The first baseball card I ever owned was a 1987 Topps Jose Canseco rookie card.

I was 12 years old and had only recently started taking an interest in baseball.

I remember opening that first Topps card pack, eating the stale pink stick of gum, and wondering who the hell this Jose Canseco was.

I was with my friends Blue, Big I, and Scotty, who as Dodgers fans had already spent years playing Little League and collecting cards.

Scotty saw the card and told me it was worthless. He tried to convince me to trade it to him for something called a Blue Jay or an Expo.

“If it’s so worthless,” I remember asking him, “then why does it have an All-Star Rookie trophy on it?”

I eluded his strategy to fuck me over and kept the card. It was only the first of what would become thousands of baseball cards I would eventually add to my collection, a hobby that quickly became a teenage obsession.

Topps, Donruss, Upper Deck, Score. I loved them all, memorizing the stats on the back and staring at ballplayers who stood as tall as my greatest heroes.

Every week, I saved my allowance money ($6/week if I remember correctly) and biked to my local baseball card shop, The Hot Corner. There, I would spend hours looking through the glass displays, lustily eyeing the priciest cards, buying packs and entire sets, and racing home to carefully yet methodically organize them into plastic sleeves.

I loved the entire process of card collecting. Playing GM and trading them with friends. Protecting my best cards in those hard plastic shells. Hiding my albums so my little brother would stop stealing them. (That didn’t work.)

Eventually, though, I grew up. And the faint whisper of a tradition long gone by became part of my past. My mom packed them up in shoeboxes and put them away. They eventually were lost or thrown out and my adult life reshifted into different priorities.

But every so often, I think about those cards and wish I still had them.

Which is why when I attended Dodgers fantasy baseball camp earlier this year, the prospect of appearing on my very own baseball card was one of the most thrilling moments of my life.

Who wouldn’t want to appear on his very own baseball card? Aside from becoming a Major League baseball player, it would be the most glorious moment in your life.

And though I obviously never made it to the show, having the Dodgers fantasy camp issue me my own card (with my stats on the back) was about as good as it got.

So good, in fact, that I made my baseball card the prize to my 100,000th visitor contest back in March.

Bridal Bird was one of the winners and wrote that “No newlywed household is complete without a framed Arjewtino card bestowing blessings on all who enter.”

The Maiden Metallurgist also won and tried instantly to find the perfect spot to store it. The perfect spot, as it turned out, was not a bicycle spoke or her purse but rather her cleavage. Pretty smart.

Maybe this will prompt me to restart my baseball card collection. My friend Beth last year found a whole bunch of old baseball cards while cleaning out some stuff, gathered all the Los Angeles Dodgers cards, and gave them to me.

Seeing Mike Scioscia, Kirk Gibson, and Fernando Valenzuela again reminded me of why I started to fall in love with baseball, this sport that would change my life.

My softball teammate Nick the Stick last week asked me for a card when I told him I still had many left.

I told him I’d give him one, to which he replied, “Will you autograph it?”

From the BBC (that’s in England!):

“World number one Ana Ivanovic was sent crashing out of Wimbledon in the third round by world number 133 Jie Zheng.”

NOW how am I supposed to enjoy this “tennis”? Did you think about that, Ana? Did you think about me?

Between the Lakers losing the NBA Finals, the Dodgers losing every game I attend and nearly every game I don’t attend, Argentina being unable to beat the U.S. nor even manage a lousy goal against them, I think this might go down as the worst year in sports since my Little League team lost the championship on my 13th birthday.

At least Serena Williams is still in it.

My first kiss happened in a moon bounce on the roof of a fast food restaurant in Argentina.

She had kept telling me she wanted to kiss me but I was too busy bouncing around like the hyperactive pogo stick I was. I tried to elude her until she finally tackled me, pinning my puny 9-year-old body down until I relented.

After the infantile kiss rape was over, I got back up and kept bouncing around. After all, it was my birthday.

Her name was Lorena and she was my novia in Buenos Aires. We both attended Islas Malvinas, a primary school patriotically named after those barren islands the British stole from us.

It was a beautiful private school where the boys wore suits and tiny clip-on ties, and the girls wore checkered skirts and canary-yellow V-neck sweaters. Where most kids stayed after class to learn about Jesus and I had to go home to my “boring” Jewish customs.

It was where I played “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours” with all the girls. Where we pledged our love to the sky-blue-and-white Argentina flag every morning and afternoon. Where I ate lunch my first week alone after I told a girl she was pretty and she told me I was “feo” and to go away.

It was also where I met Lorena. A year younger than me, we were in the same class and bonded over childhood trivialities I wish I could still remember.

She followed me around the playground even though I was smitten with the beautiful young teachers. When I realized Señorita Adriana would never be my girlfriend, I asked Lorena and she said yes.

She liked it when I spoke English to her and I never failed to impress her. Yes, I would tell her, I had lived in the U.S. and it was amazing.

But then I moved back to the states when I was 10, nearly a year after that first — and only — kiss . And I never saw or heard from her again.

Until now.

Nearly 24 years to the day that she nailed me to the floor of that moon bounce and made me a man, Lorena wrote me a simple message by way of (what else?) Facebook.

Como estas? No se bien si sos quien creo que eres. Solias vivir en Buenos Aires e ir a un colegio que se llamaba Islas Malvinas?
Beso,
Lorena”

Yes, Lorena, I was that same boy who went to your school. And though I had written before (HERE and HERE) about the strange power of Facebook, I never knew to what extent until now.

I wrote back. We talked about our lives and who we were, trying to bridge nearly a quarter of a century of our lives through this online medium. She stayed in Buenos Aires and became a jazz and Bossa Nova singer. She now lives near my grandma in the neighborhood of Belgrano.

We recalled moments from our childhood. She remembered things I had long ago forgotten. My freckles. My family. That I moved to Los Angeles.

I told her about our first kiss.

As it turns out, that she can’t remember.

Beso indeed.

* Actual results may vary

Is June 24 your birthday? Are you a blogger? Do you wish to highlight this annual observance of the day you were ejected into this world but fear sounding egomaniacal or vain?

Though it is your blog and people have a choice whether or not to read it, writing about your birthday may seem a tad narcissistic. Short of asking your blogging friends to write about you, or even ignoring your birthday all together, there is a way to blog about this day yet still appear aloof and whimsical.

Here’s my how-to guide:

1. Post a cute picture of yourself at a younger age.

Showing what you looked like as a child makes readers go, “Awwww…” and makes them think you’re not the self-involved asshole they all know you are. Is it a cheap ploy made worse by its gaucheness? Yes. Should you care? Absolutely not.

2. Write self-deprecatingly about how old you are.

Whether you’re a blogger who is turning 18 or 88, waxing pathetically about your age makes you appear humble yet strangely obsessive. For example, if you were turning, say, 33 today, you could write about how you’re really not that old. You’re just the same age Jesus was when he was crucified. Ha ha ha!! Hysterical!!!

3. Tell an embarrassing yet endearing story about a past birthday celebration.

Everyone at some point has done something stupid on his or her birthday. Some people celebrated turning 21 by making Midori Sour their first alcoholic purchase. Others have had their faces stuffed into birthday cakes when they turned 18. And some other people have gotten erections when they turned 13 and the girl they had a crush on sat in their lap.

To some people, all three of these things have happened.

4. Throw a birthday party and blog about it.

Use words like “crazy” and “so fucking drunk” to describe how popular your birthday party was. If you have photos of it, post as many as possible that don’t show you swinging a golf club on the way home.

If you don’t have any photos, be thankful.

5. Write a series of “This Day in History” trivia tidbits so people know why else your birthday is so fucking important.

You could mention that on your birthday, Henry VIII was crowned king of England in 1509, or that the term “flying saucers” was born on your birthday in 1947.

Unfortunately, most people don’t usually care about this crap.

6. Point out other bloggers — like Freckled K and Love is Blonde — who share the same birthday as you.

Two birds, one stone, etc. You get to be magnanimous in the face of birthday-wishing while simultaneously highlighting yourself.

7. Be thankful you’re not THAT old.

It could always be worse. You could be 34.

Thanks to WiB for this heart-warming someecard.

Last week, someone wished me a “Happy New Year!”.

That’s right. On June 19, I was happy-new-yeared by a man in the Metro who apparently was unaware that we’re merely weeks away from being closer to 2009 than 2007.

In his defense, the man was a bum. Literally. He was homeless. Standing near the Ballston Metro escalator, he awkwardly held out a paper cup and asked commuters for 40 cents, a pretty specific amount considering it might be tough to find someone with exactly a quarter, a dime, and a nickel. I dug into my pockets, fished out four bits, and handed them to him.

He didn’t say “God bless” (the most common grateful bum’s mantra) or “Thank you”. He said, “Happy New Year” and went back to begging.

It could have been worse. It has been worse.

While standing outside Cue Bar once at a blogger happy hour with some friends, a homeless man approached our group and asked for cigarettes and money. I had seen him the week before at Cue Bar (I love that place) and jokingly said, “Remember me?”

He took this affectionate phrase as a sign of amity I wasn’t aware existed between us. He looked at me, said, “Oh yeah! How you doing?”, and proceeded to lean into my neck and kiss it.

That’s right. He kissed…my neck.

Some advice, people. Recoiling in disgust at a strange man trying to kiss your neck does not, apparently, prevent said man from kissing your neck. I have blocked out most of what happened that moment save for remembering this girl doing her best not to crack up at my predicament.

In his defense, he was a good kisser and if I had been into men with mailing addresses, things might have turned out differently for Neck Kisser and I.

I just wish he could have wished me a “Happy New Year” instead.

PHOTO CREDIT

I recently added three blogs to my blogroll I think everyone should be reading when they’re not watching online porn.

Surviving Myself

This dude seriously cracks me up. A blogger from Brooklyn, he could write about his fucking shoe size and it would still be funny. He’s actually made me LOL or ROTF (or whatever the kids are calling it these days) with epics posts like his recent fight with a moth and his wish to fight Sean Connery.

Berg With Fries

If I lived in Chicago and knew anything about computers, I think this fellow MOT and I would be BFFs. Josh is a funny writer who has a talent for seeing the world just a bit differently than anyone else. When he’s not photo essaying his past work experience, he’s video blogging (vlogging, right?) an 8-book review in 3 minutes…while eating Pop Rocks.

Hup and Steph

This blog is written by a couple, who if I didn’t have the videos and photos to prove it, I would think they’re fictional. They live in Northern California and like to document every single second of their hysterical adventures. The video of them attending Bay to Breakers is worth the click to their blog alone.

Also, they like to wear their underwear in public:

I went to the bathroom in my office yesterday and as I went to open the door, a woman walked out.

I wish I could tell you that I had an extremely funny yet bewildering conversation with her. I wish I could, but I didn’t.

Instead, I said “Thank you” for holding the bathroom door open for me like it was perfectly normal for a woman to walk out of the men’s room.

For all I know she got confused. Or she had a penis. I don’t know, I wasn’t looking for a bulge.

The oddest thing about the brief moment, other than the fact she had been in the men’s room, was that she didn’t act awkward. She smiled a little, paused for me to walk by her, and walked away at a gingerly pace.

And before you ask, yes, she was definitely a woman. Her hips, breasts, and skirt sort of gave her away.

I’ve seen women drunk out of their skulls go to the men’s bathroom in bars. Eager to drop trou and impatient at waiting for the women’s bathroom line to go, these blitzed chicks find it amusing and (in their own minds) charming to take a piss in the men’s room.

“Do you see what I just did?” I can imagine them telling their girlfriends over appletinis and mojitos, “I just went to the little boy’s bathroom. Ha ha! I’m so funny. I’m SUCH a Miranda!”

The office woman wasn’t the first female I have seen use the men’s room.

When I was 5, I walked past the bathroom and saw my 4-year-old sister with her pants down facing the toilet. As I realized what she was attempting to do, I raised my hand and yelled, “Nooooooo….!” at the exact same moment she started to pee straight down and onto the floor.

When I asked her afterward what she was thinking, she told me, “I wanted to pee like you do.”

For the sake of argument, could a woman truly pee like men do? More specifically, can they use the the urinal? Though I am not exactly privy to modern women’s bathroom behavior, I do know (from reading Gene Weingarten’s weekly WaPo chat) that many women consider bathrooms the last vestiges of decent human civilization. Many use rolls of TP to cover the toilet seat and will even perform the “hover” move, which is exactly what it sounds like.

But could a woman “hover” or crouch above the urinal in a pinch?

Now that I have written out that statement, I realize I don’t care. I just think it’s funny.

And the next time I see this crazy woman in my office who likes to use the men’s bathroom, I’ll just raise my hand.

And yell, “Nooooooo….!”.

PHOTO CREDIT

My 12-year-old cousin called me this past weekend and asked me to give the aliyot at his Bar Mitzvah next January.

It is a great honor to give the aliyot, reserved for those family members who have had a deep impact on the young Jew’s life. It basically involves me standing at his Bar Mitzvah and performing an interactive reading from the Torah.

Aside from nearly getting my cousin drunk at Passover and taking him to a Nats game two months ago, I’m not sure how I have positively influenced his life. Still, I was flattered to be asked and eagerly accepted the offer.

The problem, though, is that giving the aliyot (or aliyah) will combine two of my greatest fears: speaking in public and speaking in Hebrew.

When it comes to public speaking, I can pinpoint exactly when my fear comes from.

When I was in 10th grade, I had to do an oral book report. I chose the book “The Natural”. I never read it, though, since I was too busy crushing on girls in my class and distracted by things far more important than learning.

When the day of my book report came, I decided instead to just go off the movie The Natural, one of my favorite baseball movies albeit a flawed one. I stood in front of the class and provided an in-depth examination of Robert Redford’s, er, Roy Hobbes’ life.

I delved into motifs, foreshadowing, and plot development, completing my masterpiece by comparing Hobbes’ epic homerun in his final at bat of the movie as the ultimate act of redemption.

My teacher, Mr. Sanchez, looked at me and asked, in front of the entire class, “Uh, did you read the book?”

Why did he ask me that, I thought. Could he see through my ruse? Was I not convincing enough? Act confident, he won’t suspect a thing.

“Of course!” I answered.

“Well,” he continued, “here’s the thing. In the book, Roy Hobbes strikes out in his last at bat. In the movie, he hits the homerun.”

Whoops.

The class “oohed” and “aahed”. I could feel my face burning with embarrassment. I stammered, trying to explain the disparity. Mr. Sanchez looked at me with disappointed eyes. He let me stand there, suffering, for what felt like hours, no, weeks, until he finally let me off the hook.

“Take your seat.”

I never got over that moment and, to this day, cannot make a speech in front of even friends and family without nearly fainting from shame.

So standing in front of hundreds of people, reading Hebrew from the Torah, isn’t exactly at the top of my bucket list. I don’t expect my family to heckle me (though I wouldn’t out it past my dad). I expect them to be supportive, pat me on the back, and tell me what a great job I did when it’s all over.

But I hope this time, I at least get the ending right.

Do you know where to find Asian women?

If you’re like me and you went to UC Irvine, they found you. That campus was teeming with Asian chicks (and, I guess, some Asian dudes) since there were a lot of Asian people who applied to UCLA and didn’t get in.

They also all drove Honda Civics like they were issued at their high school graduations.

Everyone at UCI dated Asian girls. And by “everyone” I mean “white boys”. Whether you had an Asian fetish or not, it was nearly impossible not to date an Asian girl at some point in your 4 (or 5) years there. My first girlfriend there was Thai and in the entire lifecycle of our relationship, I learned several things about Asian culture:

1. Watching or reading “The Joy Luck Club” is required.
2. Asian students study live in the biology, have to become doctors, and like to complain about how hard organic chemistry is.
3. Never refuse food provided by your Asian girlfriend’s mom, despite how full you might be.
4. Never admit you have an Asian fetish to an Asian girl.

I have met since then many guys who have a legitimate “Asian fetish”. Maybe they’re attracted to their body types. Maybe they enjoyed reading The Blue Lotus (The Adventures of Tintin) when they were young. Or maybe they just like Honda Civics.

My Korean friend Echo Monkey hates guys who have Asian fetishes. “I’m not a thing, I’m a person!”, she often tells me while giggling like a schoolgirl and talking about how much she likes Indian men.

In any case, if someone were to have an Asian fetish but didn’t have the benefit of attending UC Irvine, there’s always my new favorite poker game, Pai Gow.

Blue and I played Pai Gow poker at the Motor City Casino-Hotel while in Detroit this past weekend. Since the Dodgers failed to win both games we saw at Comerica Park, this “luxurious” casino provided the weekend’s most interesting entertainment.

First, let me explain a little something about the Motor City casino. Have you ever been to Vegas? Ever stepped into the crappiest, dirtiest, most soul-sucking casino off the strip?

This one was worse.

You see this photo? This is what the hotel looked like from the outside:

No, that BP gas station was not working and seemed to not have pumped anything since gas was under $3.

Now look at this photo, which I took from Motor City’s own Web site. You see the pretty blond white girls laughing, drinking champagne, and playing the slots? Yeah, this might have been what the casino looked like. If it were somewhere else.

Still, overall, the Motor City casino proved to be a good place to gamble since I won at every game I played. I made about $50 playing blackjack, hit on 27 in my very first spin at roulette, and popped by gambling cherry at Pai Gow poker by winning twice as often as I lost.

Like a UCI freshmen dorm, the Pai Gow table attracts the Asians. Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean, this game ropes in more Asians than a photo opportunity at Disneyland.

“Why do so many Asians play this game?” I asked Blue while I watched him lose hand after hand.

“Look at the name,” he said, “it’s called Pai Gow.”

“So? It’s just the name,” I said. “You don’t see me playing Money Lenders poker, do you?”

I eventually sat down and discovered the game’s appeal. You are dealt seven cards, which you use to make two separate hands. The five-card hand has to be better than the two-card hand and you must beat both of the dealer’s hands to win.

This is not the most common occurrence since you and the dealer are evenly matched, making a “push” the most frequent result.

But the advantage of Pai Gow is that you can play for a much longer time than other betting games and, even if you lose more than you win, you won’t lose too much money. I played only 20 hands in about an hour and a half, winning 6, losing 3, and pushing 11.

Though most of the players were Asian men, many Asian women also played. And they won. In fact, almost everyone I played with won some money except for Blue and two old white guys who muttered obscenities under their breath.

The trick to winning, it seemed, was to either be Asian or a UCI alum.

Blue, not having even an Asian fetish, should have known he would lose.

I think this weekend he’ll be renting The Joy Luck Club.

Though I thought it would happen as the starting shortstop for the Los Angeles Dodgers, being part of Sports Illustrated’s background noise at Belmont Park isn’t so bad either:

What? Can’t see me clearly? How about now?

Still can’t tell? Take a look at this, then:

I noticed this photo on Friday as I waited at BWI for my 3 1/2-hour delayed flight to Detroit. I turned to the guy next to me eating his Panda Express 3-piece combo and shouted proudly, “I’m in Sports Illustrated!”

He turned back to his egg roll without even asking me what I meant.

Never underestimate people’s ability to care solely about their Chinese takeout.