Notes on the Upper Deck Social Media Awards

I'm a little late to this, and I'm sure others have touched on the many interesting points the Upper Deck Awards bring up, so I'll keep it brief.

• There seem to be two camps in the small world of blogging about baseball cards: Topps fans and Upper Deck fans. I'm not sure where I fit in, because I feel I've been critical of both sides. So then the question I have is this: would Upper Deck include a blog/website of a Topps fan in their nominated site choices? I mean, it's their ball; they can decide the rules.

• Chris Harris raises the question: Can a blog be considered among "the best" if it has less than 20 posts? I'm going to withhold judgment on this one, simply because "the best" is a rather arbitrary ranking that shouldn't be measured by how long a person's been doing what they do, but the quality of their work. Which brings me to my next point:

• How many bloggers out there are doing quality original work? Live-blogging a pack is no longer an original undertaking. Holding up your cards to your webcam? Nope. Giving your take on a sell sheet? Try again. Writing about your "big hit"? Snooze. Want to be a news source? Read Sports Collector's Daily, because Rich Mueller does it better than anybody.

For most people, writing a blog is about what they want to write about, not about wracking their brains for daring new things. But giving an award for work that can no longer be considered original?

I'm not writing this to be snarky or to suggest that The Baseball Card Blog warrants an award. It doesn't, at least not to commemorate the work I've done in the last two years (ie, very little). But there's only so much you can do with a blog devoted to baseball (or any other sport) trading cards.

If you want to read truly original work, head over to Josh Wilker's site, Cardboard Gods. There is no better baseball card blog on this here or any other World Wide Web, and the fact his site wasn't included in Upper Deck's list of nominees is a travesty of justice.