Delayed reaction

I know myself so well.

I'd say a good 10 percent of the posts on this blog are about how slow I am. I'm fairly punctual in real life, but when it comes to the hobby, forget it. Who can keep up anyway?

Johnny's Trading Spot has been sending piles of cards around the country lately and my gift arrived in late July. "Christmas in July" said the note, and I looked at the calendar. "There is no way I am going to get this on the blog while it's still July," I said.

Here we are, nine days past July -- well past the time others have displayed their same packages -- and I'm just getting to this.

But I like this. I like "Christmas in August," better than Christmas in July. Who needs Christmas in July? July is already packed with my birthday, vacations, the 4th, and we want to throw another Christmas on it? Put it in August when I can use it!

August has always been the most depressing month for me, I've mentioned this before. It's the month before life wakes up again and realizes that it's trying to kill you. August is filled with dread. I need to take my mind off the dread. This package will do nicely.

I've weeded the card package down to what I need in order to spare both you and me. And I'm showing them by decade in reverse order. That way you folks with short attention spans can see the latest and greatest first, the way you prefer.

Here we go:

2010s

The card back for 2017 Donruss come in achingly dull gray this year. It seems on purpose now that I know that there are things like pink-back parallels in this set.

A Cody Bellinger sighting and my first Gavin Lux card! No, Baseball Card Breakdown cannot have this one.

It's a dreamy Corey trio. I'm particularly over the moon over the 1959-style Bazooka mini from this year's Heritage.

These Infinite inserts are still odd to me. I just don't dig the orange glow in the middle. It looks like Maeda is in a commercial advertising a soar throat cure.

The 2010s are going to be known to future generations as the decade when baseball cards couldn't feature a cap that players actually wore during games.


2000s

Real good stuff here, including the Preacher Roe, the Hardball roundies and the revenge of the Shawn Green relics. I traded off a bunch of Green relics a couple years ago because just had too many, and now they're starting to return. Let's see how quickly it gets out of hand.


1990s

Not much to display here (in a rare occurrence, I had most of the '90s cards in the package). But that Ramon Martinez arm makes up for it. My goodness is that thing on display. One giant hand and so much arm hair.


1980s

O-Pee-Chee! There was a healthy selection of '82 OPCs (the Garvey is weird, it's almost like you can't see his eyes). In fact all of the '80s cards displayed here are from 1982.


1970s

None (tear drop)


1960s

A 1966 Topps rub-off that I didn't have is pretty damn cool.


This was a welcome package even if I couldn't write about it until August. Still, in another month, you'll be lucky if I get to write about the cards you sent even two months after they arrived.

The reactions are even more delayed from September through May.

As those ubiquitous Game of Thrones people say: brace yourself.