Direct from the Twitterverse

As you might know, I used to be on Twitter. But like salmon swimming upstream, I got out of there while everyone else in the world was getting in.

I'm still active on Twitter on a professional level. Dispensing information, receiving information. It's invaluable. It works for me on that level. But not on the personal level. I guess I prefer my facts in short snippets, while I want my opinions in long, meandering blog posts.

When I left Twitter, I left a number of card collectors who also have blogs but prefer Twitter. They're still there now, and most don't update their blogs very much anymore. That's OK, I guess, but I miss them.

Trading with those folks has dwindled down to zero. Another unfortunate bi-product of being a blog-only collector (I don't do the forums either).

But just the other day, a card package arrived from one of the more active collector twitterers that I know.

Greg/@grogg sent me some cards that he claimed were long overdue. I don't consider any card packages overdue -- they get here when they get here. But the contents did feel like Christmas had arrived and I had waited 10 months for it. That's how much I liked the cards.

Mel Queen was one of them, right up top. He is a high-number short-print in the 1971 set. I know Queen more for his status as a legendary pitching coach with the Blue Jays -- and the fact he was born in Johnson City, N.Y., which is where I worked as a teenager. His pitching career is a mystery to me.

More 1971 men of mystery. This is another high-numbered card. You can tell by the way Topps haphazardly threw prospects together from different teams, as opposed to packaging rookies by team, which it did earlier in the set.

This card has the feel that it was set filler because none of these guys did a lot in the majors. Bernie Williams -- not the guitar playing Yankee (did you know he plays guitar? I think I might've heard about that, oh, eleventy trillion times) -- played the most of the three, just over 100 games in four years.

But you're not here to learn about the stats of prospects who went nowhere. You're here to find out how close I am to finishing off the 1971 set!

Well, with these two cards, I am down to needing just SIX cards to finish it off. SIX! Of course, one of those is Clemente, but I'm setting up a special day when I can focus exclusively on him.

Meanwhile, let's have the percentage figure on the '71 set.

752 cards in the set. 746 cards collected for:

99.2%

That's 99.2 percentage points dudes!!!!!!

I am so close to completing a set that I never thought I'd complete that I am already taunting in my head the friend that I had back when I was around 10, who showed me one of the first '71 cards that I ever saw and lorded it over me in that way that he did (he liked to feel superior). I'm pretty sure I have that card now,  bud.

Greg didn't stop with those two key cards. He went in a completely different -- yet welcome -- direction with two others.

Here is a fine-looking Paul Lo Duca relic card from Bazooka. Piece of Americana takes on a bit of new meaning knowing what we know about Lo Duca's once-proud career. But I'm very happy to own the card anyway.

This is a handsome-looking bat relic card of ex-Dodger slugger Shawn Green. I'm convinced he has more relic cards than any other Dodger. I have a dozen of them. Which means there are only 1,409 more to obtain.

And that is a great quartet of cards from Greg.

I'll probably never revive the old night owl Twitter account or start another one. But it's good to know that Twitter hasn't forgotten about me -- a wretched, old-fashioned blogger.