Artefacts of another civilization

[davidn]

Perhaps someone from America on here can help me with this - what does one do with baseball cards? While cleaning out the flat in preparation for our move, we found a pack of them at the back of a bookcase, and I remember that they were given to me by one of my brothers-in-law the first Christmas after I'd got my residence.

All of them are for the Oakland Athletics, have "Dreyer's Dibs" in the top left and "Upper Deck" in the top right. Some of them are marked "Rookie card". They feature names like Scott Sauerbeck (/P), Ron Flores (/P), Dan Johnson (/1B), Adam Melhuse (/C) and Frank Thomas (/DH). They also detail whether people BAT and THROW with L or R, which I thought were guessable enough until I encountered one with a B.

On the backs, they each have a paragraph in something that I vaguely recognize as English, which is most refreshing, followed by a table with YR and TEAM. These are followed by a set of columns marked AVG, G, AB, R, H, 2B, 3B, HR, RBI and SB... except some arbitrary ones, which instead have W, L, ERA, G, GS, SV, IP, H, BB and K.

Any explanation of these artefacts would be most welcome.

Comments

[crassadon.livejournal.com]

I've never seen a baseball card in real life, so I'm interested to learn what other people will say to this. They're like Pokemon cards, but you can't play a game with them. They're valuable if the player on them goes on to do something great?

[quadralien.livejournal.com]

"B" could possibly be "Both" - I imagine "A" for Ambidextrous would confuse people further.

(Comment hastily deleted and moved to not being a reply where it was meant to be...)