The Wonders of Coffee

At this point, late nights are a common occurrence in life. I don't actually drink coffee, but I heard it does wonders for the late night seeker or the not-yet-morning person. Caffeine is something that baseball players really must have drank a lot of in the 1950s. Performance enhancing drugs at that time was booze and cigarettes, so any energy boost at that time would have been welcomed. Right now, I'm running on one of those adrenaline highs you get after something exciting happens to you, you know? The problem is nothing actually happened, so my brain has convinced my mind (these are not the same) that I should be amped....

So here I am, absolutely hyper for no reason. I've spent hours rifling through cards ("everybody shufflin'") and realizing that 2011 was the year of collection overload. It looked like my cabinet decided to swallow all the coffee I don't drink and dedicate itself to running around and filling itself with cards that I haven't seen before. Have I ever mentioned how much I dislike autonomous furniture? First, they surreptitiously undermine your authority and then they convince the other furniture to join their cause. As I write this, my dining room table has decided to fill itself up with cards without my knowledge as well....

Here's to some of the 1956 Topps cards I have, the first of which is definitely coffee stained (or it at least better be coffee).  This card is of my second favorite catcher from before I was born, Andy Seminick.

It was a calling to old glory for Andy, as he returned to the scene of his power hitting younger days after a 3+ year exile in Cincinnati.  On second thought, that could have been a Skyline chili stain....

Jim Owen was too young to appreciate the drinks of the older gentlemen of the club, having only just turned 21 during the 1955 season. But there must have been some sort of "giddyup juice" in his water bottle because the ball jumped out of his hand in any which direction. He issued over 130 BB between the minors and majors.

He finally settled down to a less than 6.0 BB/9 in 1959 when he could rent a car on his own. I wonder if drive-through coffee places were invented yet?

So to all nighttime coffee drinkers out there, I have two pleas (of semi-ignorance), stop allowing your furniture to take sips when you're not looking and only drink it when you're in need of vintage cards because they will appear in all their stained glory.