Thank You, Blogosphere, For These Delightful Reminders of My Gloriously Misspent Youth.

From the time I became a hardcore baseball geek at 10 years old up until my high school years, I was an obscenely dedicated baseball card collector. I tried to get my hands on just about everything that came out circa 1981 to 1987, as well as trolling the local card shop for stuff from before then. Those old cards and players still have a pretty powerful nostalgic pull for me, even though the card collection is essentially gone. (In college, I sold most of it to buy camera equipment.)

That's why I've been going gaga lately over the writing at The Baseball Card Blog. Don't let the dry blog name fool you -- Ben, the proprietor, is putting up some of the most hilarious blog writing I've read in a long time, plus his years of obssessive childhood collecting roughly parallel mine, making for some great flashbacks.

And, as a companion piece, there is Joe Sports Fan's Worthless Card Collection, which offers much of the same, but in much smaller doses.

(Now, you'll notice that I said above that I sold "most" of my collection. I still have a few favorites that I didn't want to part with, including a '68 Topps Don Drysdale, Fernando Valenzuela's '81 Fleer rookie card. And, most significantly, there is the '82 Fleer Cal Ripken rookie card, which may or may not be able to pay our rent some day....)

Mama, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Wingnuts.

The Toronto Star is covering an interesting bit of research about the links between childhood personality and adult political leanings. If this research proves true, does this mean that the havoc being wreaked by our current (mal)administration is just the result of... bad parenting? You be the judge.

(Although how they managed to find any kids at all who grew up conservative in Berkeley is beyond me...)

Goodbye, Dear Friend.

144b:

This is so much better than cooking bacon nude.

The capping community got a blow today, learning that our beloved friend Bert Tilley (better known as 144b) passed away on Feb. 20. We lost a great one -- a marvelous storyteller, a generous and kind-hearted friend, and one hell of a funny capper (even when his delightfully mangled spelling and syntax got in the way). The world is a little bit sadder place without him in it. He was incredibly well-loved, and I hope he never forget that.