Thinking Deeply With 1990 Donruss & A Shout Out To The Dimwit

I made some self deprecating comments about my recent purchase of an album bound INCOMPLETE set of 1990 Donruss that I "won" at one of Cleve’s auctions a few weeks ago.  I felt it was a justifiable purchase for $2 because it also came with several back issue Beckett magazines, but mostly because the pages were in good shape and I could remove the pointless Donruss cards and use the pages for later.  It did amount to 83 pages after all.  I finally finished pulling out all of the cards the other day, and a few things occurred to me:

1)       I am never doing this again.  Do you know what a pain it is to pull 700+ boring cards out of 80+ pages? 

2)     Despite the hassle, there is always something of value in any base set if you look hard enough.  Not necessarily of monetary value, but something worth pausing over and thinking about.  For example:



Even though he was commissioner of baseball for a very brief period of time, I have grown to become an admirer of Bart Giamatti.  Some newer baseball fans may not be familiar with Giamatti and his place in baseball history.  But rather than giving an overview of his biography, I’ll partner with Wikipedia just like Topps has done recently with their Allen & Ginter cards. 

My admiration is mostly unrelated to his ruling on Pete Rose (I don’t intend to get into that here), but more due to my perception of him as a thoughtful, literate asset to the game of baseball.  If you’ve never read any of his books or essays on baseball, I highly recommend doing so.

I wonder what the landscape of baseball would look like had he not passed away and remained commisioner?  Would the steroid plague played out the same way?  Would we still have the Wild-Cards and Interleague play?  Would baseball be better or worse than it is now?  I would vote for Giamatti over Selig as commissioner, but that doesn’t mean he would have done a better job than Selig over the past 15 years.   As much as people like Colin Cowherd give Selig grief for being beholden to baseball traditions, would Giamatti been even LESS likely to make changes to the game than Selig?   I am interested in the thoughts out in blogger land. 

Also, if you don't know about it already, the one and only Daily Dimwit is having a really nice giveway, with signups ending this Friday.   Get over and check out a great blog!