Baseball's back and here's a post that's not about baseball

What can I say? Baseball takes four days off and I find something else to do. Don't do that, baseball!

On the occasion of finding my first packs of Allen & Ginter cards yesterday, I updated the link on the sidebar, in which I list all of the non-baseball player cards in the base set, with the 2018 set. Here are all your non-baseball players if you're interested in that kind of thing.

While compiling the list, I noticed that there are fewer people of the non-baseball persuasion in this set than in any other Topps Allen & Ginter set. There are just 28. It's never dipped below 30 before.

Also, when you add the places and things in this year's base set -- there are six -- that comes to 34 non-baseball players, which is the lowest total since 2012, when Allen & Ginter ignored places and things completely and produced 33 cards of people who were not baseball players.

I don't know what this means. Perhaps it was a particularly difficult year in landing people for the set? I notice that Lindsay Vonn is in the set this year and she was already in it in 2013 (although this has happened a few times already, including for fellow Olympian Michael Phelps).

The non-baseball insert sets -- which are quite interesting this year -- make up for the lack of non-baseball base cards, but I've got to admit, it's still a little disappointing. Finding cards of people and things that are not baseball players is the main reason I'm buying Allen & Ginter. It's just another baseball card set if you remove the actors and skiers and inventions and rocks.

But that's all I want to mention about Allen & Ginter today.

However, since I'm on a non-baseball run, I'm going to return to the 1991 Pro Set SuperStar MusiCards U.K. box break from my birthday.

I enjoyed opening those 35 packs immensely and they are already filed in a binder with the U.S. version set, which I've yet to complete.

I've also yet to complete the U.K. version, thanks to one stinking card.

I was feeling pretty superior about collation back in the day as I opened those cards. Through the first 15 packs, I had pulled each one of the 150 cards except for one. I hadn't even pulled a double until the 13th pack! As a comparison, I was pulling doubles of 2018 Allen and Ginter, a 350-card set, by pack number 7.

However, the last 20 packs for the music cards were all duplicates. In fact, I built nearly an entire second set, with the exception of three cards. I've already found a taker for that second set (there are about 40 cards that I pulled three times if anybody wants those).

The one cards I was unable to pull to complete the set is a legend in the United Kingdom. It's card No. 114.

"I've had nothing but bad luck since the day I saw the cat at my door." ... Anybody have this card?

Meanwhile, it's great fun to have the rest of the set. As I mentioned before, there are a quite a few noted artists in the U.K. set that did not make it into the U.S. set.

A short list: Bryan Adams, the Beatles, David Bowie, Dire Straits, Elvis Presley, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Elton John, New Kids on the Block, Prince, Queen, REM, Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder and ZZ Top.

Of course, you do get saddled with multiple cards of British heartthrobs of the past like Jason Donovan and Chesney Hawkes.

(Conversely, some artists in the U.S. set and not in the UK set: Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Hall and Oates, LL Cool J, Billy Idol, Kiss, Tom Petty, the Pretenders, Bonnie Raitt and Santana).

I'm glad some people have been enjoying the music cards. It's really where my heart is these days. (That and vintage baseball anyway). Gavin of Baseball Card Breakdown has even offered to work up some by-request musical customs using the Pro Set design. I've already put in my request.

OK, I'm off to watch non-exhibition baseball games for the first time since Sunday. It will definitely get me back into the baseball mood, never fear.