Author Archives: Matthew Lug - Page 31

Brooklyn Cyclones 1, Lowell Spinners 0

Posted by on 7 August 2012 Comments Off on Brooklyn Cyclones 1, Lowell Spinners 0

Pitching and defense rule the day

Box Score

On a perfect evening for a baseball game, the Brooklyn Cyclones began a three-game series against the Lowell Spinners amid a sea of bobbling Jack Kerouaks. Those would prove to be the bulk of the bobbles in a game filled with stellar defensive plays by both teams. Despite outhitting the Spinners 9-4 (plus one walk for Brooklyn), the Cyclones only managed to score a single run on Jayce Boyd’s second home run of the year. Gabriel Ynoa went 7 scoreless innings for the Cyclones, giving up 4 hits and striking out 8. He got into a jam in the 6th but stranded runners on first and third. Paul Sewald picked up where Ynoa left off and recorded the final 6 outs to get the save. Sewald was a bit wild at the start of his outing, but the overeager Spinners ran up plenty of 2-strike counts on balls in the dirt. In addition to offense, a notable absence in this game was 2011 1st round draft pick Brandon Nimmo, who signed autographs before the game but did not play. Nimmo missed a second game after taking a pitch to the shoulder on Sunday.

Ks to the left and Ks to the right

Nelfi Zapata gets the first hit of the game and becomes the first of many stranded Cyclones baserunners

The Play at Third

Posted by on 29 July 2012 Comments Off on The Play at Third

The end of my (three year Little League) baseball career

With the way things have been going lately for the Mets, a lot of fans are throwing in the towel and looking forward to next year.  While that’s understandable, there are still a few dozen games left to play and the team can’t just forfeit them all.  Even the Astros, with nearly twice as many losses as wins, have to pull it together and try to scrape out a win day after day, knowing full well that what few wins they are able to come up with won’t get them any closer to a trip to the World Series than a Visa card would.  Things look almost as bleak right now for the Mets, but it’s not really that bad.  And this is how things felt for me when I walked away from baseball more than twenty years ago.

I should start by stressing that I was not a good baseball player.  Even for my age, I was painfully below average at throwing a baseball, catching a baseball, hitting a baseball, or even just being in the same room as a baseball.  Little League tryouts (meant to ensure that good, mediocre, and bad players were evenly distributed across all teams) were always embarrassing for me as they showed just what I wasn’t capable of doing (which, as I said, was everything).  Inevitably, each season would start and end with a mediocre performance around a prolonged slump in the middle.  I was terrible and my team always sucked (one may have had something to do with the other).

Or at least that’s how it seemed at the time.  I very rarely spent an inning without playing in the field, which must have put me ahead of the players who only fielded for half of the game.  My teams never had a losing record, going 8-8 in my first season and, as I recall, improving in each of the two following seasons, which would put us at 10-5 going into the final game of my final season.  We must have been doing something right to be winning two thirds of our games, but it still felt like we weren’t good enough because there were teams that almost never lost.  It was always the best teams that we measured ourselves against and we always came up short.

Never was that more apparent than in a game against the Twins.  Inning after inning, run after run, we were so completely outmatched that we were putting anyone who could get a ball to the plate on the mound in the hopes of getting one out closer to going home.  I stood useless in right field contemplating sitting down or taking a nap.  By the time the final out was recorded, the scoreboard read 35 to 5.  We should have been crushed.  We should have walked away from the sport right there.  We should have been ashamed to set foot on a baseball field ever again.  But we brushed it off and went into practice as usual, the only change being an emphasis on expanding our pitching capabilities.  We lost by 30 runs and the only result was a mandatory pitching evaluation for the everyone on the team.

With that experience behind us, we went into our final game of the season against the dreaded A’s.  While the Twins were good, the A’s were on a whole other level.  Everything about that team just screamed that they were better than we were and the result was a foregone conclusion.  Eight and a half innings later, our loss was all but assured.  I don’t remember the score, but we were down by several runs, something on the order of 8 to 4 – not a shutout, not a blowout, but still well out of reach by the bottom of the ninth.  I had an at-bat coming up, now well clear of my annual mid-season slump.  I knew that I couldn’t win the game.  I knew that we probably wouldn’t win the game.  But I also knew that I had to try to start something to give us a chance.  We had been down worse before without giving up, we could still make these three outs count.

I was standing on second base.  I’m not sure how I got there.  I remember someone telling me to choke up, but I don’t think I knew what that meant at the time.  Maybe it was a double or maybe it was a single and a passed ball (those were a given at that level), but I was standing in scoring position in a game we had no business winning.  A lot more would have to go right even if I managed to score, but we weren’t done yet.  And then the ball got past the catcher.

In the movie version, this is where the throw to third bounces into the outfield and I head home to start the rally that wins the game.  In my version, this is where the low light, my mediocre vision, and the poor view from second base combine to make me uncertain of what to do.  I started toward third, looked at the third base coach, and stopped when there was no sign.  No run, no stop, no acknowledgement that there was even a game going on.  Just a guy standing on the grass minding his own business.  Was it a given that I shouldn’t be running here?  Was it obvious that I could make it to third easily?  I couldn’t see what was happening with the ball behind the plate, but by now I had probably wasted too much time for it to matter, I had to commit to an action.  So I ran.

It wasn’t even close.  I watched the ball go into the glove and dove headfirst into the bag.  Out.  I got up, uniform dirty and hands bloody, and walked back to the dugout.  I don’t know what out it was, but it didn’t matter; the game was over for me.  I was upset, I was angry, not at the outcome but at how it happened.  Why did I hesitate?  Why didn’t the third base coach do anything?  I didn’t want to talk to anyone, I just wanted to go home.  I had failed, but at least I tried.  When I needed help, it wasn’t there.  Was I wrong to expect that help?  Should I have been expected to be able to do everything myself?  I wanted to blame the third base coach for everything, but maybe I just wasn’t willing to take the blame myself.  Either way, this wasn’t the game I wanted to play.  I may have played the game poorly, but I did everything I could to help the team until the final out.  I had thought that’s how everyone felt, but now I wasn’t sure.

As I walked back to the parking lot in a daze, I passed the A’s celebrating their season at some picnic tables on the side of the path.  Their manager was reading off the players’ batting averages and other stats and everyone was cheering.  Batting average?  Our team didn’t keep track of such things, probably for the best.  I really didn’t need to know if I was batting .095, though I would guess that the actual number could be even lower.  It had never even occurred to me that any of us could have stats that were good, and there was a team filled with them.  I was clearly in the wrong place, I didn’t belong here.

The uniform was washed and returned, the wounds on my hands healed.  When summer came around again, I didn’t have any games or practices on my schedule.  Whenever anyone asked why I didn’t play anymore, I just said that I wasn’t any good at it.  My reasons went deeper than that, but it was too much trouble explaining how I couldn’t trust anyone else to be treating the games seriously.  And maybe that part was my fault anyway.  I wasn’t any good so I just stopped playing, that was the story I stuck with.

I would like to say that at least I had my memories of three years of Little League, but I remember so little from those years.  From my first two years in Instructional League (good players advance after one year, bad players stay for two and are bumped up by default afterward), I remember my first hit (which came to rest about a foot in front of me and only wasn’t an out because the catcher was slow to react), I remember taking so many pitches that I wore out the pitcher (there were no called balls or strikes and the pitchers were all adults), and I remember wearing catching equipment and being terrible at catching the ball (I’m not sure how I wound up as a catcher that year).  From my one season in Minor League, I remember the above and little else.  I was hit by a pitch once or twice (it hurt) and I played half a game in the infield twice (once at second and once at third) but remember nothing from the games themselves.  Maybe it’s for the best that I walked away.

So what does this have to do with the Mets?  Nothing really, except we’ve entered the phase of the season where everything seems hopeless.  But is it really?  We tend to be most critical of things we follow the most closely.  The Mets have a losing record, wasting a great start.  The bullpen still sucks and the starting rotation is breaking down.  Duda is slumming it in AAA, Nickeas has only just been demoted, and Batista has only just been released.  Even bright spots are easy to dismiss as mirages; Harvey looked great in his first start, but will he still be dominant once teams have seen him a few times?  The long season is growing shorter and the postseason doesn’t look to be in the Mets’ future.

That doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy what’s left and hope for things to turn around.  They probably won’t.  The end could be embarrassing.  But if things break just right, or even only a little bit right, it could be interesting.  This team has seen all sorts of highs and lows so far this season and keeps on playing hard.  And that’s all I can ask of them.

CTM Mailbag – July 2012

Posted by on 8 July 2012 Comments Off on CTM Mailbag – July 2012

Time for a break

The All-Star break is just hours away, the Mets are sitting in Wild Card position (well, tied for the second one at least), and the hobby is in full swing with new product releases almost every week.  It’s a good time to be collecting, until you see the credit card bill (Yikes!).  With so much out there to cover, I’m off on a trip and I’ll be back in a couple of weeks.  Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about the Museum Collection review, the text has been done for over a month…

juliana-herron  wrote:

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And that the wife really bought me breakfast because I came across it for him.
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Huge thumb up as of this short article!

Gary Carter is a special case in the hobby, one that I expect we’ll see more of as time robs us of our heroes one by one.  Carter has the unfortunate honor of being the first major hobby fixture to die in the era of widespread autograph and memorabilia cards.  Since 1999, Carter’s autograph has been found on countless thousands of baseball cards.  His last on-card autographs were released last year, but he continues to have sticker autograph cards released, the most recent being in Museum Collection, Archives, and Topps Series 2.  It’s anyone’s guess how many sticker autographs Topps has stockpiled and I’m sure Topps isn’t going to reveal that information.  There is no precedent here, but Carter’s condition was known for long enough to allow Topps to load up on autographs, possibly by the thousand.  We’ll just have to wait and see how Topps handles this going forward; this could set a precedent for how recently-deceased player autographs are treated.

Bigas wrote:

Value the particular democratic tactic but the conclusive solution should be open sooner or later. Nevertheless several essential stepping blocks had been established directly into location.

Aside from Wright getting beaten out for the starting role by San Francisco’s ballot stuffing efforts, the Mets did well with their All-Star selections.  Wright is back in top form and Dickey has been dominating, so those were a given.  Santana would have been nice to see, but there are a lot of deserving pitchers in the NL that didn’t make the cut and he is kind of rehabbing from major shoulder surgery.  On the Ex-Met front, Carlos Beltran managed to hold on to his starting spot while Chris Capuano joins Santana on list of not quite All-Stars.  The AL is once more devoid of former Mets.  Three current/former Mets is the norm for the All-Star Game, but having first-timer Dickey on the list is what makes this year special.  This should guarantee that Dickey gets a jersey card this year, though his pinstriped pants are also in the mix.  If you don’t want to wait for some game-used Dickey jersey, you can buy your own Dickey All-Star jersey and have people behind you wondering why there’s Dickey on your back.  Shop via the link given here and you’ll be helping out another Mets blog (I, um, forgot about this when I ordered mine, then I found out that the link doesn’t load in my browser…).  Speaking of Dickey…

Mister Mandarin wrote:

the govt secret black budget ELF towers and 02 towers are radiating the planet and beaming microwaves into peoples heads (causing deaf people to hear sounds or voices in their heads) its actually sick when you think JAPAN FUKISHIMA tsunami was 100% man-made caused by an underwater nuke, google it and research if you don’t believe me…… don’t expect to hear it on the BBC though ;)

I’m surprised nobody called me on the omission of Dickey’s Team USA autograph card in the Player Spotlight I did for him.  Back then, that card was impossible to find, but now it’s insanely overpriced ($150 seems to be the going price on eBay).  While having his first certified autograph card would be nice, now is not the time to buy.  Phil Humber’s perfect game conveniently spurred sales on eBay by people hoping to cash in but couldn’t overcome the reality that he’s Phil Humber, which was enough for his performance and card prices to tank.  Dickey is no Humber, but prices should settle down a bit once the novelty of a 37 year old knuckleballer having the breakout pitching performance of the season wears off.  It could happen, right?  Eh, I think I’ll wait for a certified autograph card with Dickey in a Mets uniform.

jeremy butts wrote:

hi i was wondering if you where willing to sell the josh edgin red wave card

Unless specifically noted, cards shown on this site are not available for sale or trade.  If you wanted one of those cards, you should have gotten one when several were available for less than $10.  Timing is everything.

The Amazin’ Mites?

Posted by on 3 July 2012 Comments Off on The Amazin’ Mites?

The Mets receive an unflattering Joe job

Over at Mets Police, they covered the The Amazing Spiderman and the Amazin’ Mets in honor of the new Amazing Spider-Man film.  Well, Spider-Man isn’t the only Marvel comic franchise that was supposed to have a movie opening this summer.  Until somebody noticed that 3D movies have higher ticket prices (even if the 3D is from a second-rate conversion), we were due to get the second installment of the “Does Channing Tatum really have to be in everything that Shia LaBeouf isn’t working on?” G.I. Joe movie franchise.  And as you might have guessed, G.I. Joe also has a Mets connection.

Back in the late ’80s, G.I. Joe comics were in high demand.  In search of more money (some things never change…), Marvel added a second Joe comic to the monthly rotation: G.I. Joe Special Missions.  The Special Missions series often featured standalone stories that were unrelated to the main comic storyline and/or documented events that were kept secret from the bulk of the Joe team.  Published toward the end of the 28-issue run in August 1989, G.I. Joe Special Missions #24 was a story that most fans wish had been kept secret from the public.  Titled “Ladies’ Day,” the issue takes place at a baseball game between “the World Champion New York Mites and their fierce cross-town rivals, the New York Dandees.”  The game is attended by the newly-elected President, setting up the preposterous action that follows.  Don’t try to make sense of the timing, this issue has much bigger problems.

I don’t know if they changed the team names because of rights issues or because of how terrible this issue is, but they kept the thinly-veiled Mary Sue fanfiction naming convention for the player names too.  The Mites lineup includes Wooky Millston, Seth Kernandez, and Darren Blueberry.  They don’t mention any of the Dandees, but we do see a uniform with the name (yeah, I know…) Beachum on the back, so I guess that would make him Mobby Beachum.  So who is responsible for these, um, creative names?  It’s not the comic’s usual (and, after 30 years, current) writer Larry Hama, who is known for crafting engaging stories that still hold up decades later.  No, the writing credit goes instead to Hama’s usual artist, Herb Trimpe.  And what happens when you let a comic book artist write?  Well, for starters, this:

Well, the intended audience is young boys…

We open a baseball game with leggy dancing girls griping about being objectified by assholes like whoever wrote this crap.  And what are the guys disguised as?  Batboys?  Hot dog vendors?  Nope, Cobra called dibs on those:

Exploding hot dogs. Exploding hot dogs…

The Joes, a (poorly-kept) secret military organization, were in full uniform standing next to their toys outside the stadium, where they are sure to be a lot of help.  Until Crystal Ball, one of Cobra’s hokiest gimmick characters, hypnotizes them by showing them his accessory disc thingy.

Nothing gets by these guys

Cobra’s ranks also include Raptor (the guy who dresses like a bird) and a Cobra Commander impostor in battle armor in addition to the aforementioned Firefly disguised as a hot dog vendor and Zarana dressed like a Mites ball girl.  Everybody gets a stupid costume!  Even the blimp got in on the fun.

What, no Yood Gear?

As for the action, um, there were some smoke bombs, some fighting in a blimp, the baseball-themed Joe pitching a smoke grenade that gets batted up to the blimp, and a Presidential rescue.  All of this would add up to a mediocre episode of the mediocre ’80s cartoon, but the comic series was held to a higher standard (at least as much as Hama could get away with it, selling toys was always the main reason for the comic’s existence).  Ladies’ Day is widely considered to be the worst issue of the original comic run and possibly the entire G.I. Joe franchise.  I usually enjoy having something from the Mets show up in my other collections, but this is one I could have done without.

Clearly this is predicting the reaction to this issue

2012 Mets Draft Class Autographs

Posted by on 19 June 2012 1 comment

Bowman signs the firsts, Panini fills in the rest

Full list of 2012 Mets draft picks

With 2012 Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects and 2012 Panini Elite Extra Edition now out, six of the 2012 draft picks have new autographs. Gavin Cecchini and Kevin Plawecki made their debuts with Bowman, while Matt Reynolds, Matt Koch, Branden Kaupe, and Logan Taylor had to wait for Panini’s clock to strike 2012 in January 2013. Reynolds did have redemption cards for Bowman Black autographs, but those have yet to ship. Panini had to settle for redemptions for Kevin Plawecki in Elite Extra Edition, leaving Gavin Cecchini as the only player with live autographs in both products.

1 Gavin Cecchini 1S Kevin Plawecki 2 Matt Reynolds 2 Teddy Stankiewicz (DNS)
3 Matt Koch 4 Branden Kaupe 5 Brandon Welch 6 Jayce Boyd
7 Corey Oswalt 8 Tomas Nido 9 Richie Rodriguez 10 Paul Sewald
11 Logan Taylor 12 Robert Whalen 14 Chris Flexen 17 Stefan Sabol

Previous Entries:

Gavin Cecchini leads off the era of capped draft spending

With new rules limiting spending and a rather unspectacular draft class, it was anyone’s guess how this draft would play out. Would the top talent fall to late in the first round or beyond? Would teams risk losing future picks to sign this year’s picks? Would signability dominate the early picks in the absence of a consensus top pick? Will players opt for college or football over the diminished bonus pot? The results won’t be known for a few years, but for now it looks the Mets are playing it safe with signable known quantities over signing, injury, or talent risks. You can’t really fault them for that approach in this draft. And Cecchini looked pretty damn good in Mets pinstripes while getting giddy over the thought of playing alongside David Wright.

When it comes to cards, you can’t really expect much from draftees on draft day, especially high schoolers. It was a surprise seeing three players in this year’s draft class who already had Team USA certified autograph and game-used memorabilia cards (first-rounder Gavin Cecchini, second-rounder Matt Reynolds, and 34th round pick Mikey White), plus two more with cards from the AFLAC/Perfect Game All-American game (Corey Oswalt and Stefan Sabol) that may show up signed in packs of future products (and are available now without certified autographs). Of those listed, only Stankiewicz and White remain unsigned (White is said to have declined to sign in favor of college). The early signings resulting from the earlier signing deadline mean that several of this year’s draft picks are already playing with Kingsport and Brooklyn.

Previous Editions:

2011 Mets Draft Class Autographs

Upper Deck: A Love Story (Part 2)

Posted by on 18 June 2012 Comments Off on Upper Deck: A Love Story (Part 2)

The 1990s, decade of despair

This is the middle act in a three-part series documenting my 20+ year on-again/off-again relationship as a procurer of cardboard rectangles from The Upper Deck Company, LLC.  When we left off in Upper Deck: A Love Story (Part 1), a chance encounter brought Upper Deck into my life just as the card collecting hobby went mainstream in a big way.  Now our relationship would be put to the test.

By 1990, card shops were fading and card shows were the new fad.  Collectors would pack malls, event halls, or any available open space in the hopes of scoring the next big thing.  The hobby was in full swing and I was finally invited to the party; it was a great time to collect cards.

At the time, I was heavily invested in Donruss, working on a set that somehow never got finished.  While this was the first product that I had opened an entire box of (my entire life up to this point had been pack-to-pack), my brother had graduated to breaking cases with a massive purchase of 1990 Topps, a set that I would soon grow to despise after long hours tearing through wax to build sets and pull cards of young stars Ken Griffey Jr. and Frank Thomas.

That summer, I once more found myself in possession of packs of Upper Deck, this time 1990 Upper Deck High Number Edition.  The price of the 1989 product, which was now finally available locally, was far above what I could afford, but the current product was still within reach.  And so, recalling my experience from the previous year, I once more dove in to sample the newcomer’s latest offering.

This time around, the design elements were limited to just a strip along the top representing the basepath from first to second, a rather dull continuation of the theme started by 1989’s first base path.  The quality remained the same, but it wasn’t new and exciting anymore.  Until I opened the pack that held a treasure unlike anything I had ever seen before.

In retrospect, that card wasn’t as special as it seemed at the time, but it was more significant to the history of the hobby than my big 1989 pull.  This time, the card bore no name or number, just the words “Baseball Heroes” on the front and some text on the back about Reggie Jackson.  What could it be?  In the thrill of the moment, I scrutinized the back of the pack for any clues to the identity of the wondrous gem I had unwrapped.  For a moment, I thought that just maybe this could be the rare find mentioned in the odds listing, but that card was supposed to be autographed – this one clearly was not.  Instead, it seemed to be from the Reggie Jackson Baseball Heroes set, but why didn’t it have a number or a picture of Reggie Jackson?  I was holding the first-ever Baseball Heroes header card and a new obsession had just begun.

The “Find the Reggie” Reggie Jackson Baseball Heroes set became known as the first commercially-successful insert set in the history of the hobby.  While inserts of various kinds had existed for many years, none had surpassed the popularity of the base product.  Upper Deck changed that in 1990 and started a mad rush to make, and pull, the next hot inserts.  In just two years, Upper deck had transformed the hobby into something that closely resembles what we have today.  This was the biggest change since the standardization on the 3.5″x2.5″ card size and I was right there in the middle of it.

Or at least I wanted to be.  My heart was with Upper Deck, but my wallet took me in a different direction.  The following year, I put my resources into 1991 Score, a massive set that, like 1990 Donruss before it, remains painfully incomplete.  Pack after pack, I worked my way through stars, prospects, draft picks, highlights, and the extra special Dream Team inserts.  Series 1 gave way to Series 2, as had become standard practice in many products that year.  All the while, Upper Deck remained on the periphery, just a pleasant distraction and little more.

1991 was when Upper Deck fell behind in the pursuit of quality in baseball cards.  That year, Topps and Fleer introduced high-quality glossy cards with full-bleed photographs in their Stadium Club and Ultra products, respectively.  I barely noticed, unable to fund the purchase of such superior cards.  The arms race was well underway.

Oh, how the hobby had changed by 1992.  Premium lines were sprouting up everywhere and even Bowman and Donruss had gone premium.  Triple Play (which makes an intriguing return this year) was introduced by Donruss to fill the gap in the low-end market, but it was a failure in every possible way (and how is it that, despite buying so much of it, I never came close to finishing that tiny set?).  Upper Deck, finally done with the basepath motif after 1991’s design overdid it with the entire left half of the diamond, released what may be its most forgettable design.  No longer the hot new product, Upper Deck dropped in value.

Three years ahead of its time

Which meant I could finally buy in big time!  At last, I could afford to pick up boxes of 1991 and 1992 low and high number editions.  Between the base set, the Baseball Heroes inserts, the occasional SP-numbered card, and those hologram stickers, I had plenty to work on.  And plenty to get frustrated about when Upper Deck’s trademark collation problems became apparent.  Still with us to this day, Upper Deck’s style of collation is guaranteed to get you lots of extra cards you don’t need and lots of missing cards no matter how many packs you buy.  I desperately wanted to enjoy these products, but every box was like a slap in the face with double after double and little progress toward finishing a set.  It didn’t take long to get disillusioned with the entire process.

Super premiums were introduced in 1993, cards seemingly designed to push me out of the hobby.  While I could afford to sample a pack or two of each new hot product, there was no way to build a decent stock in any of them unless I focused on one to the exclusion of all others.  In my misguided focus on quantity over quality, I kept buying up anything that was cheap.  Upper Deck’s SP should have been my focus that year, but I bought two packs and moved on, drifting from product to product in search of something I never found.

Shock.  Disbelief.  Betrayal.  This is what I felt when Upper Deck moved its mainline product up a tier to the new premium level in 1994.  It had moved on to a new price class and I couldn’t follow.  Worst of all, the Baseball Heroes insert set, which I had meticulously assembled in a set of binder pages over the previous four years, continued in the new premium format.  All of my work came to a screeching halt.

Because "Collector's Last Refuge from Increasing Prices" was too cumbersome

As a consolation, Upper Deck introduced Collector’s Choice, which, like Triple Play before it, was a low-priced product aimed at kids without the resources to collect the “real” product.  And so that’s where I focused my efforts, searching out Alex Rodriguez and Michael Jordan rookies and silver and gold signature cards.  This was my life now, this was who I was.  I could enjoy it or leave.

And then came 1995.  While on the surface it appeared to be more of the same, there were major changes in the works.  I resumed my efforts on Collector’s Choice, almost entirely ignoring regular Upper Deck and SP, but now there was a Collector’s Choice SE.  Huh?  I never understood the point of this blue-bordered clone of Collector’s Choice, but that didn’t stop me from buying it.  Elsewhere, the hobby was getting more cluttered than ever, with six manufacturers all putting out multitudes of products and trying to find the next big innovation in card design, failing more often than not.  I couldn’t take it anymore.

And so ends this chapter in my life with Upper Deck.  I picked up a few packs in drug stores over the next summer and apparently a couple packs of whatever UD3 was in 1997, but those would be stashed away in random places and forgotten for several years.  The hobby would undergo a metamorphosis in the meantime, but I had no patience for the ugly and messy early stages.  If not for an improbable sequence of events, I might never have seen what would one day emerge from the chaos and uncertainty of the 1990s.

Next: Upper Deck: A Love Story (Part 3)