Christie Brinkley...

...Irradiating your balls since 1996.

1996 Pinnacle Christie Brinkley Collection #8 - Marquis Grissom

And she looks so happy about doing it to poor Marquis!

Sadist.

GERONIMO!!!!

I think he should go by Geronimo Jansen instead...

It Only Cost Me $1...

...to confirm that Anna Kournikova is indeed a "10."

2003 Netpro Tennis - #10 - Anna Kournikova - Graded

He's Back!

A4!  The one-and-only!

Let's Celebrate!

 

Cigarette Cards - The Ginter of the Past (and the Future?)

I recently saw a link that the New York Public Library had digitized their giant collections of cigarette cards.  The navigation panel on the side of that page has hundreds of different sets that you can look at, ranging from historical notables, "beauties", flowers, ships, animals, birds, military, etc.  If you are interested in any way at the "oddball" (non-baseball) parts of Allen and Ginter, set aside a little time and go for a browse through that archive.

While I have not looked at all of them yet, my personal favorite thus far was the "How To Do It" sets (Set 1 and Set 2) from Gallaher's Cigarettes.  

The first card I liked was "How to Draw an Ellipse" (seen above).  The front of each card features the drawing showing you what to do, and the back features the descriptive text like this:

This is the kind of knowledge we need today!!  You could put these out on a subset of Allen and Ginter and give people instructions so they wouldn't have to use that new-fangled internet.

That set also included:

How to draw a duck with the pencil still on the paper:

How to judge the freshness of a lobster:

How to bandage your foot:

How to read the gas meter:

How to tie Useful Knots:

Having done a lot of camping when I was younger, we learned a lot of knots for various uses.  This is the subject matter that I would LOVE to see replicated in an upcoming subset of  Allen and Ginter.  Please make it happen, Topps!

Comment:  After looking through that archive, what cigarette card set did you like the best, or what would you like to see on a future Ginter subset?

Royals Rookies Roster

There was an announcement this week that the Royals had added Raul Adalberto Mondesi to their World Series roster, even though he had never played in a Major League game before.  That's all well and good, but the big impact is going to come from these two rookies here:

Those are my two little guys, repping the Royals with their new shirts from Grandma and Grandpa.  One of the helmets was my souvenir from going to my first Royals game in 1986.

This is an exciting time to be a Royals fan.  We stole Game 1, and then Cueto dominated in Game 2 to put us up 2-0.  Tenets of Wilson's projections have us at an 82% chance of taking the series now.

My little guy is almost two...He has never seen a World Series that didn't have the Royals in it -- what a charmed life.

Bonus points to anyone who recognizes the trading-card-related item that's seen in one of the pictures of my sons.  Can you spot it?

Any Jose Altuve Collectors Out There?

Leave a comment or send me an email.  I pulled something that may interest you.