The Zito Effect from David B.

All of these baseball cards are from reader David B., and to best view them please put on your Captain Cardboard Xray Glasses because they are intensely great and we don't want anyone's eyes to pop out.

A George McKenzie card we didn't have! What is even more surprising is that David sent many Ichiro cards, and of the entire batch, we only had one. This is a phemonenon we call The Zito Effect, whereby we rarely get doubles of a player we collect because there must be a couple thousand cards of said player--so there are many more that we don't have than that we do, and thus: goodness results.

Is this not an ideal baseball card? Even though it's not an action shot, the sweeping green grass, the serenely competent expression, and ok we admit, the little shiny badge, make for a memorable card.

Do NOT mess with Masa.
Both the Stadium Club cards above have this same back.

We had not seen this Spectrum card before. Mr. Ichiro appears to be swinging in from another dimension.

Another out-of-dimension swing. The text on the front of this card is perhaps another way of stating The Zito Effect: sky's the limit.

Usually we can live without a lot of business on the card, but these ribbon banners are pretty.

The hotfoot scamper.

Here is an example of too much business on the bottom. And may we make a request? If you are a sportswriter or a cardwriter, please don't ever again use the word "notches."

Does this effect actually occur when Mr. Ichiro hits? Spidery stained glass evanescence? Are the fans warned about this by the announcer?

We are going to add Mr. Hiroki to the list of players we collect, along with Mr. Masahide.

How great are both these shots?

The Timeline inserts look great together:

The floaty heads actually look kind of sharp when laid out symmetrically, as on a binder page.

This is a handsome card, and in a split second he will raise his glove to catch a ball, don't you think?

There are many people (both readers and bloggers) we are compiling cards for right now. We hope you are patient with us. For this array of great cards, thank you very much, David B.

PS Happy March.