courtesy of my phone rather than atmospheric bounce of the powerful AM stations I would use when I was a kid. And thus I got to hear the great broadcaster John Miller call the top of the 9th, 2 outs, bases loaded. Taveras hits it back to the mound and "Affeldt races to the bag. Touchdown!"

So I still thoroughly enjoy baseball on the radio. But I do also like to see what baseball looks like, which is where baseball cards come in.

But I could not resist the call of this baseball postcard, and I was rewarded with the 24 minutes of baseball sort of history embedded just above there. That video is of the Hank Aaron vs Al Kaline episode of the Home Run Derby TV Show, and it was an enjoyable 24 minutes. Aaron and Kaline were particularly pithy analyzing each other's swing  - I could instantly see what they meant. This is something I do lose just listening to games on the radio. It was just so cool to listen to these Hall of Fame players talk at all, back in 1959, still in their 20s. My baseball cards sure don't talk, well at least not out loud.

All the rest of the details on this show can be similarly summoned in just seconds; heck if you look through the settings on your computer long enough you'll discover that the last operating system upgrade you did probably added Siri-style voice recognition even to most PCs now. So you can just say Home Run Derby TV Show Wikipedia entry out loud and get all the answers to your questions quite quickly.

Episode 1 features Willie Mays vs Mickey Mantle:

I mean how cool is that?

Actually, I think watching too much of these would wear you down pretty quickly, they have been broadcast a fair bit already on ESPN Classic over the years, so some of you might have already fallen asleep now. This is just black & white baseball shot live with just a couple cameras, no instant replay, and isn't actually a baseball game of course.

I also learned that there was a Wrigley Field in Los Angeles, and if you've ever seen a classic baseball movie shot in black & white, it was probably filmed there.

The things you learn from these baseball picture cards...

There are Umpires at the baseball game?

Because I just don't see them on my baseball cards much any more.

I received this card recently; not in trade, but as a bit of packaging protection in a shipment from an eBay seller. The fate of early 1990s baseball cards...

A nice, basic, horizontal baseball card. A Turning Two card, most likely selected out into many collections of such cards.

But what immediately jumped to my attention is the Umpire there. You just don't see many cards like these. We still receive brand new Turning Two cards from Topps, but the Ump is so often edited completely out of the picture.

Now I'm not suggesting Umpires should be on baseball cards. They shouldn't, generally. Baseball picture cards are supposed to feature the players, and oh how well they do now. I just prefer baseball cards that depict the game of baseball, rather than make fetish objects out of the players. Baseball card collectors are always saddened by the size of "The Hobby" today, and wonder why more people aren't interested in it. I'm beginning to think the steady banishment of baseball pictures in favor of the ego-gratifying celebrity-worshipping products that baseball cards generally are today, is one, albeit small, part of the reason.

When I started pondering this toppic the other day I knew I should compare my old-fart complaints about those kids today to cards of years past. But I don't really have the collection for that, with my wonderful 70s/80s cards in a secure remote undisclosed location for the time being, and only large portions of 1991 and 2001 Topps sets to check out. 2001 proved to have a whole lot of live action photos, but no Umps; the images were all sensibly cropped down to a single baseball player, as they should be. You do usually get to see their feet however, which allows in more glimpses of that game context I crave. And again, the cards should be about the players, not the Umpires.

I knew 1991 likely held few of the action shots I seek. That led me to the set that brought me back into everyday collecting, the 2011 set. I fondly recall some Umpires on a 2011 insert set, the Kimball Champion minis:

I like those little cards, where it looks like the Major Leaguers are playing on some small town ball diamond with a forest in the background, but am only saving 2 binder pages of 15 each, rather than collecting all 150 of them. I am down to 8 entries on my want list and have about 50 left over, which I would like to find a good home for. They're not worth sending to COMC.

Now the 2011 set has standard cropping very similar to the 2001 set, but far more horizontal cards, and those are usually dramatic entries in the set. It didn't take long to find one:

A complete slice of baseball action there. I always like cards that capture the press pit there in the background for some reason, though they make me wonder who Topps hires to get such shots, as they obviously aren't over there with the rest of the media.

But let's see what happens when we apply the 2013 zoom style to a similar card I know you all probably remember from Series One this year:

Now the Umpire is just a lurker? No, though even lurking umpires are few and far between on the backs of the Sea Turtles. They can be found on the Ben Zobrist I-just-murdered-the-catcher card, and the spectacular Pedro Alvarez card.

There on the Utley card, the Home Plate Umpire is still present, with just his fingers on Buster Posey's back there, which I found quite touching. Ouch. The Utley card is still a pretty good card, but despite all my bitching about the zooming in to the all torsos, all the cards this year, I have never liked cards that don't show a player's face, no matter how spectacular the game action we receive in exchange. It just seems disrespectful, to me.

But that's about it for Umpire Action in Series 1 & 2. A couple blurry lurkers, and one headless umpire that I was very grateful to have on a card, as I used his uniform # to determine the results of the bunt on the wonderful Erick Aybar card.

Now that Aybar card introduced me to an outstanding baseball card vantage point, seemingly from a point just above and behind the pitcher's shoulders. I'm not sure just how new this is, as I don't have enough baseball cards to ponder. Does anyone ever have enough baseball cards? Topps came through with another fine example of this in Update, on what could become a classic Rookie Card:

Now to me, that is already a great baseball card. Arcia is still a promising young Major Leaguer, but if he hits 30 Home Runs next season collectors these days will be scrambling for all his shiny photo-shopped serial #d relic autograph cards....every card but this one.

I'm not sure how Topps gets these photos. Maybe all that digital / optical zoom technology they overuse now has it's advantages I guess; perhaps these are even stills from the video feed of the standard baseball-on-TV vantage point. I have never fully understood that view; I have always wanted to watch a game from the Umpire's vantage point. I sat 7 rows directly behind Home Plate at Comerica Park once, watching each pitch come right at me, and I've had a bit less desire to go back to a baseball game ever since; unless I could return to that simply awesome vista of baseball, which is how the game should be seen. 

However these photos arrive in my packs of baseball cards, Topps certainly deployed it to good effect on the live-action All-Star cards this year:

There are several of these shots used for the All-Star cards, and I have already featured another great one. Whatever the technology at play, it's only a tad better than the TV cameras at handling Max Scherzer's max out the tint orange shoes there. Is this his hint that he hopes to play in Baltimore in 2015?

Topps does get their photo equipment dialed in to deal with more great orange shoes on an actual Oriole player, Adam Jones:

Though here we are back to an obscured Umpire, I added this tonight because I certainly flubbed not including this one last night ... where else are you going to find two memorial patches for two baseball legends, Stan Musial and Earl Weaver, on the same card but on an All-Star card. (The O's Weaver patch is moved to the left breast to accommodate the All-Star Game shoulder patch). I love the lines on this card created by the MLB logo, the umpire's torso, and the space betweem Molina and Jones. They lead you right to those wonderful shoes. Though lines trending down aren't good for baseball cards, they work out just fine here.

A few more of those cards shot from the same point are used for the All-Star cards in Update, and I am just fine with that, as these make for excellent baseball cards. Overall the Arcia card is probably my favorite Umpire Card this year, at least among the base cards.

But my actual favorite baseball picture cards including an Umpire appeared in an insert set in Opening Day this year:

The game is over, for everyone but the Umpire, lurking there to make sure Willingham steps on the plate after his Walk-Off. I'm not the greatest fan of these cards, or seeing this at a regular season game, though I guess some teams need to celebrate when they can.

Another card in those inserts actually is a home run though, for many reasons. A copy of it will probably make my Airborne binder pages, for one, and even though the card features the vast majority of the Washington Nationals - perhaps these are better than staid team checklist cards - I can't seem to find Bryce Harper anywhere on it, amazingly enough, though I have no plans to look too closely:

Now I had hoped to deploy my own digital technology to figure out which Umpire this is and give him some props here, by zooming in on the scanner results, but that didn't work out. Just not enough pixels available, I think.

Whichever Ump it is, I love this shot of the Umpire, an integral part of every Major League Baseball game, all the way to the end. Whether Topps ever notices them or not.

Is that a picture of a baseball player?

I'm not sure ... my eyes keep going crazy directions ... everything is all grey/brown out here in the desert ... I can't tell what I'm looking at ... wait, wait, tell me something ... oh, I think it, it's something from the United States of America, yes, for sure, I see the Stars-and-Stripes ... something from the lower 48 it appears ... too bad Alaska & Hawaii ... oh, hang on, I see something else ... it's, it's ... it's a baseball! Yes, yes indeed ... it's a picture of a baseball player ... on a piece of cardboard ... it's a Baseball Card!

A "Camo-Camo." I knew when I first heard of the Camo parallel I would want one of a Padre in their Sunday best. And I knew I would have to resort to the drudgery of simply buying one. So I finally threw in the towel and made an eBay account, cuz I kind of doubt anyone would trade one of these away. Sure, there are probably better Camo-Camos out there where the Friar pictured has more Camo on display, but I like the horizontal television-like cards with the more unique parallels. The E. Cabrera card has the Camo uniform on too, but shows so little uniform you would just get lost on Tatooine. Come to think of it, that would make an outstanding Camo-Camo too.

I just happened to run across this one first, so here it is. And here's the back. You know, you buy the baseball cards with the pretty pictures for the article of reading material on the back, right?

# 84 of 99. Hey, that's his memorial shoulder patch backwards...an eBay 1 of 1, of course! I have it. The only one. You don't. I win.

The Parallel Project moves along. I finished posting the 2012 parallels I have available. That is mostly the end of what I can put on the trading block. I have a stack of the 2011 Cognac / Liquorfractor cards on reserve for a blogger, but if you have a want list of those I could check that stack. I haven't listed my 2011 diamonds because I really like the occasional "Beam me up, Scotty" bonus peeps in the background that have been diamond-ized. And I might chase a set of them when this crazy project is complete. I have to find good homes for all my extra cute little baseball cards somehow. Let's Trade!

Still to go is to putting together a want list for Series 2. The base set called me and told me it was time to get cracking on putting the binder pages together, so I could then put together the pages for the parallel cards on visual criteria, and I got that done last night. A random lot of Blue Sparkle crack is winding it's way towards me as I type. Once that arrives, I can assemble them along with the dozen.5 golds I have from Series 2 and put together the first Series 2 want list for the project.

Why I think I will start binder-izing those Series 2 parallels right now with this nifty Huston Street card. Hey, wait, where did it go? I can't seem to find it. It was just here a second go, right on the scanner. Oh-nooooooo Mr. Bill, it has escaped into the wilds of the card table of baseball cards. This could be a long Chase.

Maple Leaf Baseball Cards

Happy Canada Day! I'm even resisting adding a bonus vowel there, to show a little respect. Besides, I did that last night.

I always thought this card in my collection would be the card with the most Maple Leafs on it:

3.5 Maple Leaves, and 3 hockey players. That guy on the left there, somebody should poke him. You're supposed to look up, optimistically, when they are playing O, Canada on your home ice. But then if you played for the 1980s Maple Leafs, you'd look down at the ice a lot too.

I tried to find some vintage Maple Leaf cards to celebrate Canada Day with you, but I think my vintage vintage Hockey Cards are on safari with my terribly missed 1970s baseball cards. This was as good as it got in a box of Hockey Cards nearly amazingly Maple Leaf-less, but then it was an all-Topps box, mostly from the 80s. I'm sure O-Pee-Chee would have given me way more Leafs. I've always wondered if Canadian collectors chase Topps cards to complete their player collections:

A '78-'79, old school no-helmet edition there. Who knew Hockey Cards had Night Cards too? Maybe the Leafs were saving a few bucks by only lighting the side of the arena with the puck in it. You just don't normally think of finding a goalie lurking in the shadows on a Hockey Card.

I was in Canada last year on Canada Day. It was wonderful. A few days later, while my hometown hardly wanted to even celebrate pre-USA Day in the baking 100+ heat, I got to watch these big puffy white things drift down from the sky while I was working. Yep, I could almost say I got to see it snow on the 4th of July. Missed it by a day. Still totally wonderful though. I'm no fan of the Heat.

I had received an awesome career educational opportunity from a nice contractor who let me work up there, illegal-alien style. This year, I could secure neither a work visa, or a job. To get a job, I need a work visa. To get a visa, I need a job. Those Canadians. On the obscure chance a real Canadian could help me get around this empty-net type problem, please get in touch. I had many other things on my brain ... like working on a tree-planting crew with more women than men. Oh, how different my life would have been in Canada. I would probably own 1000x more hockey cards than baseball cards, for example, rather than the reverse situation found in my current collection.

Now, I wish I had a sports card story for you from Canada, but, alas I do not. Actually, I forgot to even look for cards the one time I got to visit Canadian Tire (yes, I think there was a good chance cards were in there, even with the word "Tire" in the store name), but I do have one outstanding sports memorabilia (I really dislike that word) story.

When I reached Edmonton, on my way much further northwest deep into the Blue Canadian Rockies, I stopped at a book store for a little extra reading material out there in the bush. And when I opened the front door of the place, I was greeted by a life-sized piece of awesome cardboard that looked very similar to this image:

That's right, this bookstore was darn proud. We've got Bob Probert's book, bitches. In Edmonton. The city that hated Bob Probert, and the scene of one of his many fuck-ups one night before a playoff game for the finally somewhat successful mid-80s Detroit Red Wings. What an impressive sports fan country.

To my great regret (along with not staying in Alberta longer in the company of someone with huge tracts of land), I didn't buy that book on the spot as I had a long shopping list in my head already. I really need to fix this situation. So if you see a life-sized Bob Probert (RIP) cut-out anywhere....

But what about the Baseball Cards? That's what we signed up for. You can get almost anything you want with a maple flavored version in Canada - baked beans, breakfast cereal, donuts, even whiskey now (where else but Canada). In fact I think you can accurately judge how far north or south you are in North America by how many maple flavored products are for sale. Try finding one in a grocery store in Georgia. Good luck.

But the Maple Leafs don't play baseball, everyone knows that. So this year I have a new contestant for the most maple leaves on a card, on a Baseball Card:

Don't ask me to 'splain it. Oh, OK, I will try. That is the point of a Baseball Card blog, isn't it? Even the Rajai Davis walk-off card doesn't have that many maple leaves on it, though it has a whole lot of players, but no Maple Leafs. Stay with me now.

That cap is a new cap this year for the Blue Jays. Technically, they wear it for batting practice, though I would wager it gets a pretty prominent display in the gift shop at the Rogers Centre. So it sure was nice of Topps to put it on a baseball card. I'm sure the Topps-always-sucks-all-the-time conspiracy forum posters would wonder what Topps got in return for publishing this card. I don't care, I just wish I had one, I would surely wear it today. Maybe it would get me a little better luck on getting one of those visas.

And of course technically, there are several cards in Series 1 that have three maple leaves depicted on them. Such as the final card in the Series, #331 Jose Reyes. Which is of course a horrible Photoshop crime against the sanctity of Baseball Cards. Hey, wait....if they Photoshopped (I love how the automatic spell checking these days accepts "photoshopped" as a real word) Jose Reyes, what about Josh up there....things are starting to look suspicious. What's Topps' cut on hat sales in Canada anyway?

But I don't think so, because we also have this card:

Sergio actually played for the Jays in 2012, so Topps would have no need to photoshop a card for him, particularly in Series 2. (If your favorite National League team is due to face the Jays at home after Santos returns from the DL, you might want to read the back of his card before you start puzzling out late-inning pinch hitting strategy. I can't give away all Baseball Card secrets.)

Anyhow, both cards have that same yellow line, probably the top of the short Spring Training ballfield fence. Like in this picture, taken in warm-ups for a Spring Training game at Dunedin:

That would have made a nice maple leaf Baseball Card. He just hit a home run as I type, though he did it on the radio. I'm Blacked-Out of watching a free game on MLB.TV, even though I am 350 miles and one international border away from the likely sold-out Canada Day Jays-Tigers game. Brilliant.

So Topps appears to have taken pictures in 2013 Spring Training, and put them on 2013 Baseball Cards. Something I regularly wish for, and a sentiment I have seen obliquely on other blogs as well. Why can't Topps do some more of this? Would it have been so tough to just print a nice safe Jose Bautista card in Series 1, as he is signed through 2015, and issue an all-new-and-shiny Jose Reyes card in Series 2 instead? That wouldn't have changed the stars mix for either series. And no, I can't explain why Josh Johnson gets a card in Series 2 AND Series 1, rather than __________________ insert-your-favorite-player-you-must-now-wait-till-October-to-see-in-Update.

And speaking of we-could-have-skipped-using-the-Photoshop:

Especially since Melky's card didn't come out until Series 2. I wish I could remember who pointed out the other M. Cabrera's orange batting gloves on his new Series 2 card. Figures Melky would wear the abysmal flat-brim version of this new cap. Fits.

It's becoming clear to me this year, Topps just isn't a purist about those Baseball Cards.

Fortunately, it's Canada Day, and I hope you are having a happy one, even if you might have likely celebrated over the weekend, so you can get back to work by the time it's USA Day here shortly. And fortunately in Canada, one can still find purists, such as for this famous hairstyle that I have always thought must have originated there, likely in Hockey Falls (fails?):

This is a rarely seen variant, the Teased Curls Mullet, and is probably a famous card in Canada, a country of good spirits. Maybe this is why Hockey teams need enforcer players. Don't laugh. I'm warning you. You can't laugh at Canada, Canadians, or Canadiens on Canada Day. Even Bob Probert would agree with that. Let's not make Bob mad now.

Too Much Loot

Sensory overload tonight. I went to a Baseball Card Store! Oh, sure there were some other sport cards in there (not many), and some baseballs and other baseball Americana, as they call it (even less). And the customer in the shop at my arrival had just delivered a miniature replica of the "Bird Nest" stadium from the Beijing Olympics that lit up, as a gift for the owner. Oh, the things you see every day...

Mostly, though, this store just sold Baseball Cards. Yep, good ole 2.5" x 3.5" Baseball Cards. Made of cardboard. Baseball Cards.

Baseball Cards everywhere. A "Wall of Wax". Singles. Sets. Boxes. More boxes.

I've been to 6 other Friendly Local Card Shops this year. One wasn't even actually friendly. This one is probably the MVP of the group. I am looking forward to doing little reviews of all of them, when I run out of cards to blab about.

But that might take a while. Because.... I bought a bunch of Baseball Cards! Some thoughts:

I like the Day-Glo orange Archives parallels. I have a Parallel Problem, for sure. But I only pulled 2 of them in 4 packs. The '85 Wei-Yin Chen is up for trade. I'd like a '90, or a '72 for it. Day-Glo of course.

Yeah, I only got 4 of those packs. I really respect that the owner of the store is very carefully spreading them across his whole customer base. Reading comments on internet-only-card-dealing-punks forums that ran like "yeah, I only got 70 of those packs. I sold all the Day-Glos on the damn eBay and made a tidy profit, after those eBay pricks took their vampire cut" made me wonder once again if I'd rather just participate in this hobby all by myself, without even ever knowing about all the esoteric eye candy out there.

But, I only got 4 of those packs, and 2 of the goodies. Topps dangles the carrot in front of my nose, and I keep trudging forward trying to reach it. And I wonder why they call them "Master Sets."

Moving on somewhat...the Blue Sparkle parallels are ridiculous. Hypnotic crack from the Master. I only received one from Series One, I think a kindly FLCS took pity on me if I recall correctly, and I was very fortunate to trade it for the Blue Sparkle of my very first PC I've ever dreamed up. I think I traded card #221 for #220 with Colbey in SC; he got one of his PC players. Neither of those cards really showed me the potential of that parallel. Four new ones from Series 2 have.

Yep, four "Week 2" packs. Four Blue Sparkles. No Silver Slates. Boo-hoo. Really. I'll have to actually buy one. I've never liked buying a baseball card. I don't know why that is. I like ripping and trading, but not card shopping.

I'm glad there is no wrapper redemption for Series 2. This way I can open all my new packs a lot more leisurely for the next few weeks, and absorb the cards the way I like. But that is why I got my Series 1 wrappers mailed in just a few days too late.

But I wish there was a wrapper redemption for Series 2. That way I could get more crack by just giving more money to the Master, and his retail agents. I'd probably end up overnighting my wrappers in with hourly tracking and required signatures at the receiving end, the way the Bowman kids do it. And then complain all the way to the bank with the results.

In other ga-ga news, I'm falling for 2009 O-Pee-Chee. Why can't baseball card Base Sets be like this one? 600 pieces of real cardboard. I had thought to avoid opening the book on any years prior to 2011 that I didn't already have a partial set from. So much for that idea. I still kick myself for passing over 2 discounted blasters of the stuff at a K•Mart back in February. Fortunately, I found one today, at a K•Mart I hadn't pillaged yet this year. I just like using the option-8 bullet I think•

Even better, I got 216 of those pieces of cardboard in a single box. Of course, at my new favorite Baseball Card Store. Too bad I bought the last one they had. I like how it says "Hobby" right on it. Yep, a hobby. Not a pseudo-business that every customer almost has to participate in. Just a nice relaxing hobby. I'll probably repeat all this blubbery when I go nuts scanning some of the delights in that box. They're better than whipped cream.

I don't know yet if I got what I really want out of today's O-Pee-Chee purchases. I'll just savor opening them for quite a while yet. What is that? That would be cards that launched a lawsuit — always tantalizing, eh? I never did hear how that turned out, though I'm sure it's over, and I'd wager that the Master won. They usually do. But to me, it's news. Stay tuned.

And, I got some supplies. Yeah, zzzzzz. But I'll have to post about that one of these nights too. Like those seemingly cool box-cards on the aforementioned '09 O-Pee-Chee, there is always something in this hobby that turns out almost perfect. Good, or just OK, but not perfect. Perfection is so very rare in baseball. So maybe I shouldn't expect Topps to be perfect either. Hmmm.

Blahblahblah, you're up past your bedtime reading this babble and I haven't even rewarded you with any pictures of any cards, though you sure have a hankering after that '69 Stargell up there, and that hatless Harper just might be a bit too ghey. Yep, I typed that. I know, I type too much. I just can't scan anything else tonight, not even the paralyzing Wei-Yin Chen Blue Sparkle. You thought that was up for trade, nope, nunnhhh-uhh, never. His Day-Glo can go however. I had a Wei-Yin Chen hot promo day. I hope he's a good player. Those sparkles could cheer me up as good as elf trinkets do for Hobbits. Or, oh heck I'll just delete all the silly similes I had in mind and get back to Baseball Cards.

I got over my disdain for buying a Baseball Card at the Baseball Cards Store today. I was contentedly reliving some youth with the ever-wonderful cigarette box of the 1982 K•Mart set. Oh what a happy day it will be when I find my boxes of that. Printed in that set are some cards I want. Some more than others. One most of all. I casually mentioned that to the helpful FLCS owner and in a jiffy he parted the stacks of cardboard boxes of cardboard and offered me an Original Copy of a White Whale I've been able to close my eyes and picture in my head for near-on 37 years now, since I first saw it on the first reprint of it, just a year after it was first issued. 1982 stoked the fire some more. Blogs the last few months made those eyes-closed memories of it seem like reality, floating just out of reach. Oh dear.

Oh, sure, I could've probably bought the card elsewhere over the years if I tried, but I never did. I'm sure I'm just 4 mouse clicks away from buying an even better copy right now. Buying a baseball card has just never been my style. I can't explain that. Baseball cards have always seemed like a luxury item, and maybe I should just take my chances on collecting them from packs. Dunno. Plus, Baseball Card stores have always been very far away from where I usually am, unless I am traveling, and then I don't usually have spare change for Baseball Cards. The stores still are - 110 mile round trip today.

Anyhow, there it was. And only ONE DOLLAR. I never dreamed that would be the price tag on it, unless it had been hideously tortured in the ole bicycle spokes. If I could purchase a larger reproduction of this, suitable for framing, I surely would. I just might hang the 2.5" x 3.5" version on my wall some day anyway. I'm not even a particular fan of the player, or the team. I did not know he ever played Third Base. That surprised me. But that's what's great about baseball cards. The details...that I forgot over the years. Like that he was a Michigan State Spartan. I went to that other school in Michigan, and thus I shouldn't ever wanna collect Spartan cards. But that's irrelevant.

Baseball player on the TV. THEY are watching. The lurkerest card ever.

Ahoy, Mateys!

Baseball Card TV

You really can't beat a horizontal baseball card.

Though you can scan them running downhill a little. Oops.

And you could have put them in binder pages so the #s run from top left to bottom right. Second oops.

'course, a sub-set builder could also rule out sub-sub-sets, like the leader cards. Third oops.

and those team celebration shots, do we really need those? Fourth oops.

For the most part though, horizontal cards speak for themselves. Even with the sound off.

uhh-ohh, fault-conflict in sub-sub-set rule at location 282. Should we leave Russell Martin on the TV here? What then to do with the 2 cards with lurking TV cameras on them? Subset problems. Problematic subsets. An Artificial Intelligence computer will never be able to sort baseball cards very well.

But people make mistakes, like not bothering to crop a scan when they are tired. 5th oops. Maybe you do need a baseball card robot to take care of these things for you. Little details like counting the cards.

60 of these in Series One, of 330 = 18.1818181818181818%

That's about 18%, or almost but not quite 1 card in 5. This seems like a high ratio. I can only wonder if it is as high as in the 1973 set, or the 1991. Or set years missing from my memory collection up there in the ole noggin. This will give me something to keep investigating with the little rectangular pieces of card-stock.

However only 44 of these feature a named player. And not even all 44 are a standard issued single player baseball card, as some of the playoff cards put a hero-player name on the front, some put a team name on the front. Pursuing that line leaves us with 38 horizontal baseball players. The 22 League Leader and Playoffs cards, along with 5 checklist cards, makes for a Series One of 303 baseball picture cards.

And thus we actually have 38 horizontal players, of 303 = 12.5%, or 'zactly 1 out of 8 player cards.

A favorite? On which page? I don't pick favorites when I watch TV. I like all baseball players on TV, usually. It's reading about them later that makes me not like some of them.

But I like too many of these cards to pick a favorite, or run a final count-down. How do those bloggers do that? Drawing cards out of a hat? That's how I would have to do it.

I can't even organize my cards right sometimes. I know I could make these pages look even better. But that's the great thing about baseball cards. There's always next Series.

Spring Treat

I think this is an annual treat on the Tigers Spring Training broadcasts....Al Kaline sat in the booth with Dan & Jim on Tuesday for the first 4 innings or so.

I did not know this was to happen; I caught most of the game on Monday and did not recall them mentioning this ahead of time, but it is easy to miss a sentence or two in a baseball broadcast. I'll be paying better attention this time next year, and I'll Be Prepared. For Realz. Cuz I sure punted it today.

The above is my only Al Kaline card, I think. I'm not sure I'm looking forward to trying to acquire his '74 Record Breaker card from '75, but I have been banking up trade items to publicize eventually. I'm not that into the '87 mini from last year; I've never been a fan of the wood paneled cards, nor the gimmick mini sets, so I'm not chasing the rest of that set either. I am doing the '72s this year because I like colorful cards, and I know the Night Owl will get Ultra•Pro to make us nice binder pages to display them eventually. The backs are so hard to read I might make them double fronted pages with 2 cards per slot.

I have also been lukewarm on reprint cards of past stars. The Kaline is another one that thawed me, after the '11 Kimball Champions I guess. What baseball fan dislikes any kind of Babe Ruth card? But do I really want a card of every Hall of Famer in every Topps style ever designed? No, not really. I'll just keep random examples I like. And how long until a player has more post-retirment cards than active career cards? I'm sure that already happened to some. I pulled a sweet Carlton Fisk retro recently that I do look forward to Googling and babbling.

I don't really plan on chasing any other Kaline cards either (I know they'll fall out of packs whether I want them or not), although I root for the Tigers now and have tremendous respect for Kaline. Currently he plays an important not-just-a-figurehead role in the Tigers organization. Last year he was sent to the Double-A affiliate in Erie, PA, to evaluate top Tigers prospect Nick Castellanos and help in the coaching process of converting him from playing Third Base to the Outfield. The result was the promotion of Avisail Garcia to The Show instead, based on Al's visit. Both are still prime prospects for the Tigers, though I wouldn't be surprised to see one of them traded away by early summer if the Tigers bullpen needs shoring up. The Tigers are under tremendous pressure to erase memories of being swept in the World Series last fall, and there is only one possible way to do that. Just Win, Baby. Now!

I moved to Michigan in the winter of 1977, 2 full seasons after Kaline retired. I wasn't a Tigers fan before that, and the Tigers were a very unlikely selection to see on Kubek & Garagiola's Game of the Week in the mid-70s. And that was pretty much the only game in town for Baseball on the TV back then.

Not long after I was all settled in the Mitten State, I discovered Tigers TV Broadcasts with Al Kaline and George Kell. They were on a local broadcast station. As in over-the-air. For Free. All you needed was any ole TV set and probably a pair of rabbit ears antenna. I sure miss those days. Sure, a baseball game wasn't on your TV for free every single time your team played. But the occasional games were marked with some buzz around town all day long - "Hey, the Tigs are on TV today....whatcha doing later?"

George and Al were both so smooth I can barely recall who did play-by-play and who was the Story Guy (you know, the job called the "Color Analyst"). The Story Guy gets to say "Back in those days" a lot on a baseball broadcast, and it seemed to be a common lead phrase for Kaline. I got to hear him say it several times today. But really I know Kell (RIP) was the smoother one and he handled play-by-play. Kaline was a very enjoyable broadcaster though.

[Even though that is an image from a 'baseball card' from the 1983 Story of Al Kaline set by some minor publisher, I'm not posting this to get that set. That single card above I would like, yes. I like broadcaster cards and will type about them another time. But I doubt singles from that player-specific set float around much.]

They called games in an era quite different from the Baseball on the TV landscape today, where I always think we could be eventually headed towards a pay-for-each-game model if we want to watch one on TV. I would be partially OK with that if it included a pick your own camera angle menu, and a live mic placed just behind the Home Plate umpire, but I doubt that will ever happen.

At least now, all the cable subscribers in the country are helping prop up ball player's salaries through the mandatory inclusion of sports channels in expensive cable packages, whether the subscriber watches sports or not. Houston, I predict turbulence ahead. Seems all those subscribers heard about this thing called the Internet...

But not really for me. I mostly listen to Baseball on the Radio, courtesy of the mobile Internet usually. If I want to see Baseball on the TV, I reach for my baseball card binders. And I discovered one helluva great TV looking card today, but it needs a perfect presentation on the web for y'all to enjoy. A quick phone-camera shot wouldn't do it justice.

I wish I could tell you more of what Kaline discussed on the broadcast. Plenty of stories from Back In Those Days (no, not one of my goofy Frankenset titles. Yet.), and a delicate discussion of the Tigers final roster moves, considering that Kaline gives input to Tigers GM Dave Dombrowski on those moves. I think they are down to 30 players as I type.

Kaline did mention that it used to be a sign of dis-respect to the pitcher if the batter took such a huge swing at the plate that the batter fell down, and tensions in that particular game would rise a little bit. I wasn't clear on whether this happened in the Tigers<>Braves game today, but I think so. Now it is just shrugged off by everyone as a failed attempt at a huge rip. That was an interesting story.

The Amazing Al also told the story of a pitcher who would do his warm-ups and for the final pitch would deliberately throw a heater wildly up into the foul ball screen, just to keep the batter thinking about what could happen on each pitch. I missed the name; I was working adjacent to a school playground and the recess shrieking was extra loud right then.

And I missed many other bits of the broadcast unfortunately, and if you have read along this far, I hope to help someone who has the otherwise wonderful MLB At Bat App '13 on their iPhone app. I will write up a little bit more on it but I was waiting till Opening Day for that - such a great app.

Why did I screw up such a great day for catching some Baseball on the Radio? Yesterday morning I was perusing the general MLB headlines (see, I told y'all I knew there was a techie solution for that) over a cup of coffee, and I set the phone down in the truck before closing the app. And then several hours later I learned the hard way a slight flaw in the At Bat App - it won't put the phone to sleep if there are x minutes of inactivity, like other apps do. And since MLB action seems to be a 24/7 proposition with possible score changes and headline articles to read, it is constantly pinging the cell towers for more MLB data nuggets. The app user must have constant brand-new baseball info. The app user must have constant brand-new baseball info. The app user ....

So when I picked up my phone to catch what turned out to be one of the best broadcasts all spring, it was nearly out of juice in the battery. And I couldn't afford to just sit in the truck and listen to the game. Some jobs I could have slid my schedule around for that one, but not yesterday's.

Sunk on loving some baseball broadcast action by my love of baseball news. Thanks MLB app designer. That's baseball of course. You win some, you lose some. And there's always next year.