The process

This post will be a two-parter, but don't worry. There's no cliffhangers.

First, I'd like to show my far-from-scientific method of how I get some of my ideas for my random posts.

But before that, I'd also like to pose this question to my readers who have blogs of their own:

How do you come up with the ideas for your posts? Do you come up with ideas beforehand and then save them for later posts? Or is it just "I want to make a post now. I'm going to go find a card to write about..." where it's mainly just a spur-of-the-moment thing?

For my themed posts, I usually have a couple ideas already rattling around beforehand. I usually know what I want to write about when it comes to those.

But for random posts like these, it's a bit harder to come up with a specific idea because there's so many cards around, all over the place.

But that's part of the fun, isn't it?

For some of my random posts, I'll come up with an idea the day before and use it.

But most of the time, it's basically just this:

1) Randomly pick a team binder. I picked the Indians today for no particular reason.

2) Go through the binder a few pages at a time. Repeat until you find something.

Pretty simple, I know. But it's worked thus far and I'm sticking to it.

Okay, here's part two of the post. The part about, you know, the actual cards.

I finally found a card I wanted to write about after a little bit of searching.

A card that both intrigues me and confuses me at the same time.

This card comes from the 2004 Topps Cracker Jack Mini parallel set.

Apparently, there were two different Lajoie cards in the original 1914 Cracker Jack set, an error (shown above), and a corrected version.

It's funny, but what they called an "error" and a "correction" back then means "Update" in today's world of baseball cards.

Topps reprinted both Lajoie cards in the '04 Cracker Jack set. Here's the "corrected" version:

This card was updated to show that Lajoie was now property of the Philadelphia Athletics. The "Cleveland" on Lajoie's jersey in the error version was airbrushed out. (Or whatever they called "airbrushing" in 1914.)

What confuses me a bit is how the name "Lajoie" is printed on each of these cards. Why does one have it as "La Joie", but the other has "Lajoie"? I originally thought that the name was the error on the original card, but after looking into it a bit, I think the "error" was the non-updated team.

By these standards, a lot of the cards from the first series of Topps would be considered "errors". I bet Albert Pujols will still be featured as a Cardinal on his base card, and Prince Fielder will still be a Brewer.

It's funny that "collectors" back in 1914 wanted up-to-the-minute uniform changes on baseball cards. Baseball cards stayed up-to-date, and they were a way to keep up with all the goings-on around the league.

In that regard, I guess the hobby hasn't really changed much.