I'm back from my vacation. It wasn't a real vacation even though I was off work.
I missed out on a few things last week.
The debut of one Mr. Strasburg comes to mind. You already know the stats from his first two games. Let's go ahead and put him in the Hall of Fame.
Maybe we'll hold off on the induction ceremony for a year or 20. Night Owl had a pretty nice post about one Karl Spooner who had a better start to his career than Strasburg. Unless you've already read Night Owl's post (and you should have) then you probably don't know who Spooner is and I hope Strasburg fares better than Spooner. I'd put a link to the post, but blogger is being cranky.
A more recent bout of hype surrounded this guy.
I used to have a ton of Mark Prior's rookie cards. They were sure to put my kids through college, even though he didn't get quite the hype Strasburg is getting. Anyone know where Prior is today?
I'm not bagging on Mark Prior. I'm sure he just tried the best he could. It's not like he and Spooner wanted to be injured. I'm also not blaming Stephen Strasburg for the hype and hysteria his debut has created. It's not his fault that Topps committed a major marketing blunder with the MCG website and the card pictured above. I even commented on a recent Cardboard Junkie post (again, no link thanks very much Blogger) saying I didn't want to buy any more Topps products. Really, who am I kidding. First of all, that is shortsighted. Every card blogger in the world isn't going to make much of a dent in Topps sales or rep by not buying or writing about their cards. Let's face it: TOPPS DOESN'T CARE ABOUT US! Sorry if that hurts your feelings. I couldn't care less about how many card roundtable Q & As Topps has letting "us" give our input and opinions. Face facts...they don't give a flying you know what. They are going to continue churning out products hoping to hit a winner like Ginter and they'll eat it up when a guy like Strasburg comes along. Don't think for a minute they aren't drooling all over themselves about Bryce Harper. Nothing would make them happier than to see Harper in a Nats uni next week.
I don't wish failure on Strasburg because I don't like him. It's only human to want to see someone succeed. I hope he goes on to a Hall of Fame career and makes all those people spending unbelievable amounts of money on his cards look like geniuses. But that doesn't happen very often. It's more likely we'll see him follow in Mark Prior's footsteps rather than Nolan Ryan's.
That was what we call a tangent. My original point was that I will still be buying Topps cards. Not just because they are the only game in town. I could just spend my money on vintage cards. Maybe I should, but I like Ginter, I even like the 2010 Flagship set. I love the MCG idea, even if they did pervert it somewhat by introducing the SP Strasburg. I'll just lump that in with all the other gimmicks and not worry about getting it for my set. If I end up with one, great. If not, I'm not losing any sleep over it.
Well, there were other things that happened last week, but at this point, who cares.
I did get three packages in the mail while I was gone and I still need to send Kerry his prize for the June contest.
It's nice to be back. Even if nobody knew I was gone.
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