Bob Hamelin
August 29, 2013
Josh Levin from Slate emailed me last week with this card attached to the email. I wrote back the following response:
This is a terrible thing to see at 5 in the morning in my underwear. I don’t know where to start. It’s so jarring and awful, a collision of unpleasant forms and surfaces. I fear for anyone dwelling too long on this card. There should be contests to see who can last the longest staring at it before screaming into the night. I fear for Bob Hamelin, too, that he will incur a massive paper cut on his jawline, that he suffers from amnesia and so carries not only his name under the brim of his cap but also on a large paper sign stapled to his chest. I pity him. I hate him. Is it his huge face crowding the frame? Is it his air of mournful need? The hint of a mullet on one possessing such a broad, smooth face and such clean, featureless glasses seems to speak of an age in which there is no rhyme or reason, no up or down. A mullet on Jose Canseco or Rod Beck I understand, but this? It makes me want to move my family immediately to a rural fastness far from any TGI Fridays. Oh, beauty, truth, where are you anymore?
Levin wrote a great article on the card, titled “The Worst Baseball Card Ever.”
Cardboard Gods 
Oh man, was that photo taken right before he shot John Lennon?
I don’t recall whether it was the day Bob was called up or the day his ROY was announced, but his dad brought in “A” grade surf and turf with champagne for the office. I was over at UCLA working on a deal and Bob Sr. was kind enough to call and tell me to get my behind back to the office. We all had a great celebration in stinky, old Vernon that day.