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Read This: Baseball cards, cliffside driving and hookers n’ blow

Running down some of the best writing of the day. Enjoy. And always wear a cup.

From "The Great Baseball Card Bubble," Dave Jamieson, Slate:

Precious few collectors seemed to ponder the possibility that baseball cards could depreciate. As the number of card shops in the United States ballooned to 10,000, dealers filled their storage rooms with unopened cases of 1988 Donruss as if they were Treasury bills or bearer bonds. Shops were regularly burglarized, their stocks of cards taken as loot. In early 1990, a card dealer was found bludgeoned to death behind the display case in his shop in San Luis Obispo, Calif., with $10,000 worth of cards missing. A few weeks later, Bob Engel, a respected National League umpire, was arrested for allegedly stealing more than 4,180 Score baseball cards, worth $143.98, from a Target store in Bakersfield, Calif., and attempting to steal another 50 packs from a Costco.

From "How a $500 Craiglist Car beat $400K Rally Racers," Sam Smith, Jalopnik:

Just rocked the first stage of the day. Thirty kilometers of craziness. I came through this 70-80 mph section with thousands of people lining the roads. We come around a corner and there's a bridge that somehow got missed in the notes. But it's a flat piece of concrete like 15 feet wide and our trajectory is right off the side. Slocum says into the mic, "We're done," stops reading notes, and braces for impact. The river below has boulders the size of Volkswagens. Sand and gravel in corner, almost as if spectators filled it. Can't get to apex, four feet off, sliding way wide, exit of corner is entrance to bridge. I pitch the car and floor it. 35-45 mph. Half the car falls off the bridge. We are looking at daylight and I am full throttle hoping the left tire and diff can put the power down. We fell so far over the bridge it collapsed the inner leg of the trailing arm by an inch or two. Almost the entire right side of the car hanging in the air. Now in the queue for Stage Two, six more to go.

(Hat tip: Adam Jacobi)

From "Russia's amazing drugs and hookers scandal," Michael Idov, The Daily Beast:

“Let me get this straight,” wrote Ilya Krasilschik, the editor of Afisha magazine, commenting on a Facebook status update after the scandal broke and summing up much of the popular sentiment. “You fight the regime, and in exchange the regime brings you free chicks and blow? Duly noted.”

Hey, if you've seen something particularly good (or particularly bad), drop me a line at jay.busbee@yahoo.com, won't you?

Read This: Tiger, Talladega & November Rain

Running down some of the best writing of the day. Enjoy. Oh, and the cat? I have no idea.

From "The Amateur: Six Laps at Talladega Kicks Off Mustache Weekend," Spencer Hall, SB Nation:

"Sound is obliterated by your surroundings, sight is limited to a tiny window in front of you, and all focus is directed to staying on track and following the line in front of you. A good comparison would be scuba diving at depth going 170 miles per hour. A better one would be going scuba diving at 170 miles per hour in a car full of roaring bees.  How drivers do anything but avoid other drivers is beyond understanding, since at even higher speeds with more on the line they are prisoners of mechanical circumstance, half-blind conductors of forty bullet trains all running on the same track. I will never wonder why drivers wreck in NASCAR ever again. Instead, I will wonder why they don't wreck on the first lap at speed every race."

From "The Stakes at the Masters," Will Leitch, New York:

"But Tiger will turn 35 this December: He's running out of time. Nicklaus, perhaps the best late-in-life golfer of all time, won only six of his eighteen after his 34th birthday and never faced anything close to what Tiger is going through. His off-fairway life has already slowed down the way he plays golf, the activity he was put on this Earth to do. If Woods shocks everyone at Augusta, he'll be well on his way to beating Nicklaus and proving himself the greatest golfer ever. But you can't help but wonder if Nicklaus, who has always revered his record, secretly wonders if he might have dodged a bullet.

From "In which we learn that all Dominican baseball players are gay," Drew Magary, Deadspin:

"Any time I'm driving behind an empty car carrier, I have the manic urge to see if I can drive ONTO the truck itself. The ramp is so tantalizingly close to the ground. I always see myself having to speed up to get onto the ramp, then immediately having to brake to keep from driving 80 while on the truck itself. Then I get out of the car, climb to the top level of the carrier, take out a guitar, and fucking blast the solo from "November Rain." And I don't even LIKE that song."

Hey, if you've seen something particularly good (or particularly bad), drop me a line at jay.busbee@yahoo.com, won't you?