Vintage Fridays: Hank Bauer, 1968 Topps #513

My wife may be the only person who enjoys early mornings less than I do. I routinely wake up at 6:00 AM on work days, and she often refers to it as "the middle of the night". I consider my early rising to be a necessary evil. I work on flex time, so the earlier I get to the office, the earlier I get out. I can clock in as early as six, or as late as half past nine. While it's certainly nice to be home before 5:00 PM most days, it's also important for me to avoid the worst of the Beltway traffic. Nobody likes sitting bumper-to-bumper on the highway, and I know from experience that congestion on 695 can turn a 25-minute commute into an hour-plus slog. If anything, the near four and one-half years that I spent trekking deep into Washington DC for work on a daily basis (by car, train, subway, bus, and foot) have made me even less tolerant of the slightest delays. When I put it all in perspective, even an hour spent traversing 17 miles is a relief compared to the best case scenario of my Columbia-to-Georgetown days, when I'd leave my apartment at 6:45 AM and sit down at my desk around 8:30. But honestly, I feel like I have to make up for the time lost while enduring all of those mass transit delays and breakdowns. Every additional minute spent in my car is a minute not spent watching one of my favorite shows, or playing a video game, or organizing cards, or reading a new book.

I cope with the tedium of my daily drive by keeping my mind stimulated in various ways. Usually I listen to an audiobook or the occasional podcast. I finished The Hunger Games recently and now I'm pushing through Wilkie Collins' 1859 mystery novel The Woman in White, which checks in at a whopping 25 hours of air time. Only 18 hours left to go! If I'm not in the mood for placidly listening along and trying to absorb a narrative, I'll put on some music and play a solo version of the road games that my family has always used for time-wasters on long trips. I often keep track of all of the various out-of-state license plates that I find on the other vehicles. I might watch road signs, billboards, and other such scenery and try to pick out names or words that double as the surnames of past and present baseball players. Sometimes I just let my mind wander and see where it goes...all while keeping my primary focus on the road, of course.

This morning I was out of the house even earlier (and darker) than usual. Our dog, an affectionate 35-pound mutt named Val, has been yanking us out of our slumber around 5:00 AM for the past few days, and I'd already resolved that I would just get up and get moving if it happened again today. If I was already awake, with less than a full hour left before I'd be getting up anyway, might as well see if I can finagle an early exit from the office. So when Val started whining loud enough for me to hear her on the top floor at 5:15, I kept my word and thereby made it to my car by 6:00...just in time for the icy rain that was just bothersome enough to make driving a bigger chore while still allowing my agency to operate on a regular schedule. It didn't look good when I merged onto the Beltway and found three lanes of traffic at a near-standstill. As I craned my neck to search for a path out of the "slow" lane, a tractor trailer bearing the trademarks of Yoo-hoo lurched past in the middle lane. This got me thinking about the number of late-1960s Topps Orioles cards bearing photos taken in the team's spring training facility in Miami. On several of these cards, you can plainly make out the Yoo-hoo sign on the outfield fence. (The clearest view is on the 1967 Andy Etchebarren card that I posted two years back.) That brings me to today's card, with the "Y" of Yoo-hoo peeking out from behind Hank Bauer's right shoulder, and now you know how Friday's sausage was made.