The Bird bird feeder (Mark Fidrych PC)

My live-in marital partner surprised me with a bird feeder last Christmas, knowing how I've enjoyed having an active hummingbird feeder for a couple years running. Took me a while to get around to putting it up, waiting for the rainy season to be over, but I've had it up for a week now and it's pretty cool. 

It's made of clear plastic and meant to be hung in a window so you can get a close look at the birdies on display. At first the clear side walls were confusing them-- often fluttering against them trying in vain to get in-- so I stuck on some Fleer team logo stickers on the sides. But I soon upgraded that idea to slotting in a pair of Mark Fidrych cards, thereby dedicating it as a Mark Fidrych Memorial Bird Feeder... or The Bird Birdfeeder.

It's designed to be hung with suction cups to a window, but the best viewing spot I could identify was over a screen, so I rigged up a hanger instead.

I'm a little worried about a squirrel raid, (and/or maybe the crows/ravens who run the neighborhood will come by for their "protection" fee?), but no trouble yet.

I didn't take the decision to "sacrifice" good baseball cards lightly. But I already have these cards. I've got one of the '77 Toppses in my setbuild, and two more in the PC in addition to the lesser-conditioned triplicate selected for the birds. As for the '78, also got one in the 78T build, plus one in the PC, plus another one that's autographed (for/from former blog buddy "Tony L." who pops up to talk about soccer on twitter once in a while but sadly seems like Off Hiatus Cards is in fact never returning from the hiatus it's currently on). 

Ruby does some birdwatching.

But yeah, the cards in there are packaged with water-resistance in mind, and it's on the north side of the house, so not a ton of direct sunlight, so we'll see how the cards are looking after a few months, assuming they don't go missing or anything. I bet it won't take long for these cards to be imprinted on my brain more than they already are due to looking over at them many times in an average day. I suppose I could pop in any old trading cards to do the job-- perhaps favoring teams named after birds.. yeah, maybe I'll swap in some Orioles/Cardinals/Jays commons once the rainy days return-- but at least for now it will continue to serve a dual purpose, acting as a safespace for li'l tweet-tweets to find an assortment of small seeds and nuts available to eat.. while also paying tribute to a fascinating former ballplayer who happened to be similarly nicknamed due to his appearance calling to mind the character Big Bird.

A guest to the Bird feeder checks out Fidrych's early stats.

The feeder isn't super busy, but has flurries of activity at least a couple times a day so far, which is perfect. Mostly common sparrows, as far as I can tell, which are cute, though hopefully I'll be lucky enough to eventually spot some "fancier" birds stopping by.

On the topic of Mark Fidrych, I just went ahead and logged my PC into TCDB today. My 23 unique cards were good enough to crack the Top 20 there, so that's cool. I did the "add all missing cards to wantlist" thing, too, so hopefully that'll spark some trades and help me move up the list... though he only has 214 total cards listed, and most of those are either oddballs from the late 70s or low-numbered stuff from the aughts when the card companies started going nuts with cards of retired favorites. But yeah, it'd be cool to build up the PC to where I could "hang with the big boys" of Fidrych collectors.

Here's the PC, more or less (turning this post into an update of my previous Fidrych PC post from 2018)...

Some of Gio's customs infiltrated this group of cards I've got of Bird's early days.

You can see I've got dupes of his '80 and '81 Topps cards (No OPC in the mix here, sadly), though they are less fun to look at than '77 and to a lesser extent '78.. but could be called into active bird feeder duty if needed.

Love the minor league cards, even if that must've been a frustrating time for Mark.

Some post-playing days cards, including a 2003 Fan Favorites auto I scored not too long ago. I believe it's my second certified auto of his, following the (not pictured) 2003 Retired base auto I got back in 2018. 

Speaking of Fan Favorites, the "1977" (2004) refractor from a few pics above didn't really catch the light there, so here are some bonus shots of it to close us out for today: 

Refraction. Simple, yet elegant refraction.

I like how the rookie cup has gone supernova in this one.

"Get out of there, Mark! The field's on fire!!"