I think in August sometime we decided as a family to cut some cords. Seemed alright to me at the time. We watch so much on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Disney+, etc., and I have the MLB app for my baseball fix we just didn’t think we needed much cable any more. Up to this point I would say that the biggest problem I had with dropping cable was that I didn’t have a clock by the TV with the cable box. That was remedied pretty easily though.
While most of the TV watching I did was pretty mindless and just really because it was on as I surfed the channels. I am having a little withdrawal from some things. For the most part that’s in the sports category of course. First, I haven’t been able to watch F1 and soccer which I’ve been getting more and more into over the last decade or so. That hasn’t been so bad. In reality I could change the soccer thing by breaking into Peacock or the NBCSports app (not sure if they are the same thing). I thought that I’d get F1 with ESPN+, but you can’t really watch anything that is actually on TV with that if you no longer subscribe for cable TV. I’ll probably figure those out at some point.
So that brings me to now… I can’t watch the MLB Playoffs. Well, I can but I am stuck watching whatever is on Fox. So that means the AL side of the bracket and the World Series. I’m trying to make myself just deal with it, but this is just the start of the playoffs so I think it will be the worst now. I’ll get my taste later and probably be OK. I guess I just need to figure out what I’m willing to get into.
So far I’ve taken to listening to the radio broadcasts and following along. It’s certainly easier to work and do other things while the broadcasts are on. But as most people would, my favorite guys to listen to are the guys that work for my team. Other broadcasters don’t generally do it for me. But thus far my biased takes are:
- The Cardinals guys get really excited for everything (good!) and I like Ricky Horton.
- The Dodgers staff are fine but I didn’t listen to them enough for good thoughts.
- The Red Sox booth feel like complete homers, but I will say that not seeing the game impacts how you hear them complaining about umpires and calls and not being able to validate it. But it’s the way they talk about the call, not just that they are saying it might be a bad call.
- The Yankees I quite honestly didn’t listen to because I know them and I just feel like they are old and annoying. I did see the clip of Sterling screwing up the single/home run call afterwards though – which proves my point I think (and I thought the Red Sox booth made a point that night to say that the Yankees broadcasters were there so you can’t blame being remote).
Hope all is well in your world!
The Monthly Numbers
After a great August, everything just kept going into September. This has to be the best month I’ve ever had in the TTM game. My high for a day was on the seventh when I got eleven returns back. That might be the best day I;ve ever had. Add to days with nine and another day with eight and I had some pretty awesome days in there.
There were some time that I thought things were going to shift a bit. You know I always complain about mail issues and I think I’m going to have to track what I don’t receive on Informed Delivery a little closer. It just seems like it takes longer to get the things that I’m saying I don’t receive these days. I normally eventually get them, but I think they’ve been taking so much longer that I kind of forget about them. Not that I can really do much about it.
But the consistency was there pretty much all month. And when it wasn’t you can see how I had some high returns days near those days where I didn’t get anything to balance them out. And with only two failures that ratio was really good. I think I’ve just been doing a better job of planning things over the last months and weeks.
Last month I was hoping to get a peak in a spot that I hadn’t ever seen before. Well, drumroll please…
Ladies and gents I think for the first time ever the highest peak I have is for 1994! Baseball and basketball made that happen even with football being in the mix for the 1989-’91 years where my normal peak is. But if you look, even with baseball against itself for those peaks it 1994 was the highest peak. That just doesn’t happen with my cards.
And this month there’s a little more colors, even if it’s not as many colors.
The chart below looks a lot like the August one did. The first place spot is almost doubling up the next best spot. While it might be a little bit closer than last month. All of the numbers are a lot higher. With the amount of cards so high this month you would think something would be driving it. But I have no rhyme or reason to what I send out so it’s pretty much random.
But it’s Chicago that’s driving the numbers again for the second month in a row. The White Sox and Cubs were the teams I saw as with the second and third most returns. Plus there was a little bit of Bulls and Bears to throw into that total. The amazing part about Milwaukee is that it’s only the Brewers that make up that number. The only other repeat team in the Top 10 is the Phillies.
Here are the Top 10 individual teams for the month (by cards returned):
- Milwaukee Brewers – 26
- Chicago White Sox – 18
- Chicago Cubs – 17
- Texas Rangers – 16
- Atlanta Braves – 15
- San Francisco Giants – 15
- Pittsburgh Pirates – 14
- Seattle Mariners – 14
- Los Angeles Dodgers – 13
- Philadelphia Phillies – 13
Getting Trendy
If I thought August was great then September blew my mind a bit. Topping 90 when topping 80 was a pretty good feat was just awesome. And it looks even better when you look at the trend. Of course to get here I’m sending out a little more than I had been in prior months. But you don’t get them back if you don’t send them out.
Something that is a bit odd to me are my failure numbers. Don’t get me wrong, I like that I’m having less and maybe planning better is helping that. But it’s odd to see the successes go up and the failures go down. If I’m sending out more I always just think a certain percentage is not going to happen. But I’ll also say that some of those failures are for guys who are charging. So I could have had a success if I knew or picked up on that, or I can turn it into a success and resend it.
I told you last month that I put in some effort to try and diversify. You can see that below. I seem to have run out of some hockey to send. Or maybe I just need to go back into those cards and see if I had some others broken out. There’s just always so many cards I could send so prioritizing is always the issue with that. But football and basketball picked up rather nicely for September.
One of my favorite things to look at during the month is the stack of cards that I get back. I don’t put them into binders until the end of the month so with the last couple months having such high totals, the stacks have been pretty tall. I actually like taking a card and measuring it by card height (i.e., it’s X card widths or heights high). Definitely something that puts a smile on the face of a TTMer.
But 352 cards back is pretty crazy overall. I thought hitting 300 in August was good but it’s just another number this month that blows my mind.
The Overall Numbers
92 returns and 352 cards! Craziness! September was an awesome month. I’m just going to try to stick with what I’ve been doing over the last 3-4 months and hope that it continues through the rest of the year: follow recent successes from others, get those out as best I can, diversify among the sports, and hope for the best. Seems to be going OK for me lately so no need to change it up now.
From a Year-Over-Year perspective I was 80% better with returns and 93% better in card totals from September of last year. The yearly total as of now has me almost dead on for last years return and cards totals with three month left of gravy over those totals. I think for right now that means that if I stopped now (no way!) I’m about 34% better in returns over last year and 39% better in card totals than last year. Those totals right now are 642 returns and 2279 cards.
He’s Making a List
I think following the recent returns and planning better has really reduced my stragglers. This month I had to go down to 150+ days just to get three. Normally I am looking at 200+. I was wondering if the way I follow other recent returns if that was going to mean I was missing the window people might be signing in. I guess that could be happening a little, or still could happen, but so far the numbers aren’t bearing that out.
Here the list of anything over 150 days:
- Kurt Stillwell – 240
- Kevin Kramer – 239
- Mike Dunne – 162
Another month with a lot to choose from. This time some of my favorites are: Danny Farquhar, Billy Ashley, Bill Lee, Felix Millan, Nate McMillan, Gary Pettis, Bill Madlock, Ruben Amaro, Emerson Boozer, Lenny Harris, Tony Delk, Ken Singleton, Kevin McReynolds, Dan Pastorini, Charlie Hough and Mike Jeffcoat. Some of those guys I’ve had trouble getting in the past so they were nice to get finally. Others were some of the really good coach returns I’ve been getting back.
I hope you had a good hobby month too!