In the beginning.....Pre State of the Blog post.

I’m a rambler. I’m sure you all realize that if you read anything I post here with any regularity. I really don’t have an agenda and I don’t plan on getting one. Over at the 13 Tenets I have a slight agenda, eradication of stupidity, but that’s just my personal crusade. With the new year approaching I’ve been thinking about the Crack here. What I had hoped to do and what actually transpired and maybe what I hope to do in the future. I really don’t get a lot of feedback from you guys which is fine. I personally like to leave little nuggets of wisdom or anti-wisdom whenever I can. Thorzul had a post a few weeks ago about the neglected posts, the ones that never get a comment. It was funny and so true. We all want that feedback. It got me to thinking of why I blog at all and why I started. Like any good hero you need an origin story.


On a distant shoreline, we’ll call it Haines, Alaska. I was looking for Robin Yount checklist. You see I collect cards of this great shortstop/outfielder, who took my lowly baseball team to its only World Series appearance. And while they didn’t win, the series did go 7 games though, it has been Milwaukee’s crowning achievement in the franchises’ history. Sadly I was 9 and didn’t really care then it would be for another 5 years till I grew to love baseball and my home state Brewers. So I’ve been looking for a fairly complete Yount checklist online and found this website call the Trading Card Database. It’s still there and I still use it and contribute to it. And while it’s not complete by any means at least they’re trying. It was while on this site that I noticed they had a little blogroll and here I first discovered sports card and sports related blogs. They were awesome. One of the first sites I stumbled across and sadly way to near the end was Wax Heaven by Mario Alejandro, who has since retired from the blogging world. But it sparked something in me. I was information deprived living in BFE Alaska. The nearest card shop was in Whitehorse, Yukon and all they sell is Hockey Cards and the next nearest were in Anchorage and Fairbanks so needless to say most of my boxes came in from eBay or somewhere else. Then I stumbled onto the motherload when I found JayBee’s Blogroll. AHHHAAA. Holy crap there was everything here and it’s only gotten better. And I thought hey I know how to write, just not well, and I like sports and sport cards, I should start my own blog, which thanks to blogger and wordpress is incredibly easy to do. So I did and I tried to come up with a title that incorporated the addictive nature of collecting sports cards and also kinda where my collection would be hidden. Lots of my friends know I collect baseball cards and comics, few know how many. In a word that labels you I found it best to keep my addictions hidden. Comics and baseball cards were always considered kids things and if you were an adult who indulged in those things you were labeled a nerd or weirdo. I guess I could have called it Collector’s Cave or Closet, but Collector’s Crack just seemed to work and I didn’t see anyone using it. Although there were similarly titled blogs out there. What was I hoping to accomplish. Hell if I knew, hell if I know now. I’m trying to change the world. I remember back I was thinking I could be like some of those great other blogs who put out useful information and offered intelligent inside into the hobby. PWWWWT. Whatever. After a while I knew it wouldn’t be that blog. But I hoped to fall somewhere in-between. In this day and age I wasn’t going to scoop anybody about any topic. So I let the Crack set its own course. I tried to put in it all the things I loved, box breaks, hits, rants, loves, hates, musings, ect ect. I soon realized that I didn’t want the Crack to just a Brewers or Packers blog or a player collection blog so I started up the Yount Collector and the Rollie Fingers Collector to give those collections and loves a place of their own. Then I decided that I wanted a place that I could put up my team specific stuff and I had always wanted to start a Packers fan club up here in Alaska called the Long way from Lambeau fan club, kinda like the Far from Fenway fan clubs around the country. And I figured why I’m at it might as well make up one for the Brewers and I called it Miles from Miller. Gotta keep the rhyming scheme together. The spatially displaced Milwaukee Brewers Fan Blog just doesn’t have the same ring to it. And then I found I was ranting a lot on the Crack about things that really had no place on the blog so I started the 13 Tenets of Cynicalbuddhism to cover that as well. And while the Crack was always my first and probably best supported blog, all the blogs have a point and a place. I have found that after a year of blogging I’m still at it, still using all the blogs, still finding things to write about, still having fun.

The best thing about the sportcard blogoteria™, is the diversity and talent. The one thing I’ve found is that no two blogs are alike, even team based blogs or player collections blogs. Everybody’s got their own take and opinion and it’s great. So here’s to you bloggers out there that take the time to put your thoughts and hearts out on your blogs. And here’s to another great year.



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