I am trying to train myself to write in my spiral notebook and not on my viral blog this week but I do have three ideas, maybe four of what I would write about otherwise.

1) I bought a pack of Topps baseball cards, read them over for insights and snarkasms, shot them with my stupid phone and sent them to my email acount, for uploading hereinning. Meanwhile, rain delay…

2) Maroon 5 is apparently doing a special show for 1,000 at Stanford Shopping Center — would this violate the new noise ban, do they have a permit?? Tomorrow or Thursday, for a large electronics device store’s grand opening. I was gonna mine mine emails for the time I sent a semi-span based on the strange overlap I noticed between Yale, Willie Mays, the number 24 and Adam Levine. Don’t recall what it was…article in RS started on page 24 perhaps.

3. Meanwhile, I ate at Peter Fang’s restaurant at 660 Howard and noted that the street address equals Willie May’s homer total AND that said slugger’s middle name is same as Street. Willie’s porno name would be 660 Howard or something. Peter Fang is his real name, I think, or so my deep throated sources tell me, or it just rose out of the grey matter like acid reflex. Willie Mays’ safe word is “slide”. Or would he?

4. Bonus trek is something about Dartmouth soccer and “Oh, the places you’ll go, once you pull the keeper…” edita: this is far from baseball but I saw earlier that Matt Marquess the Gunn grad played six matches for Kansas City of MLS and is NOT the son of the Stanford baseball coach.

Five: Consider the state of literature at the moment. Consider the rise of the memoir, the incidences of contrived and fabricated memoirs, the rash of imputations of plagiarism in novels, the overall ill health of the mainstream novel. Consider, too, culture outside of literature: reality TV, the many shades and variations of documentary film, the rise of the curator, the rise of the D.J., sampling, appropriation, the carry-over of collage from modernism into postmodernism. Now consider that all these elements might somehow be connected, might represent different aspects of some giant whatsit that will eventually constitute the cultural face of our time in the eyes of the future… What all those things have in common is that they express or fulfill a need for reality, a need that is not being met by the old and crumbling models of literature.

I guess inappropriation is when you forget to put the link, or you lie to counsel, or forget on which photo your poser is based.

Ok, the baseball cards:

GORDON, LA — I liked the little trophy, which dates back to Ken Hubbs at least, or ultimately, in his sad case. My quibble was that the back touted the dude’s speed on the base paths so why did they put a picture of him on defense.

REYNOLDS, Baltimore – News to me, this guy, who has a lot of power. On the other hand, is it cruel to point out he is the easiest whiff in the land, and that at 230 or so, he has not hit his weight since 2009 and is not doing any better so far this April.

GUTIERREZ, Seattle — I am going to hold on to this guy’s card, and maybe put it in my vault because the stats on the verso are for a Washington pitcher and not a position player from Seattle. With more hours in the day, I could comb through my Baseball Almanac and call this error by it’s proper name.

The chief myersist of the search injuns leads me to believe that Topps has seen fit to attach Sean Burnett’s numbers onto the card of Gutierez. And not to nit-pick but I found a number of cards, in my pack of 12, wherein the stats listed “3B” twice, that is for both double and triple columns. Also, it lists “W” for both wins and walks; I would suggest “BB” (base on balls).

MONTERO, Arizona – I am forgetting now, since I left the stash in my new baseball-hotdog-apple-pie-mobile, what I learned from this 2×3″ oracle, but I think I noted that he is one of about 200 Venezuelans in the show, all time, and that he broke the Arizona record for extra base hits by a catcher — hence the thing about 3B having too many plate appearances so to speak.

i think that is kinzler he is blocking

HOLLIDAY – This is pretty esoteric but I recall going to a Giants game about four years ago and hecking this guy and one of his fans, a lady, sat a couple rows ahead of me and tried to correct my rant. I said “Go back to Canada!” and she said he was from U.S. I guess I crossed him with Matt Stairs if they both overlapped briefly for the A’s. He’a an Okie and almost won the Triple Crown once; somebody already compared him to the Mick.

This is a weird "in action" shot. I miss the days of posing for Topps.

As sort of a seventh inning stretch dealio I am interrupting my own screed to shout out to Harris and Boyd classic flipping trading book; I must own an earlier edition that this 1991:

THOME and RIPKIN — I got two weird cards in my batch of twelve. Somewhere along the line, where they went into darkness and sorta out again, like adding lights to Wrigley then having a power outage like we had at a recent Niners game that I was not there, baseball cards started going all Willy Wonka and putting something extra special in some packs. Not sure where these rank but the Jim Thome card was in honor of him being like the 11th guy to hit 600 homers or something and the Cal Ripken was in honor of him going 6 for 6 one day or night against the Braves in interleague play, if that merits an asterisk. The cards face says something weird to me about Cal “unloading” which sounds like solving his constipation or something, and worse it says “on the A-T-L” which took me a minute to solve to the obvious town not a weird acronym for playoffs (LCS, DS whatever). And the “AL” the junior circuit has a “TM” for trademark, whatever. Also while I am on a roll or falling of the mound like Stu Miller there is too much wordage in the little barely legible note of copyright including a URL and a “code”? Maybe my sick connotation for the Ripkin is a play on Mylanta, Atlanta or some such. (but not david o’such a vice president at the real estate firm that ate the Times Tribune who was terror of our Senior Little League back in 1978 and 1979, I walked by their semi-public garden and then lobby and noticed also, to come, something about Western painting and Cooper).

Thome looks like he is whacking the embossed seal, which almost recalls a classic George Carlin line about Clemente having two balls. Bush league Baldessari. I also have my doubts that either of these cards use a picture of the actual moment described.

CASTRO, Chicago — Again, news to me because I do not follow this like I did in 1972 through 2000, but the Cubs have a great little infielder who is only 22 and had 207 hits last year and is 4th so far this year in BA and 1st in SB, but also has 60 errors in 290 games.

I would say overall $4 is high for Topps back of 12 with no gum. I recall them being 25 cents for 10 cards and slab back in the day.