A Moment of Silence
Yesterday, three people died within 16 minutes of each other while running the Detroit Half Marathon, in one of the most tragic days in distance race history. As I read the race reports last night in utter disbelief, I learned that one of the men caught Magglio Ordonez’s ALCS clinching walk-off home run in the 2006, inadvertently placing himself in Detroit Baseball History. Fox 2 Detroit has the story.
I remember that guy from back in 2006, which humanizes this tragedy even more. Also, this happened a week after an MIT grad student died while running the Baltimore Marathon—my wife and I ran the half marathon the same day—and I can’t help but notice that these things often happen without warning to otherwise healthy and typically young people. I am a young, healthy distance runner and these stories freak me out. What’s more, a very close friend of mine, another young otherwise healthy individual, just “celebrated” the one year anniversary of surviving the stroke that she had early in last year’s Detroit Marathon, suddenly, unexpectedly and without warning. She has recovered tremendously well and is working herself back towards running again. The wishes of this blog go out to all of the families and friends who have been affected by running tragedies like this.
If A Tree Falls
In the category of “this is crummy news, but not really that bad considering how this post started,” the Detroit Shock WNBA team is apparently leaving Detroit for Tulsa. The Shock won championships in 2003, 2006 and 2008, but suffered from the fact that they were a, uh, WNBA team. You better get your 2009 set while they last, or start tracking down the team's full cardboard history for yourself.
Topps Retail Parallels: Updates & Highlights Edition
Remember those retail exclusive parallel versions that everybody loved? Remember how in Series 2, Topps decided to make them nearly impossible to collect? Well, that fabulous tradition continues with Updates & Highlights. Preempting the retail release, I decided to ask Topps how they were planning to distribute the Walmart “Black” and Target “Throwback” versions. The answer is: poorly.
Thank you for your letter regarding Topps and its products.
Currently, the retail U&H products are slated to contain two packs of black or throwback cards similar to the Series 2 release.
We hope this information is helpful to you. As always, please do not hesitate to contact our Customer Service team (By phone: 1-800-489-9149, or by Email:support@etopps.com) if you ever have any other questions, comments or suggestions. A customer service representative will be available to answer your questions between the hours of 8:30am - 4:30pm (EST), Monday through Friday.
Thank you once again for taking the time to write. We appreciate your interest in Topps products and hope you continue to enjoy our site.
Sincerely,
Topps Customer Service team
Thanks guys. Glad to see you evened things out after already shooting yourselves in one foot with Series 2.
Upper Deck Has Inconvenient Updates Too!
Cards on Cards is all over this one. Upper Deck has a stealth update set inside of their retail “fat pack” offerings.
These are technically inserts, but could certainly fall into the realm of cards that I would want for my team set. If it looks like the base set and feels like the base set… No word yet on what the checklist looks like.
Connection Severed
In case you weren’t tipped off by the fact that I haven’t written an article for the Cardboard Connection in months, I am no longer writing for the Cardboard Connection. I submitted my e-resignation some time ago, never got a response and have let things pass. For what it's worth, the Cardboard Connection is a fine internet publication, and one that I read frequently. I just didn’t have the time or energy to contribute over there without sacrificing what goes on over here, while diminishing my own enjoyment of baseball-card related writing at the same time.
Misc. Sorry for the majority downer update and copious complaining. Part 3 of Cup of Coffee Tigers is up at The Spot Starters, cards to follow in the next day or two. Can somebody please print up some sets of RobbyT cards? They are sweet, and he has massive Tigers sets designed from the last few years. Some people dig Ballpark Collection, I will still read their blog anyway. Wax Heaven is giving away the goodies. Dinged Corners summarizes my weekend of reorganization attempts.
