Somebody Please Stop Me!

I've always been a National League guy, growing up watching the Cubs on WGN and the Braves on TBS. As a military brat, I could get those games anywhere I moved with basic cable. At that crucial time when I decided which was my favorite, the Cubs of the 1980’s were much better than the Braves. Fast forward to the 1990’s and boy, did I feel like an idiot.

Ten years ago when I moved to Maine, I knew next to nothing about the Boston Red Sox. But as lousy as they were, for almost as long as the Cubs had been, their fans were just as passionate. The New England Patriots were in the midst of winning three Super Bowls in four years but when the Red Sox went on to sweep the Cardinals in the World Series that year after falling behind three games to the Yankees in the ALCS, New England was electric. I have a loose change 5 gallon water jug fund so that I can make sure I’m part of that in Chicago when the time comes. Any longer though and I might be able to afford to take my whole family!

I’'e always been a pretty big reader. That probably goes back to being a military brat, too. Moving all the time, I got to be pretty good at making friends quickly but there’s something to be said for being able to entertain yourself at any given time. One of my favorite baseball books came from that Red Sox World Series win.

Maybe it was because I've always enjoyed Stephen King books. Maybe it was because I experienced that season myself as a guest in Red Sox Nation. Or maybe, it just gave me hope for my Cubbies.

C’mon, Theo!

I saw the book on my shelf recently and thought it might be fun to try to catch lightning in a bottle for my own team. I’m not going to write a book myself (at least I don’t think I will) but over the past two seasons, I kept track of my favorite team by making a custom baseball card for every Cubs player that appeared in a game.

This year, while I still might do that, I thought I would step it up and chronicle the games as well. I lost my newspapery card template when I lost my hard drive but using the Darwin Barney card in my header as a guide, I made a few tweaks and came up with this:

The format will remain relatively the same with each card but I’d have to update the details for each game. I could probably do this 162 times. Plus playoffs, too, right?  I think we may be a season or two away from seeing more Win flags in the upper right corner than Loss flags, but we’ll see.

I’m not sure if I’ll even end up printing these or if they’ll just end up as a file on my hard drive (and backed up elsewhere!).

I even took the time to make a backside to further detail the game. Hopefully, I’ll be able to come up with two to three highlights for each game or else there might be some wasted space.

Who knows, I may lose interest in this by the end of the month when the Cubs are already 10 games below .500, but I’d love to hear some thoughts on this. Either on the idea (how crazy I am) or the execution (thoughts and suggestions on the cards themselves). Thanks!