The Man, The Myth, The Legend.....The Mullet

So for my first card post, I chose Kelly Gruber (1987 Topps).  Who else did you expect?  As can be seen, his mullet is in the early stages of its future glorious golden lock awesomeness. 

Gruber is poised and ready in this photo to snag a screamer to the hot corner and gun em down at first base.  Either that or its spring training and he’s trying to catch his breath while thinking to himself “I gotta lay off those Texas ribs and rodeo nachos in the offseason”

As the back of his card states, Kelly was a District Qualifier in track competition. It doesn’t say which track event, but I’m guessing the high jump.  His mullet gave him an advantage by acting like wings while soaring over the high jump bars….pretty sure that gave him an extra 2-3 inches of vertical.

@GrubersMullet

Breaking Wax: Introduction

Since joining Twitter, I’ve come across many baseball blogs. They're my guilty pleasure. And it was after reading these blogs I said “Hey I should write a blog. I mean if so many people do it, why not me.”

So, eagerly I registered with blogspot and voila, I had my very own shiny new blog domain.  Now the easy part: writing a blog.  To my dismay, deciding what my blog would revolve around, settling on an idea and actually typing out the words was much harder than registering for the blog domain name (who knew?).  After that humbling experience, I had even more appreciation for all the bloggers out there. 

I had initially wanted my blog to be about the Jays in some capacity.  Not sure if you know this but I’m a big fan (as if my Twitter handle didn't give it away). They became “my” team since the late 80’s and for the past 2 years I’ve delved deeper into Jays fandom.  But guess what? There are many great Jays blogs out there.  Many that do great work from covering the big league club, the farm affiliates and just Jays fans in general.  So I decided to put the whole blog idea on the shelf....either to collect dust until I came up with a better idea that'll dust it off or to die a lonely blogs death.

A couple months back, a little fire was ignited in me (how it started, I do not recall) in which I wanted to start reading baseball books. So I did some research online, asked my fellow baseball tweeps and took note of a handful of books that came highly recommended.  As I started purchasing these books and reading them, I figured why not use a baseball card as my bookmark. (Good thing I didn’t start reading books about food. Using bacon as a bookmark would be just too messy….mmmm bacon).

Flashback *wavy hands* Diddly-doot! Diddly-doot! Diddly-doot!
I started buying baseball cards when I was 13 yrs old.  A newly made neighbourhood friend of mine had shown me his baseball card collection and that was it......I was hooked. So I jumped in with both feet into the world of baseball cards.  Now, this happened during the time when baseball card collection popularity was at its peak with many card manufacturers.  This collection lasted for about 6yrs (1987-1993).  After going off to college I packed away these cardboard icons in a box and shoved them in a closet at my parent’s house, never to be seen again for the next 18 years.

So as I went back to my parents house and asked them if they still had those boxes of baseball cards, to my delight they were still there, in the closet, ready to be opened up and to be appreciated on a whole other level.

As I started flipping through the cards and reminiscing of all the players and fun times I had with them back in the day, it hit me….THIS IS WHAT I WANT TO BLOG ABOUT!!  To me, it just made sense. 

So, while sitting on the floor, surrounded by these cardboard players of my youth, is where my blog was conceived....Breaking Wax.  

Explanation of the name for some of you….breaking wax refers to opening a pack of cards. As in breaking open the wax wrapper. Pretty simple I know. But I like the name, so for now Breaking Wax it is.

My vision for this blog is to post the cool/odd/funny/interesting baseball cards that I have in my collection and then write a small blurb on them. 

I hope you enjoy these "blasts from the past" that I'll be posting. Any comments/discussions are always welcome.

@GrubersMullet