Reblogged from Grubby Glove:

Every year Topps Baseball Cards changes their design. My baseball card collection covers ninety-five years, so each time I review my cards it’s like flipping through a massive Rolodex of colors, graphics, designs, paper stocks and styles. With this post I’m introducing a new category: Baseball Card Sets. I’m going to start with the 1972 Topps set, getting the negatives out-of-the-way and finishing on an uptempo note. I suppose the lesson of the 1972 Topps set is that every company is good for a clunker …

I’ve been waiting for a baseball post worthy of my first reblogging. This is it!

Earlier this post-season, Albert Pujols bolted from the Cardinals to the Los Angeles Angels. If the Fielder deal comes through, that will mean that the top two sluggers in the NL have jumped to the AL.

With free agency, there are no doubt a zillion reasons athletes consider when deciding to sign with a particular team. With Pujols and Fielder – both slugging first sackers – I have to think that the designated hitter position in the AL was a factor, and possibly a significant one.

Even if their legs give out, they’ll be able to keep coming to the plate in the AL longer than they would in the NL. An American League team can offer a slugger the DL and thus stretch that multi-million dollar contract a bit longer.

As a (baseball) Giants fan, it was weird — and damned annoying — to hear chants of “Let’s go, Giants” ringing out from Candlestick Park after today’s NFC Championship game.

The baseball Giants have their roots in New York, of course, and I guess that must count for something. In my New York/New Jersey years, I followed the (football) Giants and will likely be rooting for them in the Super Bowl.

But it’s going to take several days before I get the disappointing end to the 49ers’ season out of my system. Give me time to heal, please.

While baseball is always top of mind for me, I’m preoccupied with football today as the San Francisco 49ers host the New Orleans Saints in an NFL divisional playoff game.

After tonight, we’ll be on the downslope to the start of Spring Training games.

Hope abounds for the 2012 season. Bring it on!

Over the past week I’ve been thinking about the right way to observe the arrival of the mid-point between the end of the 2011 World Series and the first games of Spring Training 2012.

What I propose is for fans to head to the nearest ball diamond, take a photo and share it with other fans. Use Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, PhotoBucket, Instagr.am, email or any other means of your choosing. But share the image, and tag it with “baseball solstice” if tagging is available.

The idea is to capture our fields of dreams in mid-winter, when our longing for the sport intensifies and the hope for a new season passes the halfway mark.

• Take a photo of the snow-swept diamond at the park where your son will play T-ball come spring.
• Snap a shot of the high school diamond where your daughter will open the softball season in a few months.
• Head to the nearest minor league park and capture the desolation of the unattended ticket booths.
• Drive to the nearest big-league park and fire away as in your head you hear the cheers that will fill the air on Opening Day.

Or maybe even better, point your camera to the yard or street where you first tossed a ball with your father or played Wiffle ball with your friends.

Taking a photo isn’t the only way to celebrate the sport, and if you can’t swing getting a photo, feel free to mark the observance in your own way.

Musing on this long dormant period for the national pastime, I’ve concluded that like our pagan ancestors, we must mark the passage of the seasons. And that means fixing what I’ll call the “baseball solstice,” the mid-point between the end of one season and the beginning of another.

The end of the World Series seems an overwhelmingly logical point to mark the end of a season.

But what constitutes the beginning of a new season? “Opening Day” used to mean the oldest continuously operating professional franchise, the Reds, taking the field in Cincinnati. But Major League Baseball has trampled tradition with early openers in Japan and kooky staggered schedules.

The reporting date in Arizona and Florida for pitchers and catchers is inadequate — there are no inning-by-inning broadcasts on the radio to record what happens, no box scores to enter anything into history.

That leads to one conclusion: The new season commences with the first games of Spring Training, when the teams take the field and the umpire cries “Play ball!” Every rookie has the potential to make the team, every veteran a chance to perform even better than the year before.

In 2012, the first games will be on March 2.

Between the last out of the 2011 World Series and those first Cactus and Grapefruit league ballgames, 134 125 days — better than one-third of a calendar year — will have passed since the Rangers’ David Murphy flied out to Allen Craig of the Cardinals.

So the mid-point, the baseball solstice, will be 67 62.5 days later, Dec. 30, 2011.

It’s a fitting date. In much of the United States, that’s the dead of winter with snow blanketing many a ballfield.

I’ll do something to mark the occasion. I could bay at the moon like some ancient Druid at Stonehenge and try to conjure a power hitter for the San Francisco Giants. Or maybe I’ll just look toward Progressive Field in Cleveland, beseeching the baseball gods to make 2012 the year the Indians win it all.

Centuries from now, our descendants may chance upon the ruins of Wrigley and contemplate the meaning and magic that dwelt there in ages past. With curiosity they may look upon the remains of home plate at Fenway Park or ponder what’s left of the fountains at Kauffman Stadium.

We owe it to our descendants to mark the Baseball Solstice in ceremonies of our own devising. So join me Jan. 4 Dec. 30 at sunrise. I will be in Pittsburgh, summoning my father’s spirit to bring the Pirates some luck.

Addendum: My headline on “Fixing” the date of the Baseball Solstice turned out to be a bit of irony. I miscounted the days and got the mid-point wrong. As Paul notes below, the correct date is Dec. 30, not Jan. 4. It’s still a day to celebrate.

I’m primarily a baseball fan and the overwhelming majority of my posts reflect that. But I’ve long been a hockey fan, and I was never more so than in the years I lived in New Jersey. I moved to Summit in 1999, just as the Devils were about to start their drive to the 2000 Stanley Cup. They won again in 2003, and I was rabidly attentive to the team for the duration.

Niedermayer is the third Devil to have his uniform retired, following fellow blue-liners Scott Stevens and Ken Daneyko.  As I think back on those great seasons a decade ago, I’m amazed at the talent the Devils had skating in front of goalie Martin Brodeur.

Although I think it’s just plain wrong for the NHL season to stretch nearly to the summer solstice, hockey was never more compelling than when I followed all those long playoff stretches as Niedermayer & Co. drove toward the cup.

Congratulations, Scott Niedermayer. Well played.

Neither of these deals is news today, but I’m trying to catch up on posting after a drought of a couple of weeks.

For me, word on Pujols’ salary overshadows everything else about his switching from the red cap of the Cardinals to the red cap of the Angels. Two-hundred fifty-four million dollars over 10 years is a staggering figure, and if it’s going to go to any ballplayer, at least in Pujols it’s going to someone with some humanitarian concerns, from all I can gather.

As for Torres, the journeyman who flourished in San Francisco’s championship season in 2010, I wish him all the best in New York. Injuries and maybe a bit of bad luck cost him many at bats and his starting position at center field last season, and I felt sorry for him.

The previous year, his season was just the opposite – he seemingly could do no wrong and was one of the great stories in the game. I hope he regains his mojo in 2012. And I tip my cap to him for all the good he did with the Giants.