Goodbyes

It's about that time of year where I have to start saying goodbyes to yet another baseball season.

While 2022 had its fair share of highlights (Judge, Ohtani, et al), it was actually kind of a bust for my personal baseball tastes. One hometown team was exactly as bad as I thought they'd be (Cubs), the other was a high-octane club that turned out to be a train wreck (White Sox), and it all culminated with a World Series between one team I actively dislike (Astros) versus another I'm perfectly apathetic about (Phillies). (Though I'll admit Dusty Baker made me root for the Astros ever so slightly.)

Normally, I'd be bidding adieu to another baseball card season as well, but since Topps pushed so many sets back this year, there's actually a lot we're still waiting for here in 2022. I'm still not sure how I feel about it - gonna be weird seeing sets like A&G and Stadium Club pop up when I'm wearing winter coats - but at the very least it'll help spice up a normally dry part of the card calendar.

Thankfully, Kerry of the "Cards on Cards" blog was nice enough to send me a healthy assortment of cardboard from the (seemingly) precious few sets we have seen thus far in 2022 - only in the blogosphere would someone send me a Wander Franco rookie as a surprise.

My want lists are more for my own reference than anything, but I'm always grateful when people like Kerry actually comb through them to find cards I need.

One reason I've never been a set collector is that checking cards off a list has never seemed like much fun to me - but as the years have gone on, I've gotten more and more pleasure out of packages like this that allow me to delete a healthy chunk of cards off my wants.

More want list hits I can kiss goodbye.

(No Big League scheduled this year, which, alas, leads me to believe Topps has officially killed it.)

Kerry sent a few hits from past years as well, which is nice since these seem to get whisked away into closets the moment the calendar flips to a new card season.

I kinda remember there being a minor hubbub about Luis Robert "investing" a while back - no idea if that's still a thing - but I'm happy to finally get his Heritage rookie here two years later.

A few random player collection hits from Kerry - the Hendricks A&G is one of those foil parallels, and the Vlad is from a separate (and probably uneccessary) A&G X set that I have to admit looks spiffy with black borders.

The same can't be said about those Negative Chrome refractors though - they just freak me out.

Black border minis, stickers, and HARK, A DUDE!

(Note to self: buy more dudes!)

I've never been super vigilant about chasing down A&G needs after I open however many packs of the stuff I find, which makes them especially nice to tick off my lists.

Kerry closed with another rookie that was going for way too much on the secondary market - and one I only wanted because it's a play at the plate shot, of course!

I often think of the old Rogers Hornsby quote around this time of year, about looking out the window all winter and waiting for spring. Obviously, the lack of baseball on TV leaves a huge gap in my day-to-day winter life. But part of the reason I love collecting baseball cards is that it's a year-round activity, keeping baseball at the forefront whether there's snow on the ground or not.

As long as I've got my baseball cards, the goodbyes are never too much.

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(On a more somber personal note, however, we had to say goodbye to another one of our furry friends last week. RIP, Marmalade.)