I went for a walk around 11 a.m. today. As I was returning home, the kids from the elementary school a couple blocks from me were getting out. It was a half day as is customary during the final week of school. It's a great time of year but I don't need kids running down the block at noon to remind me how much I like this time of year. I have a job connected to the school year and that has been the case for more than 40 years. If you had told me the night I graduated from high school that I would be celebrating the end of the school year more than 40 years later, I don't know what my reaction would be. Surprise, sure. I also might have looked for the nearest bridge. For sure I am thrilled I've hit the easy season. No full slate of high school and college sports events, no late hours, no more coaches, no more parents, no more teachers' dirty looks. To celebrate I have compiled an All-School team, just to rejoice over what we're all leaving behind for a c...
This is not a post about Topps' decision a decade ago to drop managers from card sets. But what a fateful decision that was. I know I would be able to identify current managers -- heck even know their names better -- if they were still featured on baseball cards. This is about a different time when managers went missing, and it was only a couple of them. And I sure did notice. I started collecting in 1975. So I didn't know stand-alone manager cards, which were commonplace in the years prior. I knew managers as showing up as little head shot insets on the team card. That's where they appeared in the 1975 Topps set. Every team card came with a manager head shot in the lower corner. This means that the manager in most cases showed up twice on the team card because he's also seated with his players and coaches in the team photo. But I didn't know that at the time. It was too tough for my little mind to figure out who was who in the mass of people. But I did...