I Don't Have the Words

Yesterday was a difficult day in the baseball world for the obvious reasons. Jose Fernandez's untimely death was terrible news to wake up to -- for me and everyone else. Losing someone with that much promise and that much joy at that young age unfair. It's cruel -- cruel to his family and friends, and most importantly, it is cruel to his unborn daughter. 

It is a reminder that we do not live in a just world. 

Thankfully and in a tasteful move, Topps refrained from issuing an "In Memoriam" card as part of its ToppsNow series. If I had to make an educated guess, I can think of a few reasons that they did not:

1.  Without having a cause for the accident, there could be the potential for a later embarrassment if the cause was anything illegal.

2. The concerns many people in the card world on Twitter had over the optics of profiteering off a man's death.

3. Related to number 2, a potential inability to determine what charity or fund any profits should be the beneficiary of any card sales.

4. Potential legal issues over the use of his image since he had passed away and it would be unclear whether the contracts in place would allow use without clearance from his family.

I'm not going to rank order these potential reasons. Not today. My cynicism has some boundaries.

Before I start getting too deep into a religious and philosophical wormhole from which I would never emerge intact, let me move on to something more frivolous: cards I've purchased recently off eBay.

I've severely limited my card buying lately for a number of reasons -- finances, interest in recent issues, and time for collecting, to name three. But, I did make a couple of recent purchases of more recent issues. 

First is this Rollie Fingers "Archives Snapshots" from the "Topps Photograph Vault." This card was one of the "online exclusive" cards issued 12 to a box. Each box comes with a guaranteed autograph and one black & white parallel, and they run $25 a box -- so, a little over $2 a card. 

It's pretty clear when this photo was taken, if you have a memory for pictures. Just take a look at the 1981 Topps Traded set card for Rollie:

With thanks to COMC for the image

Rollie is not quite as jolly on the photo used for the card, but it's quite clearly a photo taken during Rollie's first spring training at Sun City -- the long-since demolished complex where the Brewers held spring training through 1985.

I picked up Rollie's card for just about the price of an average card with shipping thrown in. But, that seller was a good man/woman and added in a bonus card for me:

Yes, I got a bonus card from the Bunt set. This is great for me because it finishes off the need for a Yount card. I still need a couple more from that set...and man, am I behind on getting my player collections updated!

In another purchase, I was looking for a copy of Ryan Braun's National Baseball Card Day card from this year to buy. Everyone was asking $0.99 for a starting price on auctions, and all the buy-it-nows were running at least $4 with shipping.  Then, I saw a sale where I'd get nine of them for a total cost of $4.

I didn't need nine of this card, but I did need two of them and getting 9 ended up far less expensive for me than getting two of them did.

Sometimes, buying in bulk is better.

Thanks for stopping by for this abbreviated version. I'll have an update on Ray Peters coming up this week along with a bit of a surprise out of the blue that came about recently for me.

In honor of Jose Fernandez, here's his at-bat music: