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Alex Rodriguez, 2004 Upper Deck World Series Heros edition Webster’s defines “hero” as: a man admired for his achievements and noble qualities. (Side note: Woman cannot be heroes. Sorry, Joan of Arc!) Dwight Schrute defines “hero” as: The guys who wake up every morning, and go into their normal jobs, and get a distress call from the commissioner, and take off their glasses and change into capes and fly around fighting crime. Webster’s defines “World Series” as: [the] annual championship of Major League Baseball. Upper Deck defines “World Series Hero” as: a) a man who has never been to the World Series and who, in fact, has forged a reputation –- whether deserved or not -- as being unable to reach the World Series based on his very own inability to be a hero during specific situations in which a heroic deed would likely ensure himself and his team a berth in the World Series. b) a man with the innate ability to indirectly ruin a World Series he is not even playing in because his agent d...

Note: This column appears in the 4/2 issue of The Glendale Star and the 4/3 issue of the Peoria Times Last week, for the first time ever, my wife and I went to Trader Joe’s . For those unaware, Trader Joe’s is a grocery store that prides itself on selling independently grown and manufactured foods with natural ingredients, as well as other environmentally friendly products. It is essentially a grocery store for hippies. Are we hippies? It’s difficult to say. I often feel that my wife and I are this strange hybrid –- pun intended –- of old-world conservatism and postmodern realism. (Side note: I have no idea what “postmodern realism” means. So please don’t email me.) Our lives are either one big contradiction of ideals or the perfect balance of extremes. For example, we’re vegetarians, but we live in Arizona. We’re Yankees fans, but we love the underdog. We’re indignant at Republican corruption, but not that confident about Democrats. We’re Catholic, but we watch “The Hills.” I think it...

John Henry Lloyd, 1993 Ted Williams Collection Here is another installment of The Negro Leagues series. Previously we discovered that players of this era had awesome nicknames and every team was named the Giants. In this instance we discover that John Henry Lloyd was called “Pop” and that he played for seven different teams called the Giants. But where is our anecdotal evidence of how Pop Lloyd was perceived during his day? A St. Louis sportswriter was once asked who the greatest player in baseball was. Here is how I envisioned this little tidbit playing out: He said, “John Henry Lloyd. No question.” That sportswriter’s name? Franklin Delano Roosevelt. That is not how it played out. “If you mean organized baseball, the answer would be Babe Ruth.” But if you mean silly-slap-boodlekins-fart-ball –- in which the players run around aimlessly wearing helicopter beanies and the bases are pepperoni pizzas -– then the answer would be John Henry Lloyd. Also: Babe Ruth? Thanks for your input, a...

Note: This column appears in the 3/26 issue of The Glendale Star and the 3/27 issue of the Peoria Times My wife and I are Catholic. We’ve been attending St. Thomas More in Glendale since we moved here, but never officially signed on to be parishioners. Why? Well, to be honest, we were holding out. For one thing, St. Thomas More is about 35 minutes from our house in Peoria. Plus, the Masses themselves are long, making what’s supposed to be (in our minds) a 50-minute mass an over two-hour-long event. The distance also makes it nearly impossible to attend Mass during the week for any other Holy Days, which we’re rarely aware of anyway. (There are few things more guilt-inducing than when either of us call our saintly mothers back home only to find that they just returned back from Mass because today is, after all, the Feast of Saint Agnes of Bohemia, yet we are home watching American Idol.) So while we attended Mass each week, we were all the while waiting for a new Catholic Church to pop...

Alfredo Griffin, 1990 Bowman Bowman remains to this day the worst brand of baseball cards ever made. A 1991 scientific study performed by Dr. Claude Frazzelberry at the University of Wyoming confirmed that the average human being’s enjoyment of the game of baseball dropped 89% after looking at a Bowman baseball card. The Topps Company, threatened by the sheer awesomeness of Upper Deck , responded in 1990 with Bowman, thus appealing to that untapped market of baseball fans without eyes. I would say that this is the most boring baseball card ever, but then somebody could easily show me any other Bowman card from this set, and I would change my mind in two seconds. I mean, hey –- what’s not to like? It’s a picture of a Dodgers player posing! Or maybe it’s a coach. This guy looks like he’s 45, so I am not sure. Where is his name? Oh, at the bottom of the rainbow border? Let me see…(squinting)…okay, Alfredo Griffin. Glad we figured that out. Anyway, it’s an overcast day at a spring training...

Note: This column appears in the 3/19 issue of The Glendale Star and the 3/20 issue of the Peoria Times Shortly after we moved to Arizona and got settled into our house, it came time to have our backyard done. Because this was really our first house, and because we were largely unfamiliar with the local landscape, we admittedly were pretty clueless. We received a landscaping reference, met with him, and decided to go with him. He seemed to know what he was talking about, and he promised my wife a lemon tree, the one thing we knew we wanted. Maybe a month or two after our backyard was complete, we noticed that many of the plants the guy had installed had died. He also neglected to inform us how to properly care for a lemon tree, and now we have a lemon tree that produces thorns and lemon-scented leaves. I called him about this situation, left a zillion messages, but he would never answer or return my calls. This went on for weeks. One day I called from a different line and finally got a...

Vince Coleman, 1990 Topps If you were a kid in 1990 and you were opening up a fresh pack of new baseball cards and you saw this very card, you would initially think it was a regular ol' card. Until, that is, your eyes led you down to the aesthetically marvelous “Record Breaker 89” insignia. Then you would know you had a “Record Breaker” card on your hands. Your heart would skip a beat and your palms would become sweaty. Your friends would ask, “What’d you get?” and you’d nervously stutter, “Nothing!” as you carefully placed your “Record Breaker” card to the back of the pack, knowing that when you got home you would immediately place it in the finest hard plastic case that you had. You would be well on your way to becoming a record breaker in the realm of having “Record Breaker” baseball cards. The only thing that would possibly make this scenario better is if you turned the card over and it read like an “Extra, extra!” newspaper clipping with regards to said record: Vincent Van Go ...

Note: This column appears in the 3/12 issue of The Glendale Star, and the 3/13 issue of the Peoria Times It’s not breaking news that we’re all living through some tough economic times. It’s one thing however to acknowledge this fact and quite another to experience its effects firsthand. Over a month ago I wrote about our first experience as foster parents , and I mentioned our anticipation of receiving another placement. Well, we’re still waiting. Last week we found out why. Governor Jan Brewer recently signed legislation with regards to revised budget cuts for the state. In short, due to the current economic circumstances, the state is cutting back on social service funding. Drastically. You may not have heard about this, with all of the economic attention focused on foreclosures, struggling investment firms, and the fact that Manny Ramirez is finally (whew!) signed. But what does this mean, exactly? What it means is this: Children in need are a drain on the local economy. The state h...

Charles Smith, 1998 NBA Hoops Here is yet another installment of our “NBA Hoops cards that are awesome and have fascinating yet largely nonsensical tidbits on the back that sound like they were written by a drunken beat-poet from the East Village.” Today’s feature: Charles Smith. O.K., Let the awesomeness immediately begin with an abbreviated form of the lengthy and popular term “okay,” which often goes by the alias “OK.” In this case, NBA Hoops has chosen to abbreviate the original Latin form of the word, which is Okalay Kadokalay, always capitalized as it was an ancient term of acknowledgment towards royalty. your name’s been in the NBA a few times, Certainly, it has. Including the Charles Smith in question right here, the name Charles Smith has been in the NBA, quite literally, a few times. Of course, that is assuming we are talking about NBA players specifically, and not executives, team personnel, and other human beings that could be described as being “in the NBA.” (Editor’s no...

Note: This column appears in the 3/5 issue of The Glendale Star and the 3/6 issue of the Peoria Times Those who had arrived at the ballpark early Sunday morning thought the gates were supposed to open at 10am. Others thought it was 11am. Crowds gathered near the entrance gates and the lines extended back into the parking lot as eleven o’clock turned into 11:30. Nobody wanted to wait any longer to experience the opening of the new Camelback Ranch ballpark in Glendale, and people were getting antsy. When the gates finally opened just before noon, and those who had waited were immediately greeted by beer vendors, program-pushers, and the smells of spring baseball, all was forgiven. Minus a few minor hiccups to be expected from a ballpark opening for the first time, the new spring training home of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago White Sox opened without a hitch, and to much fanfare. What the fans –- 11,000 of them, give or take –- got to see was the brand new state-of-the-art facility ...

Al Pedrique, 1989 Score Al, a slick-fielding shortstop who can hit the ball in the gap… I love scouting reports. Al Pedrique can hit a baseball into the gap, which is to say that Al Pedrique can occasionally hit a baseball in the area of the outfield where the outfielders are not standing. This is a skill that is unique to Al Pedrique, and should be mentioned. …spent time at both Triple-A Buffalo and the Pirates in 1988. At both, he provided a sure glove. In his Buffalo stay, he also gave the Bisons an active bat as he hit .307 in 61 games. The Pirates, unfortunately, were not equal beneficiaries of that same hot, active, Bisonesque Pedrique bat. Although, it should be reiterated that his glove remained sure, and for that the Pittsburgh Pirates organization is forever grateful. In ’87 he was a non-roster invitee to the Mets spring training camp. He made the team but was sent to the minors in May and then traded to the Pirates. The timeline of this biographical tidbit is all over the p...

Scott Haskin, 1993-94 Upper Deck Here is a picture of Indiana Pacers’ forward Scott Haskin about to throw down, or better yet, it's a picture of Scott Haskin grabbing a rebound. In warmups, I presume, as no other player is in sight. Can you feel the excitement of the aerial view? I cannot tell if he’s on the ground or two inches in the air! Man, I am bored. Let’s turn this baby over. Photographer : Okay Scott. We nailed the picture for the front of your card yesterday. Remember that? Yesterday? When I sat on top of the backboard like Bell Biv Devoe and took that ridonkulous shot of you jumping with the ball or whatever you were doing? Scott Haskin : Yes. Photographer : Well Scottie my man, all I’m saying is…just wait. Just wait . Today we’re doing the back picture. So put your uniform on, grab your comb and a basketball, and meet me outside near the bike rack. We’re going down to the business district. Scott Haskin : Okay, cool. Why, are there basketball courts there or something? ...

Note: This column appears in the 2/26 issue of The Glendale Star and the 2/27 issue of the Peoria Times For all intents and purposes, where I live in northwest Peoria is on the outskirts of civilization. When we first moved here, we had to drive to Bell Road in order to do anything , from get a bite to eat to find a decent nose hair trimmer (two hypothetical examples). From an accessibility standpoint, things have improved over the past year or so, but it’s a slow process, and we still often find ourselves having to travel a relatively great distance to do regular everyday things like fill up our cars with gas. In fact, if your car runs out of gas while in our development, your only hope is to release flares into the sky and hope that one of the jets from Luke will see it and inform authorities of your whereabouts. Which is why it astounds me that within a 20-mile radius of our house, for the next month, I can easily go to three different spring training facilities and watch baseball w...

John Dopson, 1991 Score John Dopson: If Roger Clemens had eyebrows. Big things were expected from John in 1990 Considering it’s now -- in baseball card years -- 1991, and I am unfamiliar with John Dopson, I am going to assume that big things did not happen. He had been the Red Sox third biggest winner in 1989, his first year with the team… Have the third most wins on a mediocre team one year, go out and win the Cy Young the next. This is called: proper progression. …and had started using a puzzling knuckleball as his changeup. You know what’s even more puzzling? Calling a knuckleball a changeup. Because a knuckleball can also be called: a knuckleball. Also: all knuckleballs are puzzling. Such is their nature. But after only 17.2 innings into the season, he went down with elbow problems and was lost for the rest of the year. I’m sorry -- 17.2 innings into the season, or his season? Yes, this is nitpicking, but I like to imagine that it’s the ninth inning of the second game of the 1990 ...

Note: An edited version of this column appears in the 2/19 issue of The Glendale Star, and the 2/20 issue of the Peoria Times I never wanted a dog. We lived in a pet-free development in New Jersey before we moved here, and that was fine by me. I never had anything against dogs -- my parents and my wife’s parents each had one, and they were great. Loved ‘em. But personally I never wanted that added responsibility. Or hair. Or poop. I just never wanted a dog. My wife was another story. For four years she was in my ear about getting one, and for most of that time I could easily fend her off by explaining that we were not allowed to have one where we lived. (We were also not allowed -- according to the document we signed -- to house livestock, which was an equally difficult temptation to resist.) By the time we moved to AZ in the summer of ’07, we were so busy getting our lives in order that getting a dog was, thankfully, not on our to-do list. By this time last year we were largely settle...

Pride of the Reds, 1982 Donruss The Pride of the Reds are two white men. They stand solemnly but proudly amidst the hilly countryside of the French Alps. If you find them, they will let you take a picture. In that respect, they are not like the elusive Sasquatch. Where they are going, they do not know, but they have their uniforms on, so just in case a game breaks out they will be prepared. Except one-half of the Pride of the Reds forgot his hat. But that is okay -- hats are just for show. The Pride of the Reds are interchangeable. They are the same in physical stature and in whiteness. Ask them for an autograph and each will sign it, “To Billy: Believe in the stars. Sincerely, Pride of the Reds.” They remain nameless. Yet prideful. And Redly. But what will the historians say? When the historians look back at baseball years from now and try to decide who were the dominant players in the game during the 1970s, they need not go much further than Johnny Bench and Tom Seaver. The year is 3...

Note: This column appears in the 2/12 issue of The Glendale Star, and the 2/13 issue of the Peoria Times I don’t consider myself as someone who has his finger on the pulse of local interest -- a somewhat alarming biographical tidbit for someone who writes a column for a local weekly newspaper -- but I have noticed that this area is abuzz with a supposed controversy revolving around the cameras used to catch dangerous drivers. For those unaware, cameras have been placed at specific spots throughout the Valley, including Glendale and Peoria, for the sole purpose of catching speeding drivers as well as those who take a liberal stance on the meaning behind a red light. The way it works is, the camera snaps a picture of your license plate, and you are then mailed a traffic ticket, which, according to various email forwards and other unreliable data, you may or may not have to actually pay. (My humble guess? You should probably pay it.) There is, somehow, controversy surrounding this process...

Bruce Benedict, 1987 Topps Bunting is a very underrated part of baseball. Not underrated as in players should do it more often. Because bunting is, nine times out of ten, completely pointless and counterproductive. (Shout out to FJM !) What I mean is that the physical act of bunting is underrated. It’s like, not an easy thing to do, to square up an 89 mph breaking ball and lay down a bunt in fair territory. Bunting is made considerably more difficult when you are bunting old skool style, a.k.a. the Benedictian method, with hands exposed. Bunting old skool style is the athletic equivalent of placing the goal post at the front of the endzone, as your chances of hurting yourself badly increase by 8,000%. So we know that Bruce Benedict bunted with reckless abandon. But what else? Bruce’s off-season schedule includes speaking engagements and serving as a H.S. basketball referee. Though not specified due to minimal space on the back of this card, among the wide array of topics discussed by B...

Note: This column appears in the 2/5 issue of The Glendale Star, and the 2/6 issue of the Peoria Times Last year my wife and I decided to become foster parents. It was a long and somewhat arduous process, but we officially received our license right before the holidays. As a foster parent, your role is to care for whatever child comes into your home while being actively involved in returning that child to their biological family, regardless of any attachments you may establish. We knew this was going to be a challenge. We knew it wasn’t going to be easy. We had no idea. ........................................................................ It was not shaping up to be a good day. I had just found out we had a leak coming from our outdoor faucet. That morning, someone inexplicably put his car in reverse and backed into my car at a red light. When I finally got to work one of the machines we use to tie up the papers wasn’t working. I was having a terrible day. Then I got a call from our...

Greg Briley, 1991 Score See? Now this is a sweet-lookin’ baseball card. Horizontal is the only means by which to capture the slugging nature of one Greg Briley. Let’s find out more: Greg, who is barely 5-8, If this is nitpicking, I don’t really care. 5-8? Greg, who is barely 5-8 years of age, has provided surprising pop and a flourishing mustache for the Little League Mariners of Maricopa County. Or, Greg, who is barely 5-8 hours away from being called down to the minors, likes wonton soup . Thus ends our segment: “Fun with grammatical errors.” This should read -- as it does below his picture: Greg, who is barely 5’8” The point of all this is that Greg Briley is small. He was the latter day, and black, David Eckstein. Latter-day Blaeckstein is what his friends referred to him by. Or, as his Wikipedia page mentions, Pee Wee. Greg Briley was a man of many nicknames. Where were we? Oh yes: Greg, who is barely 5-8, proved that size is no deterrent in the major leagues, if you have talent...