Today we celebrate the life of Steve Balboni as part of our on-again, but mostly off-again, feast-day series.

Life: A native of noted City of Champions and Bare-Knuckled Violence (i.e. Brockton, Massachusetts), Steve Balboni parlayed two plus tools (power, mustache) into a major-league career that saw him hit home runs in over 5% of his plate appearances. That his peak seasons overlapped with the increased popularity of card collecting in the mid- and late-80s has likely contributed to his own enduring popularity among the children of that era.

Balboni the Ample teems with animal desire.

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Recently, in the midst of an auto trip from Chicago to Grand Rapids, the author opened (for reasons that remain mysterious) a pack of 1987 Topps at a Starbucks in Michigan City — and documented the experience for America. With a view to capitalizing cynically on the success of that first post, the author presents this hastily composed sequel, in which he opens a pack of 1990 Fleer at a cafe right by his tastefully decorated apartment in Madison, Wisconsin.

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Heart-pounding quiz, after the jump!

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An expensive teak desk, not entirely unlike the author’s.

The author’s submission to Patrick Dubuque’s ridiculous Villanelle Challenge concerns less a baseballing theme proper and more the cursed insolence of Dubuque himself — and also, it turns out, the entire world.

Hey, Patrick Dubuque: you’re not the boss of me.
Did you consider that before assigning me an effing villanelle?
In point of fact, I’m the boss of you. Literally.

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FanGraphs CEO and founder and ubermensch David Appelman has alerted the author to the presence of a Sammy Sosa Pinterest account. Now, said author does the same for all of probably less than 0.00001% of America — while noting, at the same time, that Sosa’s account is mostly just a record of him wearing two outfits in a tastefully decorated home-office.

The internet visitor does, however, become slightly more acquainted with how Sosa might react in certain, more routine and workaday situations. Here, for example, is what Sammy Sosa looks like when you interrupted him using his smart phone, but he’s not upset about it:

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The following tweet is entirely and in-no-way altered from the original (click to embiggen):

Owing to the generosity and/or oversight of the BBWAA, the present author — provided he doesn’t make a mess of everything, like his family’s always saying he makes a mess of everything — might very well have a vote for the Baseball Hall of Fame 10 years thence. It will be a privilege, at that time, to have the opportunity not only to (a) help decide which players receive one of the game’s great honors, but also (b) receive pointed threats from every corner of the internet while so doing.

In the meantime, I’d like to share my ballot for a Hall of Fame by which I’ve already been granted voting privileges — namely, my own Personal Hall of Fame.

Here are my votes this year for same, with a focus on ages 7-11:

Sears Wish Book
Provided very strong reading material while staying at my grandparents’ house. Long length. Lots of beds shaped like cars, if I remember correctly.

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This GIF of Mike Piazza on stage with Alter Bridge at the 2005 Home Run Derby is provided for the reader after the jump not because it is such a large file that it would render the site inert were it on the front page — although this would definitely happen — but rather because the reader, were he (or she, certainly) confronted by such footage sans warning, his (or her, certainly) heart would explode, like in that one movie where the guy’s heart just explodes.

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The Hall of Fame and who belongs in it appears to be a subject of some import to many fans of base-and-ball — and also of some import, one assumes, to those former players whose careers are the object of much public scrutiny on days and nights like this one.

Were the present author tasked with building a Hall of Fame from scratch, it (i.e. said Hall) would be (a) quite different than the present one and (b) very poorly managed and (c) full of gratis scotch (although not in that order, necessarily).

Also, it would most certainly have an entire wing dedicated to gentleman ballplayers flipping their bats — like in this GIF of Mike Piazza, New York Catcher, flipping his goddamn bat.

Credit to James Kannengieser for bringing author’s attention to — and to Eric Simon for manufacturing with American sweat — the GIF in question.

The following tweet is entirely and in-no-way altered from the original (click to embiggen):