Okay.

Well, I want to I want to thank you for having me.

And it's really fun to collaborate on this card.

And I want to give you the original painting.

Well, I mean, I thought it would be cool to bring a trading card int the mix of commemorative items that collectors and audience members seem to appreciate.

My whole life, I've been drawing baseball cards on the side for fun.

Isn't that really what we should be doing at the forefront?

You know, I was paintin baseball cards in college, but it was like to warm u for my more serious paintings.

I mean, is there anything more serious than what you actually want to be doing?

Look at that stoic Minnie Minoso over there.

Now, that is a portrait.

It almost doesn't need to be painted.

I mean, I found a 1955 Bowman card of an umpire.

I don't know how rare it is, but I've never seen anyon like it, so, you know, I'm sure.

I'm sure it's more common than I think, but.

But most in the wild I have 55 bowman of an umpire.

So if I find a card that I was.

Man, I love that card because of this, because of that, because of that.

And I want to have it in my collection.

Yet I also want to paint it.

Look, I think every card is a work of art, and every car is going to appeal to someone for different reasons, whether I'm the first one t ever be emotionally stimulated because of a shadow on the A, you never know what someone's going to be attracted to.

It could be the color of the clouds in the sky in the background that maybe reminds you of your grandma's house, or the more obvious could be about the player, obviously.

But for me, once I more i with my own fingerprints and ink and all that, it turns i into a whole other level of art.

It becomes like an art object.

And I sign each on and I just like, put them away.

So I have my own kind of reference cards.

I was sharing this story with my son at the time.

Maybe he was like ten.

I'm like, isn't that interesting?

I mean, wouldn't that be cool?

Like years down the line, someone will have a reference card like that.

He's like, but it's ruined.

You ruined it, I said, yeah, but imagine if popular Picasso painted baseball cards and he had all his reference cards.

Because you're not popular, Picasso.

Wow.

So, Masters of Universe stuff.

I missed that.

I'm not sure these individually.

How much is that?

Yeah.

I want to start painting these.

That would be awesome.

Yeah, I like this one too.

So my first two sets are, like, deprived of any iconic cards at all.

And mostly, I don't know, the lesser known players, but people would be like, man, that that reminds me of my childhood.

You know what I mean?

Like, for me, it's like the radio towers in the background or some of those spring training shots, and you'll see old cars in the background.

I don't know, I feel in a certain way picking up where Norman Rockwell left off.

Never mind the subject matter.

For me, it's an infrastructure for a fine artist to reach mainstream Americ and find people where they are as they si so that they can be, you know, affected by these paintings in their space.

And that's what we love about our music.

If you only were able to go see a concert and spend a lot of money on a ticket and travel, music would be different.

Music affects people's lives, everyday lives.

I mean, music taught me how to live, but not at concerts.

From the albums that reached me.

And so at 3:00 in the morning when you need it most.

There it is.

And we're talking about the same cardboard as we're talking about here.

Look, on the back of those cards are stories told in numbers, you know, and the most inspiring one for me as a kid who struck out every At-Bat.

And the first year a little league was, wow.

Look, it seems Mike Schmidt also struck out every at bat in his first year.

And yet, look what this story says the next year.

Your numbers can be italicized because you led the league, you know, three years in a row.

So it told me that you could you can always turn around.

When I was a little league coach for seven years.

Like the thing I wante to impart the most on the team was that everything you learned on the baseball diamond you can apply to real life when you're down eight?

Nothing in the bottom of the ninth.

That doesn't mean you're out.

That's up to you.

You know, these lessons, those are those are those are real life lessons.

Those are real life lessons.

That's right.

And you don't give up.

I mean, even if you lose.

I mean, baseball teaches us how to lose.

I mean, I'd rather watch the press conference from the manager of the losing team, then a whole game.

You'll learn more there.

Look at the different colors to.

Those are purple skies.

This one's blue.

Wow.

You're keeping them in order, right?

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay, so I got in trouble.

People have hard lives, but, you know, like, humans are also unbelievable.

Do you feel that?

Same like, as an artist developing your career?

Was there some, some overlay there, too?

I mean, for sure.

I mean, look, when I was working as the assistant to the cartoon editor, The New Yorker, which I did for two years.

Give me a tour around the office and all this stuff.

I just stack this high of unsolicited stuff that comes in every week.

Make sure you look at these, because some of our most famous published cartoonists actually came from these stacks over the years.

You know, we'd reject cartoons for, for, for 20 year before we before we bought one.

I was like, why would you do that to an artist?

Well, we we want to make sure we're publishing cartoons by artists who we are positive would be doing it anyway.

And that mirrored a chat I had with the great spider John Kerner of Kerner, Ray and Glover, Minnesota.

Bob Dylan used to go see playing coffee shops in Dinky Town when he was Robert Zimmerman, enrolled at the University of Minnesota, and I saw him playing.

I was visiting my grandparents in Florida in 2000, in Boca.

So Dave Ray and Spider John were at a little bar in Miami, and my grandparents excuse me for the night.

I borrowed their car.

I drove down to go see them in between sets.

Spider John was at the bar drinking whiskey.

I sat up next to him and w struck up a little conversation.

Back then, I wasn't a musician at all and never even thought about being a musician or playing guitar.

I didn't do that for another ten years.

Maybe.

You know, I'm from Brooklyn.

I'm 24 years old.

I mean, how does it.

Doesn't it make you feel good that some kid from Brooklyn is 24 year old, came all the way down here to see you play?

And he took a shot and he looked at me and he said, it doesn't matter.

I was like, doesn't matter.

And I kind of like, got this chill.

Like, nah, the end of the day, I got to know I'd be doing this anyway.

And I really think that's the standard for artistic achievement.

Yeah.

Do it anyway.