Hey all, sorry for the missing nerd this past Monday. Unfortunately, technical difficulties with the official nerd-scanner have provided a roadblock to expanding the nerd archive. Thankfully, there is a seemingly never-ending supply of Kent Tekulve cards available for posting. You can see our first Kent Tekulve post here. There are many more Tekulve cards in the archive. We may have to develop some sort of lifetime achievement award.

Happy “pitchers and catchers reporting” everyone.

Did anyone else read “Highlights” magazine when they were a little kid? One of monthly features was a “hidden pictures” page, or a “spot the differences” page, where they would show you two pictures that were almost exactly the same…but with several slight differences. These usually included someone’s eyes looking in the opposite direction, or having a button missing from their shirt.

Anyway, all these years later, fate intervened and put these two cards one on top of the other in the Nerd Archive.

Love this card…but come back on Thursday to witness Mr. Downing achieve the first successful nerd-to-non-nerd conversion.

Has there ever been a “throw back” uniform that has been as swept under the rug as this Cleveland Indians uniform? I have NEVER seen these red uniforms, and Halloween-looking-caps before this set of 1977 Topps cards. Not in baseball books, not in pictures, and not in old highlight reels. A brief internet search revealed that the Indians wore some version of these uniforms from 1975-77. Sometimes they wore the red shirt with white pants. Sometimes a white shirt with red pants. Sometimes a blue shirt with white pants. And sometimes a blue shirt with red pants. Yikes.

On August 24, 1975, Mr. Halicki threw a no-hitter against the New York Mets. So far, this is the first documented nerd-thrown-no-hitter.