The other big event of the winter was the arrival of the new Topps baseball cards. Sometime after February 1st I’d walk into the corner drugstore with my dad with nervous anticipation, wondering if this would be the day. My eyes grew wide as I glanced over and saw the brand new box of cards on display and experienced a moment of euphoria.

These cards were necessary for keeping stats, as my mom had long since made it a yearly habit to enter the privacy of my room and throw away all the Sunday Plain Dealer sport sections that I had collected over the course of the season. (They were a fire hazard, she explained to me, but I explained to her that these papers had all the stats compiled and even had the Indians players in bold text to make them easy to find. She wasn’t moved, as we had this same discussion every winter of my youth.) Once I had those cards and stats in hand I could start trying to make my predictions for the upcoming season.

Times have changed for me, but the mid-February adrenaline rush remains—not from the arrival of the new Topps baseball cards anymore, but from the release of the annual PECOTA (and other) projections. (more…)