let them eat pi

i know that this is the walmart blue parallel

of a.j. ellis' 2013 topps card, but it was what i had handy. i remember when this card came out and some folks were touting this as a "sparkle" variation. remember those? topps would actually add a sun "sparkle" to the photos of some cards as a scarce variant. i don't think there were actually any sparkle variations in 2013 topps, but i will admit when i first saw the ellis card my thoughts were "clayton kershaw! sparkle!" in that order.

anyway, the card is being featured today because it is number 314 in the set

and today is march 14th, or 3/14, which is celebrated in some circles as "pi day" thanks to the endless constant representing the relationship between a circle's circumference and it's diameter. speaking of circles, here's a truly scarce circle i added to my steve garvey collection last fall:

that is a 1978 saga disc. here's the back:

saga, from what i can tell, was a food service and restaurant company that ran cafeterias at colleges and branched out to restaurant ownership before being acquired by the marriott company in the 1980's. one of the restaurants that saga owned was the black angus stable of steakhouses, which in the 90's was known to be the home of the "square cow fun bar". another holding of the saga corporation was straw hat pizza, which is another sort of pie.

the saga discs from 1978 use a similar design to the big-t/tastee-freez design, but are way harder to track down. i had a saved search for years before this garvey was posted, and was shocked to see it posted for less than $10. now my attention is turned to the 1977 msa customized garvey disc. 

anyway, i know that the circumference of the disc is 10.6 inches thanks to its 3.375 inch diameter and using 3.14159 as the value of pi. as a side note, i know those last three digits of pi thanks to mad magazine of all things.

six days to go until the regular season begins in seoul!