You Never Know!

Greetings and salutations, my friends!   I've missed you all over the past.........well, it's been too long.   And before that, too few and far in between posts.

But no moping because there's no crying.....in......you know how it goes.

It was a great baseball season and, even though none of my personal favorites contended in the Fall Classic - it was a powerful finish for the Black and Orange.   Hats OFF to them and congratulations to my fellow bloggers who are Giants fans through and through.   It must have been a great roller-coaster ride!

Of course, one of the best highlights from the series for most of us was the historical performance by Pablo Sandoval in Game 1.   It set the tone for the Giants' ultimate victory and places a guy we all call "Panda" in some pretty esteemed World-Series-Game-Home-Run-Hitting company.   How cool is that?   I watched it unfold on TV as Mrs. Ryan's Pitch sat nearby.   I caught her attention to clue her into what was going on.   She's not a baseball nut like me but she enjoys the game and understands my obsession.   We both marveled at the moment...

Continuously checking my twitter feed and adding in my own 140-character nuggets as "@RyansPitch", I suddenly looked off into the distance.

"Wait a second...."

I ran plodded down to the basement and began a reckless search for a piece of cardboard that I had suddenly been inspired to think that....maybe, just maybe.......I actually had in my collection.   I scattered boxes and binders and loose-card stacks all over while I looked for a certain box.    Along with the original epiphany of this particular card, a new theme began to cultivate in my synapses:

"Organize your damn collection, lazy!"

I promised myself that I would.   Later.

AH!

Found it.   YES!   I knew it to be true.....I had pulled this card out of a blaster during my "Ryan's Spring" in 2011 when I dove back into our hobby.   It was awesome, simply because it was an autograph and autographs on cards in packs was a complete revelation to me as a born-again collector (can I say that?).   But it was of a player I wasn't that crazy about.....he didn't wear pinstripes or do the Tomahawk Chop....so it went in its top-loader and was placed into THIS stack instead of THAT stack and eventually forgotten.   Doomed to rest in peace until it was handed over to my son one day with a, "Behold.........my son."

But I had to wake it up and enjoy its....new found importance in the collection.   Cards have stories to tell.  Sometimes it's the picture on the front.   Other cards tell their best stories through stats on the back or a hand-written scribble by some kid from decades past.   Mostly, our cards will speak to us about the players they depict - the inherent purpose for their existence, after all.   And now, this card's story - like the man who signed it - will have an even sweeter story to tell.

We all love "pulls" and it's kind of neat when a "pull" enjoys an increase in "mojo" over time.

Enough words in quotation marks.   Here's The Panda:

Loopy On-Card Greatness

Man, I miss 2011 Gypsy Queen.   It was the release that brought me back into the collecting fold.  I thought it was pretty damn cool and as it turns out......it still is.   I hope Topps can re-capture what they had because further review of the sophomore release only heightens my disappointment and "meh" attitude towards it.

Pandas and GQ aside - it's great to be back.

Thanks for reading!