A recent post at Mets Guy in Michigan concentrated on what may be the worst Mets-related baseball card of all time (and perhaps the worst baseball card of all time, period): a Hostess-produced card for Rusty Staub in which the photo retouching is abysmal. I won't recount the story here; just click on this link and marvel at how horrible it is (and the interesting hypothesis forwarded to explain its hideousness).

The post also touched on a longtime feature of baseball cards: the hastily altered player photo. Back in the days of no Photoshop and longer production schedules, it wasn't always possible for the baseball card people to get a picture of a player in his new duds if he was traded in the offseason. Or even if he was traded the year before, since back then, most baseball card photos were taken during the previous season. And by my own amateur sleuthing, most of them were taken in either New York or LA. So if were swapped midseason and never made another trip to either coast, there might be no pics of you in your current uni.

For a good chunk of the 1960s, Topps (the biggest baseball card producer) didn't much care for verisimiltude. If a player was suddenly traded before the cards were made, they just used a generic, hatless picture, or blacked out his hat entirely, as evidenced by Rusty Staub's 1969 Topps card (seen to your right). Rusty went from the Astros to the Expos in a very late offseason trade (January 22), and since Montreal had yet to play a game, Topps--rather than find out what the Expos' uniforms might look like--scraped away the Houston logo on his helmet and called it a day.

Beginning in the early 1970s, Topps either decided this method was not worthy of their standards or hired some very ambitious/anal art directors. Because at this time, they began to document a player's new home to the best of their abilities--as ham-fisted and transparent as those efforts might appear.

When I was a kid and mired in a baseball card obsession, I bought a whole box of cards from 1977 for like five bucks. Why 1977? Because (a) that's the year I was born, and (b) it was the first year the Blue Jays and Mariners played, which at the time was the last MLB expansion. This historical fact fascinated me for dumb little kid reasons.

Topps wanted to document the freshman year for those two teams, of course. But since neither had yet taken the field, they had to improvise. In some cases, they did so admirably. In others, not so much.

Even as a young'un, I could tell something was off about some of these cards. I even recognized bad paint jobs on some of these unfortunate players. It was necessary for the aforementioned Toronto and Seattle squads, since this was their inaugural year, but they weren't the only teams treated to some paintbrushery.

I wish there was one long, Teutonic word for this feeling: a memory that infuriates you, even though it has no bearing on your life as it is lived now. I don't mean someone mistreating or betraying you, because that has a continued, negative impact on your existence. I mean something that is ancient history, something that has zero influence on your day-to-day life, yet still irks you whenever you think about it.

I'm going to call this sensation Retro-rage. I'm thinking about this concept because recently, I heard a friend of mine was looking to bolt his current place of employ. This piece of info reminded me that I once interviewed at the same company. And that memory stirred up another memory that enraged me, even though I'm gainfully and happily employed elsewhere.

Two-plus years ago, I was laid off from my job (another angry memory for another angry time). I had about a month before this lack-of-jobitude would seriously hit my family (including a one-year-old baby) in the pocketbook. Needless to say, I was quite anxious to find something, anything, very soon.

Yesterday, I wrote about stadium organists, a feature of the game that is quickly dying out. Another aspect that's already dead is one that probably shouldn't have lived to begin with: bullpen carts. Yes, once upon a time, relievers were shuttled from the bullpen to the mound in vehicles of varying size--sometimes a full-sized automobile, but more often golf cart-type contraptions.

In a weird way, the bullpen cart feels like it should be a more recent innovation. After all, today's athlete is supposed to be spoiled rotten, so it would stand to reason they would insist on being chauffeured to the mound like the fancy boys they are. But no, it was the supposedly blue collar relievers of yesteryear who were slowly puttered onto the field in embarrassingly tiny go-carts.

Paul Lukas of Uni-Watch wrote an exhaustive history of the bullpen cart a few years ago. My favorite tidbit:

1986: With happy fans spilling onto the field after the Mets' division-clinching victory on Sept. 17, Mets fan and former Shea Stadium vendor Eric Bennett heads straight to the bullpen, where he hijacks the team's bullpen buggy. He takes it for a brief outfield joyride before the engine conks out.

I keep a bottle of Sriracha in the kitchen at my office. Sriracha is also known as THE BEST HOT SAUCE CRAFTED BY THE HAND OF MAN. I don't use it too often, but it's a nice thing to have handy when your lunch needs an extra kick.

Today, as I went to the kitchen to fetch my lunch, I saw my bottle of Sriracha on the countertop. I knew it was mine because it has my hand-written note on it instructing the cleaning people not to throw it out (because they can and will throw out everything unless instructed not to).

The top was opened (it has an attached cap that unscrews like an Elmer's glue bottle) and some of its contents were dripping down the side. I also noticed that a lot more of the sauce had been used since I last used it. I'm pretty sparing in my hot sauce application, but it had obviously been applied liberally--by other people--since I last used it.

A coworker was in the kitchen at the time, waiting for his lunch to heat up in the microwave. It was unclear to me if this person was responsible for using my Sriracha. I didn't recognize him, either, because there are new people in and out of the place all the time.

I pondered what would be the correct approach to this situation. After all, using someone else's condiment is not like eating someone else's lunch (which has happened to me more than once at my current place of employ). But I personally would not use somebody else's condiments, and I felt like it was a little uncool that someone would just something that does not belong to him/her.

As I wondered what to do, the coworker removed his lunch from the microwave and left, leaving the Sriracha untouched. Now, again, I don't know if this particular person availed himself of my Sriracha. But whether it was him or someone else, he/she did so and just left it on the counter, unopened, with hot sauce dripping from the cap.

That is definitely unacceptable. So I grabbed my Sriracha and deposited it my desk. You're supposed to refrigerate it, but I'll sacrifice freshness for the sake of not having thieves and slobs pawing and mistreating it. Sorry folks, but you lost your Sriracha privileges.

I'm not nuts, right? I am totally within my rights to be stupidly pissed off about this, yes? Please reassure me.

Last week, Jane Jarvis passed away at the age of 94. Jarvis was Shea Stadium's first organist, from 1964 all the way through 1979. She's still remembered by fans who heard her as a delightful and witty practitioner of that uniquely American art form, stadium organ music. Marty Noble wrote a remembrance of her, and shared the tidbit that during the 1977 blackout, Jarvis entertained the sweltering Shea crowd with such ironic song selections as "White Christmas" and "Jingle Bells"

I'm not old enough to have enjoyed Ms. Jarvis' stylings, but I do miss ballpark organists. Most MLB teams still have an organist, but their playing time has reduced significantly in favor of prerecorded music instead, which is a shame. Both New York teams still have organists, but I can not tell you the last time I actually heard one play at either stadium.

I'm not too old school when it comes to most things in baseball; I think the game is more often hurt by its emphasis on tradition than it is helped. But there are two points where I see eye-to-eye with the Get Off My Lawn crowd: the DH is an abomination, and stadium organists are vastly superior to any other form of in-game entertainment.

In the long history of baseball, organs are a relatively recent feature of the game experience. The first stadium organ didn't appear until 1941, when the Cubs installed one in Wrigley Field, and they didn't really catch on elsewhere until after World War II. But the organ has become a sound as associated with the game as the crack of a bat. Playing "charge!" on an organ is musical shorthand for "there is a baseball game being played right now".

I have a feeling that the almost exclusive use of prerecorded music is a relatively recent phenomenon, one that crept slowly into the game in the last 15 years or so. While compiling The 1999 Project, I listened to and watched a whole bunch of games from that season, and noticed that Shea was still very organ-centric back then. Pitchers and batters entered the game to their own hand-picked tunes, but all other musical cues came from an organ.

In that spirit, please enjoy this video about Lambert Bartak, the man who has manned the organ for the college world series for the last 50+ years.

• Groundhog Day was developed by Punxsutawney, PA in a desperate attempt to employ its notoriously shiftless rodent population.

• The holiday dates back to a dark time in American history, when only groundhogs were allowed to study meteorology.

• If the groundhog sees emerges from its hole, expect an early spring. If he sees his shadow and goes back into his hole, there will be six more weeks of winter. If he scratches his nose, we skip the rest of winter, spring, and summer and head straight into autumn. And if he eats a small, juicy carrot, pray for your mortal soul, for the end is nigh.

• Did you know the ancient Egyptians revered the groundhog as a god? You shouldn't have known that, because it's not true.

• In 1943, Punxsutawney Phil became involved in an elaborate OSS-sponsored plot to assassinate Hitler. The plan never came to fruition, however, because the spy agency couldn't figure out how to get the Fuhrer to visit Pennsylvania.
  

• The officiants at Groundhog Day dress in turn-of-the-century garb not for ceremonial purposes, but as part of an elaborate fetishistic ritual whose details you are better off not knowing.

• February 2 is also the day when Bill Murray reminds everyone who approaches him that if they ask him about nothing but Groundhog Day, they'll get a roundhouse kick to the throat.

I am TRULY sorry for flipping off someone at an MMA fight in Miami this weekend. That behavior was unacceptable and I'm sorry if I EMBARRASSED the Jets organization.

Yes, it was wrong of me to attend a private event and be heckled by drunk idiots all night. In the future, I will be more careful about being in the presence of inebriated, foul-mouthed morons for extended periods of time.

Sure, extending my middle finger to someone was probably the least offensive thing occurring in that arena at the time, as I sat 50 feet away from two men beating each other mercilessly in a quote-unquote sport that's one step removed from bum fights. Not to mention that one of those men was a retired running back whose presence turned an already sordid event into a full-blown freak show.

But hey, none of that makes what I did any less wrong. Nor does the Daily News and Post sanctimoniously tsk-tsking me for my "shocking" actions, while also putting a picture of said shocking action on their front pages. Not to mention that one of those papers has no problem running a regular advice column penned by a former hooker. No, their rampant hypocrisy does not excuse what I did.

Finally, I want to make it clear that my apology is completely sincere, despite the fact that I've been making an exaggerated jerk-off gesture the entire time I delivered it.

Mel Allen, longtime Yankees broadcaster and the voice of This Week in Baseball, did many a commercial in his day. Enjoy this one from the early 80s, in which Mr. How 'Bout That shills for an Atari baseball game with an unhealthy amount of reverb on his voice. Realistic graphics!



Speaking of This Week in Baseball, I have several episodes of it from the late 80s and early 90s in The Vast and Dusty Scratchbomb VHS Archives. I would love to digitize and share them with all of you, really I would. But as I've said many times, MLBAM would come down on me like a ton of bricks for doing so.

As a meager substitute, please accept "Gathering Crowds", the TWIB end credits theme song used for, oh, about 900 years. This song actually makes me mist up a little bit. DON'T JUDGE.

Also, don't ask me to explain the assemblage of still images in this "video". I am not responsible for its visual content, but I am grateful for the audio.

It's Friday! Procrastinate and count down to happy hour with these lovely bits!

Several friends of mine on the The Twitter and The Facebook posted a link to this video yesterday. It's British funnyman/commentator Charlie Brooker showing the essential elements needed in any news segment. Though this was done on the other side of the pond, it's clear that such rules transcend borders.


This reminded me, Hey, Charlie Brooker's pretty damn funny! Brooker hosts Newswipe on BBC4 (yes, there's four of them now) and is known for his adept, savage skewering of the media. I know the word skewering is tossed off every time someone takes shots at The Boob Tube, but Brooker's pieces are truly worthy of that adjective. Think of Jon Stewart in his best moments of righteous indignation, but angrier and more Cockney.

Like his take on American news media, pitched at a British audience blissfully unfamiliar with the likes of Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck.



Brooker can be just as good when going after less serious topics, as in this clip, where he lists "The 10 Biggest Cocks in Advertising". (Cock = douche, jerk, etc. He's not naming the 10 Biggest Cocks in the Greg Oden sense.) I'm not really familiar with most of these ads, but Brooker tears them apart so well--in ways both clever and silly--that it doesn't matter. Funny is funny.



Or this spot-on (as the Brits say) takedown of MTV's My Sweet 16. "I think this might be an Al Qaeda recruitment video."



Just a brief sampling of the peeved hilarity Mr. Brooker has to offer. You could spend hours watching his collected works on the YouTubes. So go ahead! It's only Friday. C'mon, you checked out of work by lunch on Wednesday, didn't you?

Finally, Aziz Ansari posted a video on his web site that is, no joke, the craziest thing you will probably ever see. I cannot embed it, so you'll have to click there and take my word for it.

The video is an pregame intro for an Alaskan collegiate hockey team, featuring their CGI polar bear mascot. It is not cheap, tossed-off CGI. If anything, this video is a little too well done. I will not ruin any of the madness for you. Suffice to say that, if you took Chuck Norris and The Punisher, and multiplied them by infinity, then multiplied them by INSANITY, they would still look like pussies compared to this polar bear.

Part 1   *   Part 2