National Haiku Day

Baseball cards are fun.

This one in particular.

Dig his crazy duds.

Merry Steve's Eve

Do I think it's odd that we, as a society, partake in an annual festival of lights and gifts in honor of a third-string, back up catcher from the mid-80's?  Sure I do... but who am I to judge?

National Scrabble Day

I've always been a big fan of board games. Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit, Battleship, checkers... you name it, I'll play it. Maybe it's because I enjoy the strategy. Maybe it's because the stimuli keeps my overactive imagination occupied. Maybe it's because I relish the opportunity to gather round a table with family and friends for an evening of enjoyment. Heck, perhaps it's all of the above reasons. However, one thing is for certain - I will never get bored with board games.

One particular game that holds a special place in my heart is Scrabble. When my sister was a colicky infant - up all night and crying uncontrollably - my father, brother, and I would sit on the living room floor and test our vocabularies for hours while dad simultaneously rocked the baby. I mean, it was too loud to sleep and we needed something to distract our minds from the raucous sobbing. This little bit of family bonding meant a great deal to me and I'm pretty sure I can thank my baby sister for my school district spelling bee championship in seventh grade.

The reason I bring this all up is that, apparently, today is National Scrabble Day. The Hasbro trademarked creation has been around since 1948 and is sold in 121 countries with 29 different language versions. Why we have a national holiday to honor the crossword-based game is beyond me, but I'll sure as heck take any excuse to bust out the board after dinner tonight.

But, what does any of this have to do with baseball cards? This is a baseball card blog, right?

    =  29

Longtime Cubs hurler and current Giants disabled list resident, Jeff Samardzija, is famous for his tremendously difficult to spell surname.  Lord knows I can never confidently press "publish" on a post which makes mention of the Notre Dame product without cross-checking Baseball Reference.  I can only imagine what fits he put the editors at the Chicago Tribune and Sun Times through.  With that, Jeff - while better known as "Shark" - was often nicknamed as "Spellcheck" or "Scrabble," in reference to the random jumble of letters that is his last name.

Out of curiosity, I decided to see just how many points "Samaradzija" would earn in the game of Scrabble.  Of course, since it's a proper name, it would not be a legal play; but, in theory...

With the coveted "Z" and "J" tiles generating most of the oomph, the name generates twenty-nine points.  That's not bad at all; although, if one were to play the names of former Cubs players, Samardzija would not be the highest earner.

  =  29

Another former Cubs moundsman, Fred Baczewski (9 games, 1953), actually ties the "Shark" with twenty-nine tallies and with less letters, to boot.  Another "Z" is found, but the wealth is spread out a lot more here, with three, four and five-point tiles making appearances.

Now, I couldn't stop going down the road at this point - I had to figure out which player in Cubs history would have the most valuable last name in the game of Scrabble.  In the franchise's loooooong history, lords knows that they have had some mouthfuls on their active roster.

  =  13

  =  13

Here's another pair of hurlers whose family names have twisted the tongues of Cubs fans in the past.  Unfortunately for them, neither Pisciotta nor Tiefenauer combine for much in the way of scoring.  Thirteen is definitely not an embarrassing score for a turn in Scrabble, though it's hardly anything to write home about...

...much like the Cubs tenures of journeyman Bobby Tiefenauer (6.08 ERA in 13.1 innings for 1968).

= 21

Hargesheimer has the second longest last name in Cubs history; but, unlike the three men tied ahead of him, it's much more difficult for the human mind to figure out how these syllables form a pronounceable word. His lone season in the Windy City came in 1983, one year after Harry Caray shifted from the South Side to the North Side... someone please tell me that video exists of everyone's favorite drunkard struggling to pronounce this mish-mash!

For all his trouble, though, all Mr. Caray would earn from his struggle would be twenty-one points.  Good, but not great, and still behind a handful of other Cubs.

 = 26

  =  26

Tied for third most in my far-from-comprehensive research are yet another pitcher and, finally, a position player.  Apparently, those that man the mound are more naturally inclined to have peculiar names; is it a competitive advantage in distracting hitters?

Joe Schaffernoth might get points through the shear amount of letters on his name tag; however, sometimes less is more.  It's tough to beat Matt Szczur (pronounced "Caesar," somehow) and his two "Z's"... especially since in the real game you only get one such tile.  We'll suspend that disqualification though, since proper nouns aren't legal plays anyway.

  =  28

The hat-less Vic Roznovsky edges out Szczur and Schaffernoth by two tallies, on the strength of yet another "Z" and some four and five-point letters  This ranks him second on the list of best Cubs Scrabble names of all-time... or at least of my half an hour of semi-distracted research.  Speaking of which, Topps might be trying to tell me that this is an Orioles card, but they can't distract me from the fact that Vic is clearly wearing a Cubs uniform in this photograph; the blue and red trim on his color give it away.

Alright, it's all come down to this, which Cub has the highest scoring Scrabble name?  Drumroll please:

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The all-time, Scrabble king is Zizzer-Zazzer-Zastryzny - another two-Z technicality.  How appropriate that this quirky title should fall upon a lefty reliever?

With that, we've reached the end of my little exercise, inspired by National Scrabble Day.  Out of curiosity, what names from your favorite franchise's history would be best to drop on the game board?  Am I the only person who's brain is wired like this?  Will my wife kill me if I try to play "Roznovsky" in our game tonight?  So many questions begging to be answered!

Happy National Scrabble Day, everybody.

Wrigley Roster Jenga's Year in Review

Congratulations to everyone reading this - you're less than 24 hours away from officially surviving the tumultuous year of 2017.  Was this 365-day period really any more troublesome than any other? I don't know - but, between the political upheaval, natural disasters, violence, culture wars, etc. it sure did seem like it.   Here's hoping that 2018 is the start of a brighter future.

That's enough being negative, I'm sure a lot of good stuff happened too.  For me, personally, 2017 brought me marriage to my beautiful wife, a cozy new apartment, a much needed career-switch for my bride, the engagement of my father-in-law to a wonderful woman, and high school graduations by a pair of my sisters, among other positive happenings.  Furthermore, seeing as this is a baseball card blog, it would be quite remiss of me not to mention that this year provided a bountiful boon to my treasured Cubs All-Time Roster Collection.

All told, since January 1st, 2017, I've added 51 new names and faces to my marquee binder.  Let's review, in the order of their addition:

                    Brett Anderson                           Doug Clemens                  David Shean                       

Jim Gleeson                            Billy Myers                            Billy Rogell

Gordon Massa                          Bill Johnson                           Jeff Cross

Dylan Floro                          Eddie Butler                            Ian Happ

Pierce Johnson                      Seth Frankoff                             Frank Secory

Mark Zagunis                      Victor Caratini                    Jack Leathersich

Jose Quintana                    Les Sweetland                 Joe Stephenson

Jimmy Johnston                    Ray Harrell                   John Ganzel

Billy Maloney                 Bill Bradley               Jake Weimer

Johnny Bates                  Jake Buchanan                         Red Lynn

Dick Culler                     Ralph Hamner

Alex Avila                         Justin Wilson

Rene Rivera                          Dillon Maples                    Mike Freeman

Leonys Martin                       Jimmy Adair                       Jen-Ho Tseng

Johnny Hudson                                 Ed Sauer                             Lloyd Christopher

Bill Faul                             Footer Johnson                     Rube Novotney

John Pyecha                           Vern Morgan                    Tyler Chatwood

Brandon Morrow                     Drew Smyly                          Steve Cishek

John Flavin                                         Ray Prim                               Walt Woods

Names written in light blue indicate players that were also added to the Cubs all-time roster as I added them to my binder - in other words, player transactions.  I was able to keep with almost all of these live edits this year, except noted staring contest champion, Taylor Davis; to paraphrase Meatloaf, 21 out of 22 ain't bad.  So, if you see an extra TD lying around, please feel free to drop me a line.

Fifty-five seems like a significant amount of damage for just one calendar year.  For comparison's sake, last year was the only other year in which my record keeping was reliable enough to determine my 12-month progress; in 2016, I was able to cross off an additional 58 names from my "need" list.  Thus, my progress was minimally stunted in the year of the fidget spinner, but not significantly so.  I'm quite happy with what I accomplished with my CATRC this year.

Besides plain completion numbers, I was able to land some big fish this year, including 11 cards that I would consider to be super vintage (pre-1950), create a pair of custom card TTM successes, make my very first trip the National Convention, and establish a personal connection with oddball card producer, Carl Aldana.  Plus, it doesn't hurt to close out the year with what is, by far, the best month for readership that this blog has ever experienced.  This December, Wrigley Roster Jenga has had nearly 9,500 views - a 2,000 count increase over November and more than double the next best month in the blog's history.  We're definitely closing out 2017 on a high note!

via GIPHY

All in all, 2017 was a very big year for my baseball card collection and blogging.  I want to take this moment to thank all of you out there who read my ramblings and, for some reason, continue to come back for more.  Thank you for trading with me an sending out packages as random acts of kindness.  Thank you for writing your own wonderful blogs which supply me with endless hours of enjoyable reading material.  Thank you for helping to create, foster, and be a part of a phenomenal community of supportive collectors - without this outlet, I would have finally taken up residence in Crazy Town years ago!

The world might be a mess, but this community has provided me plenty of hope and served as a welcome distraction throughout the chaos of 2017.  If baseball card bloggers ran the world, I think it would be a much better place.  Here's hoping things begin to straighten out in the year ahead and 2018 has a much much different overall tone.

See ya next year!