Pokemon on the Diamond?

 

 "Why is there a Pokemon at the game?"

That is the question my son asked this week when he caught sight of a video clip of the Phillie Phanatic. He has never been to a MLB game, and he doesn't watch much baseball. 

CardBoredom's June

I finally got around to publishing a pair of related posts that were delayed by hosting issues. The first is a review of Brian Kappel's book Re: Leaf, which is dedicated to the production history of the 1949 Leaf baseball card set. He provides a good primer for readers unfamiliar with the (many) oddities of this issue. What I particularly want to highlight is his insistence that dozens of cards were produced with two variations. He lays out the case for the existence of a parallel track of cards and walks readers through the evidence that differentiates the cards from the printing flaws and fluctuating ink levels that are so commonplace in the set.

This discussion of variations prompted my thoughts to go in a new direction and to wonder which variety was more difficult to come by. I set about designing a study to answer this question and determine the ratio of these cards populations beyond just ascertaining which version is more rare. I published my results here, finding that the variations produced late in the production cycle are nearly six times as scarce as the more common variety. As someone who loves to get as deep into a card's history as possible, learning which cards in my collection fall into this "hard to find" bucket is very exciting. Feedback has been coming in, and I suspect a follow up post will be in order in late July or early August. One of the earlier experts on the set will be adding his thoughts and I am eager to see his suggestions. I know there are also a handful of math professors who read this blog and I encourage them to share their thoughts. I see this as a first draft of an idea and think we can refine it and take it even further.

Writing only two posts in month gives an idea of the general availability of time for hobbies. Work is picking up, I have doubled the usual number of interns being supervised for the summer, and have generally been marveling at the scope of the boom underway right now. Throw into the mix the solving of a hole in family genealogy lore and an ongoing medical mystery for one of my kids (potentially solved, will get confirmation in August). This is not a time to be sitting still at all. Baseball cards will always be somewhere in my mind, but they can wait their turn. 

A brief follow up on last month's hosting hiccup: The problem of intermittent access to CardBoredom was finally resolved. The issue lay with the site's CDN, which had become overly aggressive in shutting off traffic arriving via VPN. All has been working since finding some workarounds. 

Newly Arrived Cards

This month's additions added to both my '52 Topps and '49 Leaf set builds. I knocked out six '52 commons and find myself two cards away from having completed the low number version of the set. The race for being the final card marked off the checklist is now down to the rookie card of Wally Post and the semi-high number short print of Tommy Brown. Within the Leaf checklist I was able to secure a Johnny Vander Meer and a late printing variation Buddy Rosar. 

Wallet Card Sighting: US Navy Edition 

Let's close out this month's summary with an update from one of the current wallet cards. This picture comes from inside Turret Number 1 of the Wisconsin, a retired Iowa Class battleship tied up in Norfolk.