Random thoughts presented randomly

Happy Carlos May Day!

I wanted to find this cartoon to acknowledge the always fun trivia question, "who wore his birthdate on his uniform?," but didn't have time to search all of my cards to find it.

Tigers fan Don came to the rescue on Twitter and told me it was on the back of the 1977 Topps Al Bumbry card. Mystery solved. But it made me think that I would really like to catalog my cards by cartoon.

Really. There are so many cool facts that I learned from reading cartoons on card backs during the '70s that I often want to find the fact but can't find the card. So, I might do that some day -- you know, when I have so much time on my hands that I'm spending the whole day rocking on the back porch.

But today I have no time, so you're getting a bunch of random thoughts that I've had over the last few days just thrown together like so, because I can't form a properly structured post.

Try to enjoy.

When I scanned the Matt Kemp Bowman card for yesterday's post, something looked familiar about it.

I then realized that it sort of resembled the cards that are on shelves right now.

Sure, 2013 Topps has more thought to its design, but there are some similarities between it and 2011 Bowman.

I used the blue parallels to better illustrate it since base 2011 Bowman is black and base 2013 Topps is white.

But it makes me wonder if Topps designers riff off their own designs.

Hell, it's not wondering at all. They must take ideas from certain sets and extend them to others. It's only natural.

What do you do when a player you have a history of disparaging is suddenly signed by your favorite team?

I hate when that happens. The Dodgers, for reasons that only can be attributed to desperation, signed Jonathan Sanchez to a minor league deal. I'm hoping he never makes the majors because the guy's a disaster.

As a former Giant, he's already got one strike against him, but I have always had an issue with pitchers who are not, shall we say, "mentally tough." Sanchez is a meltdown waiting to happen every time he shows up. "I'm a real energetic guy," he's quoted as saying on the back of this card. Well, energy doesn't help you if every small hiccup or perceived slight causes you to walk eight batters in a row.

I'm having flashbacks to when Darryl Strawberry was signed by the Dodgers after years of me hollering "DA-RRYL! DA-RRYL!" at the TV screen. Except, you know, Strawberry was actually GOOD.

I don't know if anyone wants any of these cards, but I thought I'd ask before getting rid of them some other way.

I've completed the 1977 Topps set, and that has included making quite a few upgrades. That means I have almost 300 or so '77 cards -- most dating back from when I first collected them in 1977 as an 11-year-old -- just sitting around.

I thought about saving them to pay homage to that memorable year of collecting. But I'm running out of room (and I've already got my first cards from my first year of collecting in '75).

Virtually all of the cards look like this. Well-worn, not a sharp corner (or a corner period) to be seen. But creases are at a minimum and there are no rips, tears or stains.

If anyone is interested in them, send me an email, and I'll be happy to ship them off to you (give me a few weeks though to send them).

If you want only a few, say all the Phillies or something, I can do that, too. But I will give preference to anyone who wants all of them. And it's first-come, first-serve, too.

I also have a healthy stack of '76 Topps (in slightly worse shape) and '79 Topps (in slightly better shape), if anyone is interested in those. Same rules apply as for the '77s.

If no one's interested, I'll try Listia ... maybe. I'm staying away from the site lately, because people are charging too many credits for their useless cards. But I can at least take advantage of the "get rid of your garbage" feature.

I'll end this with a mini trade post.

I received a nice trio of Dodgers cards from Marcus at All The Way To The Backstop. He combed my want list to find these two 2009 Topps 206 parallels of two guys not on the Dodgers (for various reasons).

And here's some insert from 1993 Upper Deck (I think).

This may or may not be on my want list, I just know I didn't have it before. It pays tribute to Upper Deck's 5th anniversary (what a big boy you are Upper Deck!). The back is full of self-congratulatory copy that only UD could churn out.

The card number is #A10.

My question is: what is it? And: do I need a second one, since I'm trying to collect everything 1993 Upper Deck?

OK, I'm done with the random thoughts.

I'll try to be more specific next time.