So, Do You Like ... Stuff?

Note: This column appears in the 4/1 issue of The Glendale Star and the 4/2 issue of the Peoria Times One of the clues that I am getting older is that I am becoming increasingly offended by things. In my younger days, nothing fazed me. Even things that I recognized as being extremely offensive were not actually offensive to me. It wasn’t that I didn’t have morals -– I was just indifferent to or amused by the lack thereof in others. Which, I guess, reflected poorly on my own morals, but whatever. I’m not the one on trial here! Anyway, now in my early 30s, I am finding myself perturbed by even things that have gained national acceptance. Sometimes especially things that have gained national acceptance. Exhibit A for me is “Dancing With the Stars.” Believe me that I do not voluntarily watch this show. (Don’t get me wrong -– I watch plenty of shows that would make you question my masculinity. This is just not one of them.) But my wife does. And I am appalled by it. I mean, have you seen t...

Dave Winfield, 1988 Kay-Bee Superstars of Baseball In the late 80s, the authority on who was, and who was not, a superstar of baseball was Kay-Bee Toy Stores. The good news for everyone playing baseball in the late 80s was that Kay-Bee Toy Stores was pretty liberal in who they named superstars. For example, this particular card is No. “33 of 33 cards.” For the year of 1988, it was deemed, by Kay-Bee Toy Stores, that there were 33 superstars in baseball. Thirty-three ! That is a lot of superstars, especially considering that my complete and unopened set of 1989 Topps is worth $4. It remains curious as to what the criteria was to be a superstar in the mind of Kay-Bee Toy Stores, but you definitely needed at least some form of identification. If you happened to root for a team in 1988 that was mysteriously bereft of at least one superstar, that only meant that your favorite player was not forging an adequate relationship with Kay-Bee Toy Stores. And that was unfortunate. But I digress. Le...

Note: This column appears in the 3/25 issue of The Glendale Star and the 3/26 issue of the Peoria Times Like many people I often wonder: If I ever struck it rich through either the lottery –- which I do not play –- or through fantasy sports –- where our annual payout for any league is around $200 –- would I continue to work? I always liked to believe that I would continue to work regardless of whether I needed to or not, although that mindset is often second-guessed on those mornings when I’d just rather go back to sleep, which is, actually, every morning. But last week something happened that helped reconfirm my original position. Last Monday morning my wife woke up feeling very ill. Stomach flu. Luckily for us, I have off from work on Mondays anyway, so although it was no fun to see her in so much pain, at least I was around to take care of things. I was Mr. Mom for the day. I cooked, straightened up, made phone calls, and most importantly took care of our little one. Admittedly it’s...

Nolan Ryan, Baseball Heroes, 1990 Upper Deck Here is our collective baseball hero, Nolan Ryan. In 1989 he struck out his 5,000th batter. But I bet you were wondering what he was like as a naïve, impressionable, hillbilly youngster, caught up in the big bright lights of New York City. As a youngster with the Mets, Nolan once remarked to teammate Tom Seaver that Jim Bunning’s 2,500th strikeout, which they had just witnessed, was a remarkable accomplishment. Nolan Ryan : You know what, Tom? I was thinking. To me, 2,500 strikeouts is a pretty remarkable accomplishment. Tom Seaver : Oh, really? Ya’ think? You know Nolan, I thought your strong suit was throwing 100-mph fastballs. But let’s throw “perceptive analysis” into the category of “things you do really well.” In fact, I wanted your opinion on something. This baseball looks round to me. What do you think? Nolan Ryan : I hate you. Seaver told him about Walter Johnson’s 3,508 career K’s. In the realm of silly and contrived and 99%-false ...

Note: This column appears in the 3/18 issue of The Glendale Star and the 3/19 issue of the Peoria Times So my wife and I have been watching “The Marriage Ref.” For those who have managed to miss this mercilessly promoted television program, it features married couples having arguments which are then discussed and arbitrated on by the host and a panel of celebrities, most of whom have an obvious and shameless connection to NBC, “The Marriage Ref’s” home network. I have many issues with the show, not the least of which is not finding it to be particularly funny, which is, I think, the point of the whole thing. But that’s not my only problem. Besides the inherent disingenuousness of people arguing in front of cameras, the arguments themselves are made-for-TV in their outlandishness. In the interest of declaring “a winner,” this makes it near impossible to not immediately and obviously side with either the husband or wife. For example, the first few episodes featured a husband who wanted h...

Bill Bene, 1989 Topps Seen here is #1 Draft Pick Bill Bene, who is too sexy for this hat. There's no way he's disco dancing! It's difficult to say how this #1 Draft Pick worked out for the Dodgers, because my Internet is down and thus I cannot find the data to back up the obvious fact that it did not work out for the Dodgers. Not to say that Bene himself was not a success, as overall performance is vastly inferior to dashing good looks in a city like Los Angeles. But where does Bill Bene's story begin? At birth? No. In high school: Primarily a basketball player in high school, Bill was originally an outfielder. Let's ignore the fact that this statement makes it sound as though an outfielder is a position on the basketball court. There are more pressing issues here, namely: what does it mean to be "primarily" a basketball player in high school? For Bene, was basketball business and baseball mere pleasure? Were his dreams of making it to the NBA and being an...

Note: This column appears in the 3/11 issue of The Glendale Star and the 3/12 issue of the Peoria Times What happened? These are almost always the first words my wife utters when she comes home from work on those days when I am responsible for picking up our hopefully-soon-to-be-daughter from daycare. Typically, her inquisition is a result of our little one wearing different clothes than my wife had dressed her in that morning, a small detail I consistently miss when picking her up. If she is wearing “backup” clothes that means she had either a spitting-up or poop-related accident, and so my wife’s follow-up question is: Where are her clothes? My response to this -– as was my response to the initial question and any additional ones -– is a meek shrug of the shoulders. This has been a constant source of frustration for my wife. I know she thinks that if our hopefully-soon-to-be-daughter were wearing a potato sack when I went to pick her up, I still wouldn’t notice. And she may be right....

Orel Hershiser, 1989 Baseball Cards Magazine Here is further proof of my mastery of a pair of scissors . Again, I don't remember cutting out this small slice of heaven -- apparently it's from Baseball Cards Magazine? Man, I am cool -- but Orel Hershiser himself seems pleased with my efforts. As do the fans. Let’s find out more about this fellow called Orel: The hero of the 1988 World Series Orel Hershiser was unreal in the 1988 World Series, pitching brilliantly during his two wins and earning MVP honors. That said: Kirk Gibson on line one. (By the way, I’ve never used the “X is on line one” joke. How did it go? Did you laugh? No? Because your sense of humor is on line one. Ha! Take that.) And the reigning king of the big contract and the multi-million dollar endorsement, Yes, in his day Orel Hershiser was a lethal marketing hybrid of Peyton Manning mixed with Bob Villa mixed with a hilarious old woman inquiring as to the whereabouts of her beef. He could sell advertising spac...

Note: This column appears in the 3/4 issue of The Glendale Star and the 3/5 issue of the Peoria Times I’m not much of a phone person in that generally, I don’t prefer to talk on the phone. I would say that I am in the mood to talk on the phone approximately twenty minutes throughout the course of a given calendar year. What an actual phone can do however, as far as texting and letting me know who is calling so that I don’t have to answer, which allows me to better avoid actual conversations, has been great and has, ironically, made me more of a phone person. As a result of that, or as result of me being considerably less popular than I think I am, not many people actually call me. In fact, save for my wife and parents, nobody calls me. Under normal circumstances -– as in, if I were normal -- this would be fine. But for some odd and illogical reason, I still expect people to call me. I am equally annoyed by people calling and not calling. My own cell phone has an automatic keypad-lockin...

Chicago White Sox, 1990 Upper Deck Who doesn’t love baseball nostalgia? Ya’ know, besides everybody in this picture. I know I do! Baseball card, take us back to the good ol’ days: The year was 1917. A year I remember well. The White Sox won a hundred games for the only time in their history as they routed the New York Giants, 4-2, “Routed?” in the World Series. Who can ever forget when the White Sox won the 1917 World Series?! It was a glorious time for baseball, a time when only white players could play, and two of the four teams in the league made it to the World Series, and drunkenness and general debauchery throughout the sport were not only accepted, but encouraged. But it was an even better time for the White Sox in particular, who were only two years away from a betting scandal that would cost them the 1919 World Series and earn their most famous player, Shoeless Joe Jackson, a lifetime ban from the sport. Good times! Coincidentally, one of the major players from that game-thro...

Note: This column appears in the 2/25 issue of The Glendale Star and the 2/26 issue of the Peoria Times The evolution of our family –- namely of our parents –- as it relates to technology has been an adventure. She’s going to kill me when she reads this, but the first time my mother-in-law used email, she sat at the keyboard, typed her message, and then walked away. Having never hit “send,” she had just assumed that the email had reached its destination, like a prayer. Now, after a lot of hard work and admirable dedication, she has a Gmail account and texts us using modern shorthand that even we don’t understand. My father-in-law, on the other hand, has always embraced technology. It is rumored that he owned the first car phone in Brooklyn, which was actually just a phone booth in the passenger seat of his car. Because of his business and hectic lifestyle, he currently owns approximately eight cell phones – two of which are Blackberries (!) -- several of which he will frequently mispl...

Todd Worrell, 1990 Score Front of the card? Eh. Back of the card? Chock full of goodies. And elongated ‘staches! Todd was a tremendous loss to the Cardinals in ’90, Positive start here. First thing we learn about Todd Worrell: he’s either dead, or was not around for some reason, for the Cardinals, in the year of 1990. I am excited! You? No? Let us continue: even though Lee Smith was a solid replacement as the team’s stopper. The all-time Major League leader in saves (until Trevor Hoffman passed him in 2006) = solid replacement. Lee Smith led the NL in 1991 with 47 saves and finished second in the Cy Young vote. By the time Worrell had returned, he had lost his job to Smith. I wonder what a “very good replacement” would have been like. Anyway, Todd Worrell got injured. But before that, he was really good, as the following tidbit describes in naughty detail: A menacing figure on the mound, Todd threw a sizzling 95-mph fastball as hard as could, as long as he could. By blowing away batte...

Note: This column appears in the 2/18 issue of The Glendale Star and the 2/19 issue of the Peoria Times There’s been a lot of talk about overrides lately. Not by myself in particular –- I usually just talk about fantasy baseball –- but in this paper and in the community. To be quite honest, I had no idea what an override even was until, spurned on by its newfound popularity, I decided to look further into it. It was like the time my wife said, “That Lady Gaga song is awesome!” and I was like, “Who is Lady Gaga?” and so I decided to do more research and discovered that Lady Gaga is a man. It is that kind of research that you, the faithful reader, can trust. And it is in that vein that I come before you to explain the current override situation. An override is, by definition, a verb that means “to ride over.” Clever, right? In this particular instance, what we want to do is ride over –- not literally, with our monster pickup trucks, so let's not go crazy...but with our votes -– the s...

Luc Longley, 1999 Upper Deck Let us begin: With three championship rings on his fingers He probably doesn’t wear them all the time. You could just say "With three championship rings..." because, ya' know, we're aware of where rings are supposed to go. I am very irritable today. After only seven years in the league, Weird thing to say considering the three titles had just happened, all in a row. Why even mention the four non-championship years? That would be like me winning back-to-back-to-back fantasy baseball championships and then bragging, “Hey, I’ve won three titles this decade,” instead of just calling myself three-time defending champion. (Which I’m not, in case you’re wondering. It’s just a hypothetical example, starring me. Although I have won three titles this decade -- well, last decade, I guess -- which is something I’ve been dying to casually mention somewhere without coming across as self-serving. So there, I think that worked.) one might expect the Bulls...

Note: This column appears in the 2/11 issue of The Glendale Star and the 2/12 issue of the Peoria Times I’ve mentioned before, ad nauseam, how great it is to be a sports fan here in the Valley. Yes, my favorite teams still reside back east, but that’s no matter, because I’m a sports fan first, and everything is so much more accessible here. The games are easier to get to, cheaper to go to, and never get canceled due to inclement weather. And if you want season tickets, you don’t have wait for 30,000 people to die. So we frequently find ourselves going to sporting events, because sports are fun, and awesome. But I wondered –- how would having a hopefully-soon-to-be-daughter affect our sports fandom? I always imagined that if we ever had a family, we’d get him/her started on sports early. I never wanted to be one of those parents who use their kids as an excuse to not do anything. But it’s different when you actually have that family, and everything revolves around a routine, and you fre...

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 ...

Note: This column appears in the 2/4 issue of The Glendale Star and the 2/5 issue of the Peoria Times My wife and I made the decision to move here to Arizona on our own volition. The hardest part of the decision –- in fact, the only “con” on our list -– was saying goodbye to our family. I never found it necessary to describe how close we are to our family until I realized that our bond seems, at times, abnormal when compared to others. As an example, my younger sister is married to my wife’s younger brother (legal in only 48 states, of which New Jersey is one). And when I say family I include not only parents, siblings, and in-laws, but also aunts, uncles, cousins, cousins-in-law, and lifelong family friends. And when I say close I mean that we all legitimately enjoy and prefer each other’s company. I’ll like, hang out with my uncle. My mother-in-law will have lunch with my aunt. Our wedding party alone consisted of twenty people. Considering that many simply tolerate family, we are, ...

Malone-Eaton-Stockton, 1989 Fleer All-Star Game series Here is a photograph of three All-Star basketball players who are all on the same team, their varying sizes and ethnicities spanning all corners of the globe and giving testament to the strong diversity of the state of Utah. We will learn more about them later. What is behind the curtain however, we may never know. Let us begin: The Utah Jazz keeps on delivering There seems to be a grammatical tug-of-war when it comes to sports teams that boast a nickname that is not otherwise of the plural variety. In one camp are those who insist on recognizing this name in its original form and not in the context of a collective basketball team, which is what we see here. In the other camp –- the one in which I have pitched my tent, so to speak -– are the normal people who realize that this name is, in fact, plural, and treat all accompanying words thusly. We would not, for example, say: The New York Knicks keeps on delivering . A) Because they ...

Note: This column appears in the 1/28 issue of The Glendale Star and the 1/29 issue of the Peoria Times I enjoy it when one entity grades another entity based on the latter entity’s own method of grading. Which is why I was thrilled to see that Quality Counts -– an organization that does such things -– gave the State of Arizona a C- for its educational system. Arizona -- which did not know it was getting graded and therefore didn’t even study – is among the majority of states that received a C or lower. So…America! As with most studies and research of this ilk, the method of gathering information and the subsequent conclusion is suspect at best. For example, in the category of “Transitions & Alignment” -– for which, in general, Arizona received a C- and which, also, makes it sound as though Arizona’s educational system is a car –- the state received a D- in the sub-category of “College readiness.” In my humble opinion, being ready for college involves a myriad of factors, and the...

Brad Muster, 1990 Score Seen here is Brad Muster –- as my friend Bill would say, and has actually said -– “demonstrating how to carry the football with both hands, in front of the waist, while looking to the sidelines.” Indeed. Were Brad Muster, at this very moment, to take a hit to the midsection, his lungs and intestines would come out of his mouth and his bladder would be punctured with a football. Unless of course, on this particular play, Brad Muster was running up the middle, an area of the football field where he was indestructible: Brad, a big, tough runner up the middle Rushing to the outside however? Not so much, as Brad Muster had the elusiveness of a desk. But hey -– that’s why they don’t ask big, hunkering white dudes who went to Stanford to make guys miss. Speaking of Stanford, how does one get into such an esteemed institution? I can think of nobody better to ask than Wikipedia : Muster prepped at San Marin High School in Novato, CA, graduating in 1983. I’m sorry…he pre...