One Thousand Words to Say One Thing...

So I have me a quandary… I LOVE to blog. I love to collect baseball cards, I love to trade baseball cards, I love to talk about them and write about, I love to read other people who also love baseball cards. I have a blog. It is about baseball cards and my love of them. I have had it for over 2 years now. I used to write on it A LOT. A LOT of folks used to read it. Then I got too busy, and then my favorite player chased the all mighty dollar and abandoned ship, left town and joined the enemy. Then a bunch of other folks followed him out of town. Then I took this personally. I felt betrayed by the players I collected. I didn’t want to write about cards anymore. This lasted a while, but then something happened. I missed collecting cards; I missed talking about cards, trading cards and writing about cards. I decided that my love of this game (baseball) and my love this hobby and my love of writing (typing) about it was far greater than any one player…

Unfortunately during the time it took for this epiphany to strike me my scanner died out, I ran out money (and postage ain’t cheap!) and broke my right hand. I tried to recoup some money by peddling away the cards of my favorite player who left my favorite team but I realized that no one wanted them as badly as I did. In other words I was the sucker who would drop 20 bucks for a shiny autographed card that normal people would only pay 8 bucks for… This got depressing and I gave up on that mission, plus cards are hard to sell without pictures of them. People don’t just take your word that the card you are selling is in fact a real 1 of 1. So here I am. I have this blog and it has 156 followers and I have a head chock full of stories. I have 2 rooms in my house with stacks and boxes and binders and piles and more boxes filled with cards on the floor, on the shelves, on the desk, on the table and the chairs. I have a broken scanner and a broken hand and a busy schedule and no money and more excuses than a 15-year-old late for curfew… Like I said, I have a quandary…

I have shut this blog down and started it back up, I have quit collecting a dozen times, but I keep on coming back, I keep finding new things to collect and new reasons to love this hobby. I keep on posting occasionally and realizing that people are reading and that makes me want to post more. That makes me want to ignore that I have a broken scanner, a broken hand and more empty pages than full ones in the many half empty binders on my dining room floor. I love this hobby and I love to write about it. I have an addiction and I like it. I don’t wanna quit. I am a baseball card junkie, I am hooked on blogging. I don’t really want help.

I know I can’t post like I used to. I worked hard to create a following and I am pretty happy that a lot of different people have stumbled upon this blog; I am happy that so many stuck around, read a bit, maybe left a comment, maybe traded with me… A lot of folks did this and it made me pretty happy. I don’t wanna lose that. I want that back again. Each time I have left and came back I have made promises to post often. I have promised to update my other blogs. I am not gonna make any more promises. I have an idea. I tried doing a theme blog. I tried to blog about the 1978 Topps set. I think I made it to card 11 before I gave it up. I tried a vintage card of the day thing. It was cool, but there are more than 4 days in a month: I just couldn’t keep up. I tried to blog about my team’s journey in the postseason. By the time I got around to it, they were eliminated… They had a good run. Then they were dismantled. I took it pretty hard…

I never said goodbye (formally) to CC, Jason Bartlett, Fernando Perez, Matt Garza, Carlos Pena, Rocco Baldelli, Dioneer Navarro, Gabe Kapler, Willy Aybar, Rafael Soriano, Joaquin Benoit or Grant Balfour or any of the guys who were Rays the last time I blogged about the Rays… They aren’t now. I miss them. I really liked those guys. I still hold a grudge about Aki, Gomes, Kaz and Delmon. I am slow to forgive. The team is getting by, pretty good actually. I never welcomed Manny to the team, never said goodbye either. I am glad he is gone, I am glad I missed that episode. I am glad if ANYONE is reading this. I am glad I am getting better at typing with my left hand. I think I will be doing this more often. Maybe not this, but blogging.

I think I am back. I want to be back. I am gonna say it, the long and winding road has hit many dead ends, but it always leads back to my love of baseball cards and I can’t help but write about it. I am gonna say it straight up, I AM BACK!!! The troll is back, but he is out for now. Yeah, troll back, troll out.

(By the way, the one lone card in this post is the LAST card I scanned before the unfortunate death of my scanner. It came from the Cardboard Junkie. He rules. He knows that everybody loves Raymond… Thanks! I love this hobby. I love being back. I am back. I am out.