Make-up Call

Everyone knows that referees -- particularly in basketball (just ask defrocked NBA referee Tim Donaghy), but certainly in other sports as well -- will give a make-up call on one play to make up for an atrocious call on another.  Whether it is to shut up a yapping player, to appease a complaining coach, or to soothe a referee's own conscience, it happens all the time.

Bloggers can need make-up calls too.  It's not as common, but it becomes necessary when one blogger highlights a particular item that they sent to you as part of a trade and you either forget, misplace it, or otherwise space out and don't mention it in your trade post.

Some might call it eating crow, apologizing, or what have you, a make-up post becomes necessary.

A minor musical digression introduces this post:  So. Central Rain, by R.E.M.:

Back when R.E.M. had their edgy fastball in the 1980s, that song -- with Michael Stipe's plaintive cry of "I'm Sorry" as the chorus -- was the first single off Reckoning.  I liked R.E.M. a bunch in the 1980s and early 1990s, but then once I spent three years of my life in Athens, Georgia, for law school, I gained a new appreciation for their earlier songs.

Anyway, all that is a typically long introduction for a mea culpa: I owe Keith at The Home Run Apple an apology.  If you read his trade post about the trade we worked out, at the end of the post is a reference to hoping that I liked "the Braun Coin card."  If you look at my trade post, you'll see that there is no Braun coin card.

That's because I missed it.

In the middle of two eBay envelopes showing up with a couple of small team-set purchases, I mistook the Braun coin card for being from eBay.

Then I compounded my mistake.  I asked Keith about it. He could not find it, and both of us were scratching our heads.

Last night, though, I went to my bookshelf to grab my uniforms book to fact-check myself on when the Brewers got rid of their wonderful powder-blue away uniforms, I looked and saw...the Braun coin card....

...there, in all of its glory -- even in an eTopps sticker-closed protective case.

That was truly a lesson to me.  I learned that it is a bad idea to open envelopes at the kitchen table before going to my card room.  I learned that it is a bad idea to have two or three gin-and-tonics before scanning things in to show them off.  And, I learned that it is a bad idea not to look around your own room before asking someone else to do the same.

Keith, thanks again for the great trade.  And, my humblest apologies.