St. Harold Baines Day?

I ran across this posting today about St. Harold Baines Day. I thought it was fun and wanted to share with the rest of the class.

It's funny and informative at the same time. The author suspects Harold to be part ninja. It may surprise you to know that Harold went 1 for 4 with 2 RBIs on the day he was born.

Could Harold be the only man to collect more hits than words spoken in his career? I know it was part of the joke, but it might actually be true. Harold did an interview on a White Sox Spring Training broadcast this year. It was the most I've ever heard him speak. I had actually forgotten what his voice sounded like.

This is truly a man of few words. He let his bat do the speaking for him in his career. Now that he's a coach, I'm sure he must have to speak slightly more often than when he was a player. A mute coach isn't really effective.

Happy 2008

Happy New Year everyone! Sorry for the lack of posts lately. The holidays have taken more of my time than I ever expected. I should resume regular posting shortly. There may be a few days here and there where there will only be a single post. Hopefully, there won't be many days that go by without a post.

2008 should bring joy and excitement. Everybody's team is given a fresh start. All the card releases for 2008 will be new at this point. Jim Thome may actually take the field in a few games again. Well, that's true every year. It's called interleague play, and yes, I am a fan of that. I just think MLB should spread it out throughout April until the end of August. They should have an interleague game or two scheduled everyday and then nothing but division play in September. I always thought it would be more exciting that way.

Something coming up later in the week, will be a completed trade between myself and Mario at Wax Heaven. Mario only got two cards, one of which was his holy grail card, and in return I got a massive amount of White Sox cards. Some I had, which will go to Tracey's nephew, and a lot I did not have. My fiancee's nephew and I both thank you Mario. I still have to go through the pile this week and catalogue it all. Rest assured there will be getting a full report in this blog.

By the way, if anyone would like to initiate a trade, visit my want list page and e-mail me. I'm sure we can work something out. I won't list what I have available for trade, because that would occupy even my sleep, but if you are looking for a specific team, player or card, I'll see if I have anything that fits your criteria.

Post Holiday Bliss

Well, my holiday was not entirely baseball free, thank goodness. I saw bits of Mark Buehrle's no-hitter and Jim Thome's 500th homer games on Chicago's local Comcast Sports station. They also replayed a Cubs game that my future mother-in-law was interested in.

No baseball cards unwrapped at Christmas this year, but that's OK. Tracey and I got a lot of gift cards that we will use in 2008. Mostly department stores and restaurants, but one came from a movie theater with style called Hollywood Blvd. It's a place where you can eat a sit down meal and have alcohol in a comfy leather chair and see a first run feature. It's the only place that I'll really go to see a movie.

I was reminded of this fact when Tracey, her sister and I caught a Christmas Day movie at a theater around her. I could barely move in the seat. We saw National Treasure: Book Of Secrets. The first one was slightly better, but that's not saying much. I accept it for what it is, a mindless popcorn movie. I saw a lot of actors slumming it for a paycheck, which is always amusing. The Goofy cartoon that preceded the movie was much better. It was a throwback to the Goofy cartoons from the 50's. It was about how to set up a high definition home theater system. I'm also a movie nut, so it was very funny to me.

When I got a free moment today, I checked the obligatory blogs and sites and ran across this at Wax Heaven. I was intrigued by the headline "White Sox Cards blog saves Christmas". I was very pleased to see that Mario got the cards that I sent over to him. I was hoping that they would arrive on Christmas Eve, but you can't make the U.S. Post Office go any faster, especially around this time of year. I imagine it's a madhouse around there during the holidays.

I hope everyone else had a wonderful holiday and got something that they can brag about. No matter if it was a gift, a gesture, or just being with the ones you love, I hope everyone had something positive this holiday.

OK, I'm done. Back to baseball cards and White Sox related stuff.

Happy Holidays

Off to relative's houses! Just wanted to write a quick post to wish everyone happy holidays! Whether you celebrate Christmas, Chanukah, Solstice, Kwanzaa, Ramadan and Eid, Festivus, Futurama-style X-Mas, or any of the other holiday celebrations at this time of the year, I hope they are festive and full of friends, family and fun.

Whatever you celebrate and whatever team is "your team", I hope your holidays are filled with baseball and baseball cards, in addition to family, friends and fun.


I leave you with Five Christmas Wishes by Steve Martin.

Hey Bud, Let's Party!

When you're marrying into another family, you have certain obligations that go along into that. I don't even want to go into obligations for marrying into your own family. Not my place at all.

One of those obligations is the family party. You'll notice that I haven't posted since early Saturday. Well, Saturday early afternoon was my fiancée's paternal side holiday extravaganza. Yes, the beloved Christmas party. I had fun, but it took me away from the computer for almost two days. I did sneak in for a minute to check e-mail, but that was it.

Seven hours of eating, greeting, watching bad Bulls basketball and picking grab bag gifts was exhausting. Throw in the fact that I'm sleeping in a strange bed because the streets were a sheet of ice and you get a good picture of the past two days.

I've enjoyed all the great feedback I've been getting. Thank you to everyone who's left a note. All of it is read and all of it is appreciated. I will get back to the White Sox and baseball cards a little later in the day. Since the mad rush of postings the last few weeks, this probably seemed like a shock. Life unfortunately intrudes sometimes, but back to the grind.

You may be wondering why I picked the 2005 Topps Chrome Red X-Fractor to accompany this post. Well, simply, it looks festive. No other reason. It's red and sparkly. It reminds me of a Christmas present and what better present than a World Championship the year this card came out.