Favorite card of 2018 and a couple of Christmas gifts

Once again, P-town Tom of the Waiting 'til Next Year... blog is running a favorite card of 2018 contest.

Looking at this year where the Browns have returned to respectability, one might think that I would have a Baker Mayfield, Denzel Ward or Nick Chubb card as my favorite. These rookies have all had wonderful seasons and I hope to accumulate many of their cards over what I hope are long and successful careers in Cleveland.

However, looking through the 2018 cards that I added to my Browns collection, the one that jumped out at me went in a different direction. I feel that it is a nice tribute to a future Hall of Famer.

Here is my favorite 2018 card that I added to my collection:

I love the photo of Joe Thomas carrying his helmet. It shows him, the person. I also don't mind the shiny pattern in the background that helps spotlight Thomas further.

I'm also very pleased with the write-up on the back of the card.

Thank you, Joe Thomas, for the great career that you had with the Browns.

I've really enjoyed seeing Thomas on Thursday Night Football telecasts. I really hope to see him in more prominent tv roles. I find him to really be funny, with good insights.

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I exchanged Christmas gifts with a good friend today.

I bought him a remote controlled R2-D2, his wife some chocolates and a page-a-day calendar, and his daughter a couple of board games and Barbie-like Bella Twins wrestling figures.

From them, I received a book:

Of course, my comment about the book was that since the Browns have never made a Super Bowl there won't be any stories worth reading in there.

To go with it, they also gave me something that I have never owned before:

I have a number of Browns jerseys, but have never owned a Kosar one. The oldest jersey, and my first jersey, was an Ozzie Newsome one. I am very happy to add this one to the rest of them. And I am happy to have another old style, classic jersey.

A funny thing about the jersey is that after he gave it to me, he joked that now he needed to get a Cowboys Kosar jersey that we could wear together. Okay, that really isn't that funny, but then I told him that if he did that we would then have to get his oldest friend, and my roommate his own Kosar jersey too. My roommate is a Miami Hurricanes fan. I just think it would be funny for all of us to go to a bar wearing different Kosar jerseys. (We don't have any Miami Dolphins fans in our group.)