What is Bill Spiers looking at

On the back of Bill Spiers's 1992 Leaf card, he is shown looking through a small pile of baseball cards.

The card visible in his hand is clearly this Mark Knudson card.

However, behind the Knudson is a card in a sleeve with a "ROOKIE CARD" header. Knudson was not a rookie on this card, so there's really now way to tell who it is. If I had to guess, I would assume Greg Vaughn, as he was the biggest Brewer rookie in 1990 Donruss.

By the way, I bet it's not easy flipping though cards with your batting gloves on.

Walt Weiss and the Motor City Kitties

The back of this card features a nickname I never heard of before for the Tigers - the Motor City Kitties. Tomorrow, of course, the Kitties play a team that used to have a star pitcher named Kitty.

And why is Walt Weiss carrying a salami? This needs to be explained.

Arrrr, Pirate hats

Johnny Ray's afro is so big, it crawls up the side of his helmet! Although it is a Donruss Highlights card, no highlights are in fact visible in Ray's hair.

Willie Stargell's cap in this picture only has half his name - does he also have a hat which says "GELL"? The scrambled eggs on the bill of the cap indicate that he is in fact a Pirate Captain.

The hair-raising Silvio Martinez

There have been a lot of posts lately about big hair on baseball cards. Night Owl posted this 1981 Donruss card of Silvio Martinez, which is certainly an eyecatcher.

I bet a lot of people looking at that card in 1981 were wondering, how does he get a cap on over that? Donruss obliged by showing him with his cap the next year:

Interestingly, Martinez never pitched again after that. Perhaps he got a neck injury from carrying all that extra weight on his head?

Chris Rosenbaum on baseball cards

Chris Rosenbaum is a catcher in the Angels organization who hit .319 this year at Single-A Rancho Cucamonga. Rosenbaum, who has both a BS and an MBA from the University of Tampa, writes a blog called "Looking Through the Mask" that can be found at both MLBlogs and Wordpress. He kindly took the time to answer my questions about his baseball card experiences. "I used to collect baseball cards when I was younger. I think I stopped getting new ones around when I was 12. I still have them at my home in New York (I have been living in Tampa for the past five years) and will look through them from time to time. It's interesting seeing cards of people that are now coaches and managers in my organization, as well as others. I think there are only two things worth noting about the three cards that have been issued of me. On my 2007 Orem Owlz card, it mentions my accolades when I played at the University of Rochester (2003-2004). There was nothing mentioned about The University of Tampa (2005-2007), where I transferred to and completed my collegiate career.

The other tidbit to mention is that on my 2009 Rancho Cucamonga Quakes card, my birth date is listed incorrectly as 4-25-87. It should read 4-2-84. However, I'll never complain about appearing to be younger than I really am. It also says my hometown is Albany, NY. However, my hometown is Castleton, NY (a suburb of Albany). I don't know why these were the first year of these mistakes."

Thanks!

Tony Tarasco 1995 Donruss

Here's a card of Tony Tarasco that came out a year before he was pwned by a 13-year-old in a playoff game. His position on the front is listed as OF. However, judging by the inset picture, it looks the correct position would be BATBOY.

Interview with Ruben Flores

Ruben Flores (who likes to be called "Flo") started his pro baseball career in the Mariners organization. A Midwest League All-Star in 2009 with 18 saves for the Clinton Lumber Kings, he was traded to the Brewers on August 19, 2009 straight-up for veteran infielder Bill Hall. He kindly took the time to answer my questions about baseball cards.

Bo Rosny: Do you have any stories about cards of yourself or of other players?

Ruben Flores: Stories about my self unfortunately i don't have, but i can remember as a kid my favorite athletes were Michael Jordan and Nolan Ryan which might i add still are. But i can remember that one day eating cereal i saw on the back of the Wheaties box there was a chance to get a collection of Jordan cards if i mailed in like 10 upc's. So me being excited and wanting the cards, I asked my parents if we could buy the 10 boxes of Wheaties to get the UPC's so i could mail them in. I was happy that we were able to send the 10 upc's in but sad that i had to eat 10 boxes of Wheaties and let me tell you Wheaties don't exactly have the best taste for a 10 year old kid, i think by half way through the 2nd box i had given up and told my parents that i would work off the other 8 boxes.

BR: Do you have a favorite card of yourself or of another player?

RF: This last year i made the MILB Midwest league all star game which was pretty sweet and i got a baseball card that says exactly that. i thought it was pretty cool first one ever, hopefully more to come.

[His card is on the top right in this picture]

BR: Do you collect baseball cards?

RF: I used to collect them, i had a ton. I had all the players put by their team and position in a little binder in card sheets. I stopped after about 12 years old, just got way to busy traveling with my teams that i grew up with but something i could really get back into.

Thanks, Flo!

What is Upper Deck to do?

With Topps's new monopoly on baseball cards, they can't put team logos on cards. So will they merely rip the logos right off, leaving just a few threads hanging?

Or make up their own random logos for each player? (That would be cool!)

Topps commercial

Last night I was watching the MLB Network and there was a commercial for Topps. It was pretty bad, just a mishmash of cards flying across the screen. Pretty much looked like this except not staying on the screen long enough to make out any individual cards.

Doesn't exactly make one rush out to buy baseball cards. I guess now that they have a monopoly Topps feels like they don't have to try very hard.

In the land of the beltway, football is king

Living in baseball-mad New York, you can forget that in most of the country, football is more popular than baseball. This is not usually reflected in baseball cards, but check out this 1992 Upper Deck card of Baltimore first baseman Randy Milligan playing with a camera in Memorial Stadium.

It's hard to see, even when I zoom in on the camera, but if you have the card you can clearly see that the camera actually belongs to the Redskins.

I guess the Orioles had to borrow cameras from the big football team in the area. I assume that these days the Orioles borrow their equipment from the Ravens.