Cheery Sunday Morning Thoughts
 

Is collecting little cardboard pictures and photographs of dead guys some kind of charade that is designed to dilute the idea of death? Like we keep these guys alive somehow and maybe someday someone will keep us alive forever? As long as someone is collecting your card and talking about how great you were in the prime of your life you never really die right?

Carry on. Have a cheery Sunday.

That gets me thinking that I want to recreate this for my personal life. I should create a trading card set for my life going forward - one card for each year. I will hand them out to my family and loved ones each year. When I pass they can remember me in a fun way. Not just a a photograph, but something that is designed as a trading card. I think my family and friends who know I collect would appreciate it (or maybe they will throw it away). I wish I had thought of this sooner - I only have so many playing years left!

For me at the root of collecting, it’s about community. As a kid, I really wasn’t pursuing a card as much as I was something fun to share with my brother, and then my close friends. I texted my wife from The Boston Show yesterday saying ‘These are my people!’ So as an adult while the cards have grown in value and my collecting/upgrading is a family pursuit, it’s still the same for me: building friendships and relationships around a shared purpose, and in a way, that’s what baseball has always done-bring people together.

Oh, celluloid heroes never feel any pain
Oh, celluloid heroes never really die

I don't know if it is physically possible (not for 21st century people, but by the laws of advanced physics) to travel backwards in time, but consider this:

Not saying anyone has to travel backwards in time, but if it is somehow possible, that would mean, every detail of the past must somehow be preserved, or the information must be retained for the past to be re-constituted.

If, somehow, time could revert to, say, 1912, then the information for every detail from that period must be able to be re-accessed. Put another way, Joe Wood and his blazing fastball still exists.

Again, even if nobody or nothing ever returns to that time, if it's within the realm of possibility, then by definition the past still exists.

I turn to music to cheer me up...usually its DISCO!!!
https://youtu.be/Lrle0x_DHBM?si=eWvd919eh1T7yT6q
Sometimes, i open my safe and pull out my 'grail' cards.
Seeing and holding them is like sunshine.
Gotta show a T206..here is one i got Xmas last year.

My son in an astrophysicist, and that stuff is waaaay beyond my brain power. But I think it's a given at this point with quantum physics that there are realms of the galaxy that currently exist in periods of time that happened long ago and far away, so there are definitely different past, presents and futures out there.

Cheery Sunday
 

Answer to original question- good heavens, I hope not. I'm sure there's some
small, unidentifiable percentage of collectors who have managed to turn a
wonderful hobby into an existential struggle against death. Those folks are
desperately in need of a new hobby. Most people collect because they admire
a sport (or player or team), then grow to admire a hobby. It even turns into a
passion for a lucky percentage of us. if this is Sunday cheer, I'm afraid of
what constitutes Sunday gloom:)

Trent King

No, not really. To me it's a direct connection to my younger days when I was either collecting or coveting those same cards/items. Those items are to me a mental snapshot from my formative years. Cards such as these provide me with nearly the same delight as they did when I was a kid:

https://hosting.photobucket.com/albu...allCards-1.jpg

:)

Agree 100%

Who is planning on dying?

Reminds me of this novel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pi...of_Dorian_Gray

Card collecting represents an innocent pastime that was done mostly by young kids and for young kids. This has to be an element that is on the minds of most normal/healthy collectors and to the contrary does not suggest someone has some struggle with death and should collect Beanie Babies. :confused:

When we look at a distant star, what we're actually seeing is the light it emitted millions of light years ago. In some cases, that star may not even exist anymore. Conversely, if some being is on a planet right now that is 66 million light years from earth, if they have a telescope powerful enough to view our planet, they'd see dinosaurs walking around.

Which brings us to a recent discussion between Nork and his father, who live on a planet 120 light years from earth...

"Whatcha looking at through your telescope, Nork?"

"I'm watching that bow-legged creature with the short pants and "P" symbol on his lid. He can really hit that little ball and then he scoots around so fast nobody can catch him."

"Well, Nork, remember, you're watching events that took place 120 years ago. That bow-legged speedster probably no longer exists." Seeing the sadness in his son's eyes, Nork's dad quickly added, "But since he is obviously superior at what he is doing, compared to his peers, the creatures on his planet probably still revere him to this day. In fact, they probably collect and save pictures of him, so he'll never be forgotten."

Neil deGrasse Tyson or Carl Sagan couldn't have said it better.

I think the desire to put a collection together might have at least a little to do with our mortality in the sense of trying to leave behind something greater than ourselves, but I also think it has more to with life and the desire to enjoy material things while we're here. Just my two cents off the top.