As the saying goes, I’m not superstitious, but I am a little stitious.
I’ve had to follow the Rangers by gamecast or by audio because of getting rid of cable and stuff. As I’m writing this I just shut it off because I came to the game late and since I joined, they’ve gone down by two. Do you ever feel like you are the thing that’s causing the loss. I do realize that isn’t the case, but you just can’t help feeling like that.
It happened to me the other night too. It was the night of the Mets comeback in the ninth against Philly and I was following on my phone. As a matter of fact I was following the Rangers too… or trying. I had a kid in a theater production too. Both games weren’t going well and I just told myself not to be a dummy, pay attention to the kid. When I got home I checked and both games turned out well. It’s stuff like that that makes it feel like it is you.
I think the worst version of that that I ever felt was watching a World Cup game. If I remember correctly it was USA v. Belgium or maybe USA v. Germany in 2014. Whichever it was, I had some neighbors that came over to watch. Things were going well, and then a certain someone came in the room. They started asking questions and talking about other stuff and I swear it was minutes before things went south.
I think everyone in the room felt it too. But then it’s not one of those things you really want to tell someone… “get out. you’re bad juju.”
Well, right now I am the bad juju.
Hope you all had a great month!
The Monthly Numbers
April turned out to about where I think I am going to sit numbers-wise on a monthly basis. I’m still getting consistent returns throughout the month except for maybe one little two-day hole, but there was one of those in March too. I think the biggest difference between March and April, and this might be obvious given the totals, was that the daily totals just never got as high as often.
In April I had one day with nine returns, one day with seven and then three days with six. In counting up all the days over four I had thirteen days. Comparing that to March… I had fourteen. It’s just those days over four were a lot more than four, especially in the beginning of March.
I just really have to get used to not seeing triple digits in returns as much as I did in the past. It’s hard to get used to.
OK so we know that I’m going to see the spike in the range of 1989 through 1991. But I love how spread out the baseball numbers are getting. I got a real good amount of 1969 and 1970 returns and then there are some nice little lumps throughout the 70’s. I think the gray basketball stretching into the 2000’s is nice to see too. Loving the look of this heat map so much.
I don’t know why I don’t see certain cities as much as others in my returns. I certainly don’t think to not send out things for a certain team or anything like that. But just like the heat map, I like seeing some things I don’t normally see on here. Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh are all up in the top of the list. I know things like Seattle and Minnesota are up there too, but those a cities that I tend to see up there a lot actually, even though in March I might not have.
As you might expect given I get back a lot of baseball and Seattle and Philadelphia, the Mariners and Phillies are at the top. This time around there’s no sharing at number 10/the bottom of the list. It was a clear cut at 10.
Here are the Top 10 individual teams for the month (by cards returned):
- Seattle Mariners – 19
- Philadelphia Phillies – 17
- Cincinnati Reds – 14
- Montreal Expos – 14
- New York Mets – 13
- Oakland Athletics – 13
- Houston Astros – 12
- Boston Red Sox – 11
- Chicago Cubs – 10
- Pittsburgh Pirates – 9
Getting Trendy
So overall down with 88 returns for the month, but like I said earlier, I think this is about where I’m going to sit on a monthly basis. The failure numbers were very consistent and surprisingly low still to me. But just looking at May already, I think that’s going to jump a bit when we get to the end of this month.
Baseball isn’t that far down last month and the rest of those numbers are pretty consistent as well. I know it’s small in the grand scheme but basketball took a bit of a dip compared to March. I think with the way I’m sending things out there’s a chance that this could stay pretty consistent with the three sports I don’t get as much. I try to spread out about a third of the cards I’m sending out weekly among those bottom three sports. If we assume that my return rate/luck is pretty consistent, that should mean those stay somewhat consistent.
As returns go down then the card totals will go down a little bit. I kind of have a feeling though that I’m putting less cards in some of my envelopes lately.
The Overall Numbers
I had 88 successful returns with 284 cards coming back in those envelopes. Those are both the third highest totals for the year. That’s not saying much though given this is only April. If you go back a few more months this is only the second lowest total in the last eight months. So you can see my totals are definitely on a downward trend. But that’s what happens when you send out less. It was about a 20% drop from March in successes and about a 12% drop in successes.
When we look at this year compared to last year in the same month I had 54% more returns and 39% more cards back. I think I am about 33% better in returns compared to where I was this time last year and about 23% better in cards than where I was this time last year.
He’s Making a List
April saw an uptick in stragglers. I had another current player return an old one (Blake Parker) and I had one pushing two years old come back (Mark Williamson). Other than that there were more, but they didn’t seem as old as they did in March.
Here the list of anything 200 days or more:
- Mark Williamson -764
- Mike Lloynd – 432
- Kjell Samuelsson – 361
- Blake Parker – 330
- Roger Salkeld – 236
- Jarrod Bunch – 228
- Tim Blackwell – 228
Lately I’ve been including my recent paid returns. For April those were:
- Bret Saberhagen – $40 – 4 cards
- Bill Mazeroski – $10 – 1 cards
- Steve Sax – $20 – 4 cards
I hope things are going well – many happy returns!