Deadline? You expect me to make deadline?

So I’m feverishly putting the finishing touches on the next issue of Beckett Sports Card Monthly this afternoon and I get an email from friend and co-worker Chris Olds that includes two attachments.

I double click on one attachment. I double click on the other. I scream with glee.

Turns out Larry Fitzgerald, my favorite active player and a guy I’ve been collecting fanatically for the last year, will grace the cover of America’s favorite sports videogame when it comes out next August.

For the record, EA Sports’ official Madden NFL 10 cover features Fitz and the Steelers’ Troy Polamalu together.

I’m thrilled for Fitz in the same “he’s made it!” kind of way that I was thrilled for all-time favorite Ed McCaffrey when he appeared on a Stadium Club promo card about a decade ago. (Back then, promo cards played a huge part for manufacturers in the marketing of their products and, as such, were reserved only for the best players of the day; the fact that Eddie Mac got one still is somewhat hard to believe.)

In any event, just minutes after opening Olds’ seemingly innocuous, subject-line-less email, I’m blowing off BSCM deadlines and fondly remembering just how sensational Fitzgerald was during the 2008 postseason.

Then I start thinking about the sweet Fitzgerald cards I’ve collected in the last year . . . and about the countless ones still uncollected . . . and just like that, I’m fixated not on sending finished files to the printer, but on feverishly finding new Fitzes.

Chris, I’ll get you for this.

— Tracy Hackler