I don't know if it was the Collective Troll who coined the term "blogger kindness" in reference to this community, but he popularised it and it is certainly true. Here are two tales from my experiences that I wanted to share with you, and now that I have found the box with my scanner, and hooked it up to my computer, I can do just that.

A couple of months ago, I put out the call for help. You see, I had this idea to take the plain single-color binders I bought for my team collections and put logo stickers all over them to decorate their plainness. I put out a call on my blog for anyone who had some stickers they could spare (with the full knowledge that they would be peeled and stuck) to send them to me. Captain Canuck from the Waxaholic blog responded with a "I'll see what I can find" message - and when I got to my parents' house, I found that the good captain had sent a team bag filled to bursting with Reds, Mariners, Orioles, White Sox and Athletics stickers.

I love having both the old-school and the current White Sox logo in that package! There were also some Upper Deck hologram stickers in the bag, but I didn't scan those because I wasn't sure how well they'd show up. The Ken Griffey is actually a sticker - one of the Fleer Star player stickers from 1981. I've already started to put them on my binders, and they look much better! So thank you, Captain Canuck, for your generosity. I'll even forgive the rude things you said about Tim Lincecum in your last post! ;)

I knew those stickers were waiting for me, but I didn't know quite how many there would be. But I didn't expect the e-mail I would get the day after I got back in the States, from Larry (Mariner1) at Emerald City Diamond Gems. Here's the important part:

I have an extra copy of a 12 page commemorative section from the Seattle Times Sunday paper from a couple weeks ago. It is all Griffey. I know how big of a Griffey fan you are, and if you weren't here in Seattle, you probably wouldn't know about it. I would like to send you a copy as a Mariners fan to a Griffey fan.

What a nice gesture! I'm happy to report that I got the paper before I left, and it made it back safely to Australia. I need to figure out a permanent home for it, but right now it's tucked safely in my Griffey PC folder. Here is the scan of the front (or at least as much of the front as my scanner will allow)


Again, it's another super-nice, out-of-the-blue offer from a fellow blogger, and typical of the type of people in the baseball card blogosphere. Thanks to everyone who I have dealt with, am currently dealing with, or will do so in the future. The Troll keeps talking about how you all are so nice, and he's absolutely right. The spirit of camaraderie and togetherness, what we in Australia call "mateship," is what keeps me involved, I hope, for many years to come.