Free Comic Book Day

Usually, the first Saturday in May is a day that we can go to the local comic shop and pick up a whole bunch of new comics for free!  The first Saturday in May is generally Free Comic Book Day where we, as readers, get to take home some really cool, new comic book previews, and comic book publishers get to highlight some of their titles that are coming out.  

The pandemic has changed so much of our lives including pushing back Free Comic Book Day.  This year FCD has been moved to August 14.  While that is a real bummer, it appears to be worth the wait.  It is the 20th anniversary of Free Comic Book Day and they have 50 free comic books to offer that day.  For a full list of the free comics to be offered that day, check out the Free Comic Book Day website right here.  

Otherwise, here are some books in which I'm really looking forward to reading: 

Star Wars: The High Republic Adventures by IDW

Star Wars: The High Republic The Edge of Balance/Guardian of the Whills by VIZ Media

Investi Gators: Ants in Our Pants Sneak Peak! by First Second Books

 

Lady Mechanika by Image Comics

Overstreet Guide to Collecting Comics 2021 by Gemstone Media

It's a bit of a wait, but the positive here is that Free Comic Book Day is still happening.  It is a great day to read some fun stuff, discover new characters, new writers and new artistst.  It is always a good day around here.  I'm looking forward to seeing all my friends at the Local Comic Shop on August 14!  

May the Fourth Be With You!

Happy May the Fourth Be with You!!  What a fun day to celebrate our fandom of Star Wars!  This year there are so many things to celebrate, but the 70-minute release of the new animated show, Star Wars: The Bad Batch, on Disney+ may be the most notable.  

There are so many ways to celebrate.  Starwars.com offers five ways to celebrate Star Wars Day.  It has become a tradition for me and my family that we celebrate by wearing Star Wars t-shirts on this day.  In fact, I invite everyone at the school I work at to wear Star Wars shirts or other Star Wars apparel.  It is not unusual for roughly 100 kids and staff to wear Star Wars apparel!  In other years, I walk around the lunch room with a microphone and ask students Star Wars trivia and I give away random Star Wars prizes. Since the pandemic has kept us from having lunch at school this year, it will be a tradition I will continue next year.

This year our foods classes will whip up some fun Star Wars food with May the Fourth recipes (Chewy Cookies and Lightsaber Pretzels) they found in the April/May edition of the Taste of Home magazine.  

This day gives all of us a positive, fun day to celebrate our fandom and to share it with the world.  What are some fun ways that you enjoy this day?  How do you share it with others?  Comment here or share on Twitter and tag me @draftline  Enjoy the day and May the Fourth be with You!

Personal Stats update April 2021

You may remember that I started keeping personal stats of my consumption of reading and viewing content for 2021.  If you missed that post, check it out.  Here is a quick update of my progress through April 28:   

Movies watched: 17
Rewatch: 11
First time: 6

TV series (streamed):
Episodes: 24
Rewatch: 8
First time: 16

Books read: 9
Graphic Novels: 3
Fiction: 5
Nonfiction: 1
Pages read: 2451

Comic books read: 68
Digital: 43
Print: 25

I have no idea how I am doing as I have no stats from past years in which to compare, but I will say that this seems pretty good for me. I am really surprised by the number of films I have watched. Most of the rewatch films are MCU rewatches. Most of the TV series are WandaVision and The Falcon and Winter Soldier.

This has been fun. It seems silly, but I am actually finding it helps give me closure when I finish a story. I get to visit my Google Keep note where I keep the stats and I have a second to reflect on the story I just read or viewed. It is a short moment, but it is satisfying. I will pass on an update around July for the half-year check-in.

Fantasy Baseball Draft 2021

Ladies and Gentlemen, let me introduce you to this year's Coca-Cola Kids Fantasy Baseball Team.  The Kids were established in 1988 as a National League Rotisserie Baseball Club, but then upgraded to an online team in the mid 1990's on Sandbox.  The Kids joined their current league, the League of the Gorgeous Rogues, in 2003 and took 7th place.  Since then the Kids won the championship twice in 2006 and 2013.  They have finished last more times than they would like to admit, however.  Enough history, it is time to look forward to the 2021 baseball season. 

The Coca-Cola Kids had the first pick in the draft and took  Lucas Giolito starting pitcher for the Chicago White Sox.   Each team in the league gets to have three keepers each season.  The Kids elected to keep: Jose Abreu, First Base of the Chicago White Sox, Kris Bryant third base and outfield for the Chicago Cubs and Bo Bichette, short stop of the Toronto Blue Jays.

Here is how the remainder roster shakes out after the draft: 

C:  Buster Posey, San Francisco - Drafted Aaron Nola, San Diego

1B:  Abreu

2B:  Ian Happ, Chicago Cubs

3B: Bryant

SS: Bichette 

OF1: Luis Robert, Chicago White Sox

OF2: Nick Castellanos, Cincinatti Reds

OF3: Ketel Marte, Arizona Diamondbacks

Utlility:  Javier Baez, Chicago Cubs

SP:  Lucas Giolito, Chicago White Sox (first pick of the draft)

SP: Luis Castillo, Cincinatti Reds

SP: Ian Anderson, Atlanta Braves

SP: Matthew Boyd, Detroit Tigers

RP: Yimi Garcia, Miami Marlins

RP: Greg Holland, Kansas City Royals

P:  Diego Castillo, Tampa Bay Rays 

P:  Nathan Eovaldi, Boston Red Sox

Bench: Jose Soler OF, Ke'Bryan Hayes 3B, Ryan Jeffers C, Adalberto Mondesi SS, Tarik Skubal SP, Michael Kopech SP

At posting, the Kids are currently in first place, and are looking forward to a great season of baseball.  

 

Celebrate like the Baddoos

"Don't give up. Your day will come!"  I don't know if Akil Baddoo ever heard that, but he certainly lived it.  Who is Akil Baddoo?  That's what I was asking when he came up to the plate for the Detroit Tigers (my second favorite MLB team).  All that is on the ESPN.com is that he is a 22-year-old centerfielder for the Detroit Tigers.  A little more digging discovered that he remarkably made the Tigers after spending several years in low A minor league ball for the Minnesota Twins.  The Tigers picked Baddoo up this last winter in the unprotected player draft.  After a great spring training with the Tigers, he made the major league team

What did he do?  In his first game in the major leagues when he came up to bat against the Cleveland Indians, he took the first pitch to the opposite field for a 370 foot home run. It was a great moment (check the video).  While one home run, even in your first at-bat, doesn't define a career, it certainly defines a positive moment of hope and achievement for hard work.  It defines a positive moment in the young baseball season where fans are back and the world is trying to figure out what a post-pandemic era will feel like.  It defines a positive moment for a family who was there to see it.  

What really caught my attention was his reaction and that of his parents who were in the stands that afternoon (again, check the video).  You could see the joy in Baddoo's face and actions as he rounded the bases, and he knew exactly where his parents were sitting.  He gave them recognition as he crossed home plate which I think is a total class act.  The cameras knew where his parents were too as if they knew something special would happen that day.  The cameras captured their instant reaction, and as a parent, it was beautiful to see.  Even though I wasn't there for all the little league games, high school baseball, years of summer ball, and what was likely a difficult decision to go pro, I could see the reward; we all could.  

We should mark Akil Baddoo's moment in time and remind ourselves of what can be achieved by the daily grind.  Our hard work will have celebratory moments.  It may not be in front of 10,000 fans and televised.  It may not be in front of all our friends or even our parents, but those moments do come.  Own those moments when you achieve them.  Take credit for your success and be proud of your accomplishments.

If you are a parent, look for the achievement, even small, in your own children and celebrate like the Baddoos did.  Be proud of your work as a parent and be proud of what your children are becoming.  I love baseball for reasons like this, but look around, I am sure there are moments like this to be found every day if we look for it.   

Akil Baddoo update 4/6/21

Baddoo's legendary start to his major league career grows.  In his second game for Detroit on Monday, he smashed a grand slam.  Then today, Tuesday, he was a pinch-runner in the eighth inning of a tied 3-3 game with Minnesota.  He stayed in the game defensively then in his first at-bat of the game in the 10th inning he hit a walk off single to win the game 4-3.  Keep an eye on this guy, he is fun to watch.  

Candlekeep Mysteries

Dungeons and Dragons released its newest book last week, and while all their books are wonderful, this book, Candlekeep Mysteries, is absolutely amazing!  In brief, here is why: 

1. The variant cover is beautiful.  It is a deep red with shiny gold art and lettering.  It has a mystical stamp on the front center with a fairy looking on just to the left and from above the title.  When you flip the book over, there is a terrifyingly beautiful Beholder staring at you with all 11 eyes! The standard-issue cover isn't too shabby either with an image of a couple of adventurers pouring over a book in the library as they attempt to solve some great mystery.  Look carefully, there is danger looming right behind them!  

  

2. There is a great pullout map of Candlekeep that shows the Inner Ward and the Great Library. That's a big deal.  

3.  The book has 15 adventures (there might be one more, it was a quick count) that are "bite-sized" quick adventures for different levels.  What is really cool about the adventures is it appears that each one is based on or revolves around a different book.  How awesome is that?  

4. Let's be real, as a librarian in real life, I have been waiting for something about the greatest library in Faerun!  We get titles and the structure of Candlekeep's curators like The Keeper, The Council of Eight Great Readers, Master Readers, the First Reader, and more.  What may be the best detail is that there are 13 Modrons that escaped from Mechanus who now are part of the library staff.  They catalog and shelve books, but it is noted that they shelve one book at a time.  

This book, upon a quick viewing, is an amazing work.  While I haven't read any of the adventures yet, the description of Candlekeep with its extradimensional meeting rooms and study areas that have permanent silent spells so students aren't disrupted, leave so much to be discovered. I can't wait to dive in to some of these mysteries.  Another aspect of Candlekeep is for characters to gain admittance they must provide a unique book that the librarians of Candlekeep don't already have or it must be a highly valuable and rare copy of something they already have.  It will be fun to send characters on a hunt to find something unique before ever heading there.  This book has so many possibilities and so much fun in store.  

If you make a visit to Candlekeep, let me know in the comments below or tag me on Twitter @draftline

  

Baseball Cards: How much are they worth?

To be able to answer the question of how much baseball cards are worth, I think we have to explore to whom baseball cards are meant.  At first, I think about when I fell in love with baseball cards, and that was when I was a kid.  Is that who the cards are meant?  It seems, given the packaging, placement on the shelves, and the stick of gum inside (old-school, I know), that they were intended for kids.  If we go far enough back, however, some of the most famous (and expensive) baseball cards came out of cigarette packs.  That changes the audience a little, even in those times.  This makes the answer simple; baseball cards are for baseball fans. 

I love the idea that cards are a great way to introduce kids to the game.  I happened upon a blaster box (I'm not even sure I know what that means) of 2021 Topps Baseball cards at Target a few weeks ago, and with the excitement of the new baseball season and a few extra dollars in my pocket, I picked it up.  But who seemed to be as excited about the purchase as my nine-year-old daughter.  She knows I love the Cubs and watching baseball, so she seemed interested.  She convinced me to let her open the packs with her.  So what is the value of baseball cards?  I have no idea in this case.  How do you put value on your child asking to spend time with you to open baseball cards?  Dare I say that these packs of cards are priceless when the payout is time with our own children.  

As she was opening the cards, she was tossing them in a pile on the ground, then sliding them together and using the floor to create a nice stack.  The instinct in me was to say, "Careful!  Don't bend the corners!"  I stopped myself. What was I thinking?  This is supposed to be fun.  She is supposed to enjoy looking at them, opening them, organizing them, not get yelled at because she isn't being "careful" enough.  Heck, I used to stick them in the spokes of my bike!!  What is the value of a baseball card?  The value is looking at them, checking stats and stories on the backs, organizing them and then reorganizing them, talking about the players and the teams.  

I am sure this treatment makes some collectors cringe, but what is the value of a baseball card?  Ninety-five percent of the cards will be worth less than twenty-five cents years from now!  Heck, my Topps Rookie Ken Griffey Jr. card from the 1990 set is only worth $1.00.  Is that what that card is worth?  Heck no!  That card is worth the stories and my history with the card, my history of watching Ken Griffey Jr. play baseball, my history of trading that card with friends.  That card and set is a history book when I open it up with my kids.  I share those cards and tell stories of the season and the players.  They look at the backs of the cards to discover which players were the greats of my time growing up.  What is that worth?  More than any money, that is no doubt.  

When the season starts, I can't wait to put these new cards into sleeves and a binder.  But this year, my daughter will organize them.  Knowing her, she will ignore the numbers on the back.  She will probably organize them by team, or by position, or maybe by which uniforms she likes best.  But the most important part to me, is that she wants to organize them with me.  What is the value of that?