My Virtual Shrine

"A chart of numbers that would put an actuary to sleep can be made to dance if you put it on one side of a card and Bombo Rivera's picture on the other." —Bill James, 1982 Baseball Abstract

One of my all-time favorite baseball books is The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading, and Bubble Gum Book, by Brendan C. Boyd and Fred C. Harris. In it, the authors combined reprints of baseball cards from their youths in Fifties and Sixties with commentary ranging from one-liners to lengthier anecdotes. The results are touching and often hilarious as well.

I've always wanted to do something similar to that, and in fact my first attempt to do so led to the impetus to build this site. I grew up collecting baseball cards, and a good share of my memories, if not necessarily tied to the cards themselves, are triggered by them. Case in point: a few years ago, an obscure ballplayer named Ike Brown passed away. I never saw Ike Brown play (Detroit, 1969-1974, before my time), but I could instantly recall his 1974 Topps card as if I were holding it in my hand: a husky black, bespectacled right-hander, posed in his batting stance, cropped around the knees, wearing a road Detroit uniform. A fairly mundane card, yet etched for eternity in my memory.

Anyway... Here you'll find profiles of some of my favorite players and other baseball personalities, along with some reminiscences and a fair amount of background research. And of course, the cards. Not all of these guys were futility infielders, but they all mean something to me. My Wall of Fame inductees:

• Jay Buhner
• Ron Gardenhire
• Pedro Guerrero
• Reggie Jackson
• Tommy Lasorda
• Melvin Mora
• Paul O'Neill
• Lenn Sakata
• Luis Sojo
• Willie Stargell
• Tony Suck

Coming sooner or later:

• Jim Bouton
• David Cone
• Dock Ellis
• Mickey Hatcher
• Orel Hershiser
• Tommy John
• Graig Nettles
• Tim Raines
• Nolan Ryan
• Fred Stanley
• Don Sutton
• Gorman Thomas
• Fernando Valenzuela
• Bill Veeck