This is a searchable catalog of cards and collectibles from Mike Schmidt’s playing years, built for quick browsing and easy reference. Each entry includes available images, basic details, and my personal ownership status, with additional (occasionally snarky) notes where applicable.
April 4, 1968 — 6:58 p.m. The elevator shuddered as it climbed to the third floor of St. Joseph’s Hospital, where the night air smelled… Read More »Nightfall In Memphis: One Woman’s Prayer After the Death of a King
(Or How to Build a Car, Lose a Fortune, and Haunt a Casino) By Andrew Laker George Bessler could feel the devil bite his ass… Read More »The Story of George Bessler and the First Automobile In Batesville
By Andrew Laker For centuries, children of the Laker clan were born and raised on a single diminutive patch of earth in Angelbeck, a small… Read More »Searching for (and finding!) the Ancestral Homeplace in Germany
I was playing around with a popular app on my phone one day. It was called FaceApp, and I was cracking up at all of… Read More »Using a Smartphone App to Forensically Reconstruct The Face of An Ancestor
(The last names used in this story have been changed for privacy. The rest has been told exactly as it occurred.) The last time I… Read More »The Last Time I Saw Stinky
“No! Where did it go!?” I muttered to myself as I combed in frustration the rows of graves at St. Mary’s of the Rock cemetery… Read More »The Strange Disappearance of My Ancestor’s Headstone