Classic card of the week

Charlie Hough, 1986 Topps Mini

I’m not sure how well it translates in the above picture, but I do want to inform you that what you see here is a mini, dream-sequence Charlie Hough baseball card. So breathe it in. Especially those of you who dream small, and old.

I cannot be certain of the purpose of the mini-baseball card. I mean, having a Charlie Hough baseball card in itself is inconvenient because: what are you going to do with a Charlie Hough baseball card? Having a mini-Charlie Hough baseball card is doubly inconvenient because there are no mini-ways by which I can store this card (i.e.: mini-hard plastic covers or mini-baseball card sleeves) and it remains an awkward fit amongst my other, normal-sized cards of ancient knuckleballers.

For posting purposes, I was more distraught to discover that Charlie Hough’s Wikipedia page is – like his career -- rather blah. But luckily, it led me to a link entitled The Shrine to Charlie Hough.

I was at first skeptical that an online shrine (Charlie Hough is still alive, btw) could do justice to the long and legendary career of one of baseball’s best knuckleballers. But once I was met with the beautiful aesthetics of the site, I was sold. The friendly greeting didn’t hurt, either:

Welcome to The Shrine of Charlie Hough.

Thank you! Happy to be here.

This page was launched on 10/12/96

You don’t say.

and is still being updated.

We then come to discover that the site has been updated twice since then -– once in 2004, and again in 2005 -- both times to include breaking Charlie Hough news and other content. It appears as though this shrine could have been the brainchild of Hough himself, when he found out about the Internet, and then he had his grandson help him with it, because “that kid knows how to operate that mouse thingee,” and his grandson was like, “Here ya’ go Grandpa, you’re online now,” and then he promised his grandpa that he would update the site everyday, from college, which he didn’t, because he was getting drunk every night, but it didn’t matter, because Charlie Hough couldn’t figure out how to turn on his computer for eight years, but was too embarrassed to say anything, but then when the grandson had graduated, gotten married, and turned his life around, he came home and updated the site -– rather than, ya’ know, just creating a new one, since the current site was ridonkulously outdated and silly, because, the grandson figured, “Does it really matter?” -– and everyone was happy.

Interested in the type of Charlie Hough-content the site had to offer, I ventured over to the “Charlie Hough Media Gallery” page, where I was immediately invited to view a video (!). The link? “Charlie Hough endorses Sports Bagz juggling balls.” I can’t tell you how tempted I was to view this link, mainly because: what?! But considering that link was posted sometime around the last century, and may not be compatible with any of my company’s current software, I was too scared that my computer would catch fire, and then I would have to explain to my boss why I crashed the company server trying to view a video of Charlie Hough endorsing Sports Bagz juggling balls.

Did you know?
Charlie Hough prepared to protect his new website from the potential Y2K bug by building an impenetrable wooden box around his computer.