Guess who has diabetes...............

This guy!

I mean me.

As I referred to in a previous post, I said that doctors had found gallstones and I was going to get it taken care of.

Well, that was a while ago and I am still suffering from this.

But as it turns out after going to the ER today for what I thought was going to be a ruptured gall bladder turned out to be far worse. But not end of world stuff.

It turns out, after a hour long exam of my gall bladder, they only found a few stones and there was no signs of infection, so they opted not to take it out until I spek with a surgeon who is acommadating to those of us with lesser means.

While they said the gall bladder was not causing me pain, my 384 blood sugar level was definitely the source of my pain.

It just type 2 diabetes, which means I can use Metformin to treat it instead of insulin.

After two doses od this medicine my body has responded very favorably to it.

At first I just wanted my GB out, but after thinking about it I realized how dangerous diabetes is.

While mine is not as bad as it could be, I still wish I had not taken to drinking all those liters of Cherry Coke I swore off for three years.

So it looks like my health is going in a better direction, but I would like to say to you please put down the extra cupcake or make it a small soda.

Fuji, I'm still working on your wantlist because I said I would and also it kept my mind doing that instead of thinking of pain.

Hopefully I can offer more and better posts and get back into the swing of life.

My favorite 2013 Topps card

Somebody recently wrote about the same card I'm writing about now. Don't ask me who because I'm so far behind in my feed reader that they start to blur together when you go on a reading binge. I do remember it was about the red bordered version of this card:

I love everything about this card:

• It's a Cubs card!
• It's Rizzo
• The Rookie Cup
• The look in his eyes, like he knows he got it all
• The bat posed along the border
• It's a really clean card
• He's at the top of my blog!

I'm thinking of chasing down every parallel of this card, except the printing plates.

That's probably about 8-15 cards, with some of them going for some haughty dough like the pink border.

But it would make a great row of cards to line up on a shelf or in a wall display.

Might be a modest goal compared to what many of you are aiming at but that's why the hobby is great.

We all are interested in our own quests and do it because it's fun and it's an individual pursuit, not one we all decide to pursue at once.

I'll be posting as I acquire my little.....triskaidekafecta?

Grade this, PSA!

Technically, this card could never be anything more than fair condition:

Edges: 9.0

Surface: 8.5

Centering: 10.0 Well, you tell me it's off centered!

Corners: -5.0  They aren't there!

Overall: 5.0

I would like to hear how PSA would define these corners and give then anything better than a .5 score.

If this card was a Bryce Harper in this shape and Beckett was doing a video break for Topps we all know this would be a BGS 9.5.

Yeah, B-12 Shots. Right!

This is one of my favorite cards from 1993 Upper Deck:

Juan Gonzalez was just stepping into his belting shoes.

Canseco was already a supreme masher when he joined the Rangers.

Palmeiro was just getting into his ridiculous groove.

Rodriguez was at the beginning of what is now the best defensive catcher's career.

It was and kind of still is a great card.

But we all know what is wrong with this card.

And we all loved watching these guys hit, even though the cloud was just starting to descend on them and many of their contemporaries.

I do want to say that Palmeiro never looked like he was on steroids.

Pudge always had a bit of a cloud over him which greatly intensified when he hit the Tigers' camp having lost 25 pounds of muscle from the previous season.

Never in my life did I think Gonzalez was on it because when he came up he had such an explosive swing and great size already.

Canseco--------HA! Still fun to watch.

I wish 1993 Barry bonds was in the picture just to show the dramatic size increase from then compared to 2001.

Here are the four bulkheads combined numbers:

• Runs: 5364
• Hits: 9677
• 2Bs: 1885
• 3Bs: 128
• HRs: 1776(We just celebrated that)
• RBIs: 5978
• SBs: 450

Those are ridiculous!

I used to be a big fan of the Texas Rangers, mainly because of Gonzalez.

I still like all of them but Pudge. The fact that it was obvious he used and has been left alone is a something I don't get. His power suddenly disappeared and nobody made a big deal of it. Bench will always be the best because he didn't have to take any thing to be who he was.

I hate Pudge Rodriguez.

But I still like this card.

Fathers and Sons

 In 2000, Topps made a rather unique card:

Three prospects who all had fathers who were extremely productive.

Tim Raines has over 1,500 runs and 800 stolen bases and is eventually going to get the green light to Cooperstown.

Garry Maddox suffered from burns during the Vietnam war and has worn a beard til this day to hide the scars. He was a tremendous fielder, winning 8 Gold Gloves in a row. He was also a very solid hitter.

Gary Matthews, or Sarge, is known to me mostly as the back bone of the Cubs run in 1984 and overall clubhouse guy. A former Rookie of the Year and solid hitter and overall excellent OBP guy.

So did these young guns ever mount a charge to reach anywhere close to what their fathers did?

Let's see:

First the fathers' combined stats:

• Runs: 3431
• Hits: 6418
• Doubles: 1086
• Triples: 226
• HR's: 521
• RBI's: 1812
• SB's: 1239

Wow!

And the progenies of these three?

• Runs: 636
• Hits: 1090
• Doubles: 234
• Triples: 30
• HR's: 108
• RBI's: 491
• SB's: 105

Yuck.

All three are out of baseball now.

Junior Maddux never reached the majors and Junior Raines had cups of coffee over three years. But he was a base fiend throughout his minor league career.

Junior Matthews produced 95% of the numbers above but used steroids to produce most of them. At least the other two did it the right way. Or did they?

I'm sure their dads were and still are proud that their little guys followed them into pro ball.

It just goes to show you many things jump a generation, not just genes.

I'll show them!

In an effort to prove that he has always been more than a slap hitter and bunter, Juan Pierre has recently begun a strenuous weight program that includes seven hours of upper body lifting every day, huge protein shakes, and the dreams of all those before him who hit home runs only on video games.

It seems to be working:

Wow!

Where before his jersey was so baggy it looked like the word maximum was on front of his jersey, now you can clearly see the word Miami amongst those Adonis pecs.

And you can tell it's all natural because his head is still shrunk from that witch doctor he fell out of favor with so long ago. It's not the size of Bond's head.

The results so far from all this hard work:

• 28 hits
• 1 double
• 2 triples
• 34 fly balls out of the infield 
• 0 home runs
• 1 fly to the warning track-during batting practice
• 38 bunts which one hopped the wall!
• 13 stolen bases-until his massive upper body pulled him off the bag and left him standing upright on his head, resulting in 13 tag outs.

*stats are taken from a secret source


Since July 4th, Juan has quit his strength regimen and gone back to his regular one.

He has hit three grand slams since.





Not.

Sometimes, it just takes time

As the Cubs wait for their future to come to fruition, the Phillies have had one of their future core players bust out this year.

Domonic Brown is hitting .281 with 23 HR's and 62 RBI's in the season's first half to catapult himself into the All Star game.

And to think the Phils were thinking of moving him to the Cubs for Alfonso Soriano.

It's nice to see a player whose compass was going South in his first few seasons find North.

Congrats to Domonic.

Now I just have to wait two to four years for one of the Cubs uber prospects to copy what Domonic is doing.