How I Spent 2009 (or, Why I Had to Take a Year Off)

I started The Baseball Card Blog, funny enough, to blog about baseball cards. Collecting baseball cards, trading baseball cards, buying baseball cards. Dealing—tongue firmly in cheek—with the addiction of baseball cards. Openly questioning the sanity of my own fawning over sports stars and their small cardboard representations.

But The Baseball Card Blog became other things as well, though I tried very hard to keep it on topic. This was not to be about my life, unless my life somehow had something to do with baseball cards. This was not to be a forum for ragging on private individuals; I made a point of keeping angry thoughts private.

I poured a lot of time into this blog. I spent a lot of energy writing the stuff I wanted to write: dissertations I felt were needed on sparsely represented topics (hello, 1987 Topps); artistic interpretations to epic odes of futility (Casey at the Bat); giving away cards I liked (The Great Goudey Trade-away); highlighting funny things about utilitymen, bit players, managers, and bona fide stars. I enjoyed this kind of thing.

And then I didn't. I explored selling the blog. I explored bringing in new writers. Ultimately, none of these were ideas I saw to completion. The Baseball Card Blog was retired. I added a link to the Wikipedia page for Casey at the Bat and nobody took it down. I stopped writing.

But I didn't stop collecting. Or reading others' blogs. I kept up with Cardboard Junkie (still my favorite). I started collecting the T118 (World's Greatest Explorers) and T218 (Mecca/Hassan Athletic Champions) sets. I am just about 50% complete on the 1962 Post Cereal set. I started collecting 1956 Topps, 1967 Who Am I?, and lots of miscuts, printing errors and blank fronts and backs. I even got in touch with The Baseball Reliquary in Monrovia, California, about donating a hard copy of the baseball-card Casey at the Bat, but still haven't got my act together to send it along to them.

And all of these things slowly made me want to start writing about it all again. Not religiously blogging three or four times a day so that it gets in the way of me living the rest of my life. But simply writing about baseball cards when I have the time.

I had to take a year off. Now it's time to dust off the cobwebs, tinker with the setup, and see how long it will take me to put together a set by simply buying packs.

BH
January 1, 2010

Fantastic Card of the Day & More

Here's a question: How many shots did it take for Al Oliver to settle on this bat?

Also, if he ran out of bats, would he have posed holding a metal folding chair?





You may have been wondering: what happened to Ben, and why doesn't he post as much as he used to? Well, a lot is going on. I work two jobs, I teach blogging at MIT on weekends, and I'm winding down as a baseball card blogger.

I know I've made a number of different assertions as to the future of The Baseball Card Blog, but here's the truth:

I will stop writing The Baseball Card Blog as of January 1, 2009, if not sooner. The blog itself will stay up as a fully tagged and searchable archive of everything I've written over the past three years.

I've thought long and hard about this, and I've decided that The Baseball Card Blog needs to end. In my opinion, the best card blogs are those with a finite topic. For example, the stellar 1988 Topps Blog, where Andy K posts something about each and every card in the 1988 Topps and Topps Traded sets. When the sets end, the blog ends. It makes sense. But an open-ended blog about one collector reminiscing and finding his way back into the hobby he once loved? Three years is enough of that for me.

I'm not really interested in writing about the latest hobby trends, or new cards that I can't afford. When I really think about it, those are the very things that caused my interest to wan in the first place. I will still collect, and will remain open to trading. I will remain as the admin contact at A Pack A Day, as well as our brand new vlog spin-off APADtv.


Finally, I know I've made it a point to stick to the script on baseball cards, but I thought I'd make an exception. If you are vegan or enjoy vegan food and live in the San Francisco Bay Area, do yourself a favor and take a look at this new blog: Vegansaurus!. And if you've never tried vegan food, it's better than you think!

Idea for the Next Topps Gimmick Card

We all know it's coming, and I'm probably not too far off base to assume there's a room of monkeys with typewriters at One Whitehall coming up with ideas. I'm speaking, of course, about the next Topps gimmick card. Let's see, in the last three years they've sprung Guiliani and the Sox, the Bizarro Jeter, Poley Walnuts and the deftly geo-targeted whoopsie of Alex Gordon in Kansas-area Wal-Marts.

So what's next? I have an idea. Get someone like Manny Ramirez (a popular player who also seems a bit eccentric) to take out his braids and cut his hair like this:





My Photoshop skills used to be a lot better, but I think it would look something like this:




And you know, Manny doesn't even really have to do it. Presumably, Topps' graphic artists could just fake it. God knows they've had the practice. And if it's as big a hit as I think it will be, I think we'll be looking at a full blown insert set for Topps 2010.