Baseball cards hold value beyond money

From the time I was about 10 until I was 16, the most exciting time of the year was early March. That's when the new baseball cards hit the market.

My older sisters loved Bobby Sherman, Michael Jackson and David Cassidy.

I loved baseball cards.

Due to baseball cards (and my passion for sports in general), I knew the name of every major league baseball player – at least those who were among the 660 cards printed annually by the Topps Company.

Baseball cards were fun and interesting. My collecting started slowly and built up steam. By the time I was in seventh grade, my goal was to get a complete set: All 660 cards.

Obsession? Maybe. I prefer to think of myself as driven.

My friend Dana and I competed (and teamed up), pushing each other to do better, to get more cards. We sometimes traded, but also worked together.

By the time I was 14, I stopped relying on my mom to buy cards at the grocery store and ordered cards directly from a distributor, in boxes of 1,000 or 1,500. I spent much of my savings on those cards, then waited for the UPS truck to drive to my remote home in early March. It was like watching Santa Claus come . . . if Saint Nick delivered boxes of baseball cards 10 weeks after Christmas.

I collected passionately, telling everyone that these would make me rich one day.

But it wasn't really about money. I loved baseball and loved collecting cards. I traded them with strangers (Dana and I took out an ad in a sketchy baseball card magazine to land more old cards) and dreamed of getting the rare Mickey Mantle or Willie Mays rookie card. More than anything, I loved my era: the mid-1970s.

In 1975, Dana collected 659 of the 660-card set, missing only Steve Foucault of the Texas Rangers. We spent months pursuing Foucault, an otherwise forgettable relief pitcher. I'm pretty sure that Dana never completed that set. His 1975 Topps mini set (distributed in only a few areas of the U.S.) was forever at 659, one short. Mine remained 12 short.

I put together complete sets in 1976, 1977 and 1978. Then, like nearly everyone, I slowed. Then I stopped. By the time I was a senior in high school, I had no interest in baseball cards – but unlike most people my age, I kept them. Separated by year in boxes, in numerical order.

I know that because I recently decided to sell my baseball cards after storing them for years in my garage (in a plastic tote, secured and dry, still in boxes in numerical order).

When I reviewed them recently, they looked just like they did when I was a teenager. The complete sets (and all the extras from those years) are still in order. My 1975 mini set is still just 12 short (including Foucault!).

When I checked them out, I didn't think of their financial value (which has dropped off a cliff in the past two decades). I thought about how much they meant to me when I was a teen. They were distinctly mine. They were my first investment. They were the way I learned about baseball and friendship.

They tied me to a place and time.

I will sell my cards in the coming months, hopefully to someone who appreciates them as a snapshot of time as much as a fiscal investment. I won't miss them, since they've been largely out of view for decades. My memories aren't financial, but what those cardboard treasures meant to me.

They meant springtime, baseball, a good investment . . . and that Steve Foucault was elusive.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

How to make Winter Olympics even better

The Winter Olympics are at a crossroads. The question is whether the International Olympic Committee is ready to take the kind of steps necessary to move the Games to the next level.

Sure, they're Olympian now, by definition. But they could be much better. I'm optimistic that the IOC is willing to surge ahead to ensure the success (and by success, I mean good TV ratings) into the future.

The IOC has already made steps.

Consider the difference from even 38 years ago. Back in 1980, the U.S. Olympics hockey team won the gold medal, but the rest of the Olympics? Boring figure skating. No short-track skating. No snowboarding, half-pipe. Not even any curling. There were only six sports – with 10 events (since things like skiing have multiple variations) – contested. This year? There are 15 sports with 102 events.

Here's my point: The IOC doesn't need to keep expanding sports. It simply needs to make the existing ones more exciting.

I have recommendations.

You want me to keep watching NBC's coverage through commercials every five minutes and boring interviews? Try these three updates to the sports:

Multiple competitors at once. In events such as short-track speed skating, the excitement comes from several athletes racing simultaneously – and the inherent danger. Same thing is true on the snowboarding and skiing slopestyle events.

What if we added multiple performers to other sports?

I'm thinking of downhill ski races, sending them down side-by-side or side-by-side-by-side (elbowing each other at 60 mph). What about three or four luge teams shooting down a wide track simultaneously, racing to the finish?

Want something really out of the box? How about multiple figure skaters on the ice at the same time? The thrill of whether someone will land a triple-lutz, triple-toe loop combination will be multiplied when someone else is racing toward them. Backward.

Increase jingoism. When I was a kid, the Olympics were all about misplaced national pride. The Russians (who were the Soviets then) cheated. We didn't. Wins over the evil empire were celebrated as if they proved our culture was better.

We live in a flattened world, where we don't believe that anymore. But what if we tied medals at the Olympics to something of national importance – for instance, to the ability to have military bases in other countries. Each gold medal gets you three foreign bases, a silver medal gets you two and a bronze gets you one.

Do you think we'd care more about the giant slalom or the skeleton if a gold medal expanded American military influence?

And how significant would this year's banning of the Russian team be if that meant they had to close all of their military bases in other nations?

Let's bring back American pride: Make the Winter Olympics determine our nation's influence on the world.

A winter pentathlon. The Summer Games have the decathlon and the pentathlon in track and field and this is the winter version. Imagine watching the same person over the course of the week competing in downhill skiing, figure skating, the luge, the ski jump and curling. It would be ratings gold, especially if multiple people were competing at the same time!

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Why your local newspaper is a treasure

I love newspapers.

That may sound self-serving, but it's not. I haven't worked for a newspaper for more than three years. I pay to subscribe to the Daily Republic, just like you.

I love newspapers and cheer for them to succeed.

It's easy to knock your local newspaper. Almost everyone does so – giving it a sarcastic nickname that suggests some fatal flaw. During my career, I worked for the Times-Standard (called the "Sub-Standard" by locals) and the Daily Republic (called the "Daily Repulsive" by locals). I tolerated those slights because I knew that happened everywhere. And I knew people were wrong. Both newspapers were good.

Local newspapers play an important, irreplaceable role in our lives. Local newspapers cover high school and community sports. They keep track of events at schools and weekend gatherings that are what make communities great. They tell you what's coming in entertainment.

They cover what's happening and serve as watchdogs of local agencies. Do you want to go to every city council or school board meeting and keep track of the happenings? If not, do you want someone to do it for you? Local newspapers do that. When a local newspaper goes away (as it did in Bell, in Southern California, a few years ago), local agencies can go crazy, because no one is watching. A local newspaper is much more authoritative than the local blogger.

There's been plenty of talk about the struggling economic model of newspapers and how they're not relevant in a world of social media and web-based outlets.

But when people ask me about newspapers and say things like, "They can't compete with the internet," I disagree. Because if you look at the real reporting of news on the internet, the coverage of government and well-written articles about events that matter most to you, they almost all come from newspapers.

Local newspapers are where we turn during events like last fall's wine country fires, when we need to have a broader focus. They're where we turn when there is crime or a fire in our neighborhood. They're where we turn when our child graduates from high school and we want to see photos.

Newspapers cover all those things. And you know what else? Newspapers pay reporters and photographers and editors. Newspapers pay receptionists and payroll clerks and the folks who design advertisements (so you don't have to pay 100 percent of the cost). Newspapers pay the people who work the printing press and those who make sure the newspaper gets delivered to your house.

And trust me, while newspapers pay all those people, none of the employees are getting rich.

The Daily Republic requires you to pay to see its online content, which has undoubtedly brought complaints from people who would never think to give away their work for free. I don't mind paying for the Daily Republic (just as I don't mind paying for internet access and food and heat and water). It's payment for service.

A recent article pointed out that the millennial generation, stereotyped as whiners who want everything for free, are leading the way back to traditional media. Millennials realize that it makes sense to pay for news in the same way they pay for food and clothing.

I love newspapers. My biggest hope is that they survive and thrive in the new world.

Because if we let local newspapers go away, the first losers will be those who make a living there. But the biggest losers will be our communities, which will lose something impossible to replace.

Keep supporting your local newspaper.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Super Bowl 'facts' to make you a hit

Today is Super Sunday – the day of the ultimate football game (although, as I point out nearly every year, Dallas Cowboys running back Duane Thomas was correct nearly five decades ago when he said, "If it's the ultimate game, why are they playing it again next year?").

It's Super Bowl Sunday! Or, as we call it, "The Tom Brady Variety Show."

In case you thought today was about sports, consider the fact that the NFL threatens to sue any business that uses the words "Super Bowl" to promote something that isn't tied to the league. By "tied," I mean "paying" the league.

Super Bowl. Super Bowl. Super Bowl.

A sport? Far from it. The Super Bowl is big business, although it's big business that you will watch.

If you're a sports fan, you'll watch because it's the biggest sports event of the year. If you're not a sports fan, you'll watch it because everyone else is watching it and you can only see the Puppy Bowl so many times before you get cuteness fatigue.

There's a problem, though. The game will take nearly four hours to play and you will probably run out of things to say, whether or not you know anything about sports.

What to do? Here's one suggestion: Memorize the following "facts" and recite them during the game. Yes, "facts" is in quotes because I made some up. But the people you talk to won't know that (although you will, because the made-up "facts" have an asterisk after them).

Want to be part of the discussion? Drop these tidbits during today's game:

• The National Chicken Council says 1.25 billion chicken wings will be eaten during the game, bad news for 612,500,000 chickens.

• Minneapolis, Minnesota, where the Super Bowl is being played, is the most popular five-syllable city in America (Interesting, since Philadelphia – hometown of one of the teams in the Super Bowl – also has five syllables. It ranks fourth, also behind Colorado Springs). *

• Despite the frequent misspelling by your co-workers and mother-in-law, the game is called the Super Bowl. Two words. Both capitalized. (That's an emotional reaction from spending 20 years as a sports writer, which is also two words).

• Pink will sing the national anthem. She is the second color-named person to sing the anthem during a Super Bowl. (Redd Foxx performed an obscene version in 1968.) *

• Despite the similarity of their names, Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski and kicker Steven Gostkowski are not related. Weird.

• Justin Timberlake will perform at halftime this year, but most observers consider the show-stopping performance by Up With People in 1976 ("200 Years and Just a Baby: A Tribute to America's Bicentennial") as the greatest entertainment spectacle not only in Super Bowl history, but in world history. *

• My sister, Jana, traveled with Up With People for a spell. I denied it to my friends.

• Billy and Benny McCrary, who gained fame in the Guinness Book of World Records as "fattest twins," with that awesome photo of them on the minibikes, never played in the Super Bowl.

• Tom Brady's father, Oliver, was the goofy cousin introduced during the final season of "The Brady Bunch" in an effort to bolster the show. Which means Tom Brady is second cousins with Greg, Peter, Bobby, Marcia, Jan and Cindy. *

• You can bet on nearly anything in the Super Bowl, including whether the national anthem will take more than 2 minutes (historic average: 1:58) and whether the coin toss will land "heads" or "tails" (tails has a four-Super Bowl winning streak and leads the overall series 27-24).

• The winner of the Super Bowl goes to Disney World for one day, but the losing team is forced to go there for a week, as punishment. *

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Solutions to US parking problems won't help me

It’s the kind of email I get routinely at my job: Pitches to write articles about a topic or to review a book. This time, the subject was parking.

Yes, parking.

The emailer was passionate about the subject. He called himself “the parking industry’s leading publicist,” which is kind of like being “the most famous 50-something male named Stanhope is Suisun City.”

His missive discussed how Americans are awful concerning parking issues, including parking lot brawls, which I didn't know was a thing. The author also advocated several changes that could make parking better and offered to help set up interviews for an article on parking.

Interesting, but what I really want is some help on parking.

Because I’m not particularly good at it.

Oh, I’m especially proud of my ability to parallel park better than anyone reading this column (think I’m wrong? Well, you’re wrong!). But parking in a closed structure? Not so great.

I’ve written before about my difficulties in the Stanhope Family Garage, which include ripping the side-view mirrors off both sides of vehicles and a memorable experience when I backed our old minivan into a closed garage door.

But that’s old news. Parking inside isn't. Take an incident from about a year ago.

My office has a subterranean parking garage. It’s three huge floors of vehicles – which always makes me feel, as I navigate my way from my Prius to the elevators, like I’m in a 1970s detective movie and a deranged gunman is about to shoot me. It echoes. It’s cold. There’s plenty of room for bad guys to hide.

And I make it all the way to the elevators every day, because I'm courageous.

Anyway, on the day in question, I pulled into my space (in a parking garage, like in a meeting room, there are no assigned spaces. Except you sit or park in the same space every time). I don't remember whether I was listening to a podcast or thinking about my coming day or contemplating a time when I'd get an email from the parking industry's leading publicist.

Anyway, I heard a loud crunch.

"Dang, I scratched my car," I mumbled.

Wrong. I didn't scratch it, I crunched it. Which is why I heard a crunch and not a scratch.

I got out and saw the front driver's-side panel was dented. Severely. I had driven into a concrete pole while parking.

Since I couldn't fix it, I did the next best thing: I ignored it. I didn't say anything to Mrs. Brad and hoped that one day the big dent would simply reverse itself.

It didn't. A few weeks later, Mrs. Brad saw it, gasped and asked me what happened. I explained, suggesting that the concrete pole had moved in front of me.

She wasn't impressed. Just like she wasn't impressed on the driver's-side mirror, passenger-side mirror and backing-into-the-garage-door incidents.

Mrs. Brad thought I wasn't paying attention, which was arguably true.

Enough of the blame-casting. Here's the takeaway. We can add technology and smooth out our experiences while parking. We can stop having brawls in parking lots. But until the concrete poles stop jumping in front of innocent 2005 Toyota Priuses (Prii?), we won't fix the parking problem.

Even the parking industry's leading publicist knows that. Right?

Right?

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Spacecraft threat brings fear, anxiety, love songs

I'm buying a helmet for March, just to be safe, and so should you.

In case you haven't heard, a Chinese space station is expected to fall back to Earth late that month, bringing a trail of destruction, death and horror.

Or not.

Experts scoff at the idea that someone will get hit by the falling space station in the same way people scoffed at the idea that we could watch TV on our phones or that "Sharknado" could become a successful franchise. Look who's laughing now!

Here's what I know: While it's likely that some parts of the satellite will burn on re-entry, larger pieces could flatten you like a cartoon character while you're walking from the mall to your car. Yes, our mall. And your car.

The satellite, Tiangong-1 (and let's hear it for a satellite with a name I can pronounce, especially one with the world "gong" in it), was launched in 2011 as China's first crewed space station. Now it's China's first crude space station, am I right?

Anyway, the spaceship weighs nearly 19,000 pounds and one estimate says that between 10 and 40 percent of the craft will make it to ground.

I'll do the math for you: Between 2,000 pounds and 10,000 pounds – the range between a pontoon boat and three mid-sized cars – will plummet from the sky on a lazy March day.

Get your helmet!

The problem arose from the fact that the Chinese Space Agency lost contact and control of the space station, something many observers have compared to the relationship between the producers of "Two and a Half Men" and Charlie Sheen in 2011. They don't know when or where it will come down, in the same way those producers didn't know when Sheen would come down.

Now, of course, comes the spin.

The world's space agencies say they have tracked Tiangong-1 and it will come down between 43 degrees North and 43 degrees South longitude. They stress that most of that range is covered by oceans and is unpopulated.

Here's what they don't say: That's where we all live! Fairfield, for instance, is 38.2494 degrees North.

We are in the splash zone!

This has happened before. A Russian spacecraft fell into the Pacific Ocean in 2012. NASA's Skylab – which weighed 160,000 pounds – plummeted to an area near Perth, Australia, in 1979. That is the incident that many blamed for the rise of Australian bands Air Supply and the Little River Band.

Space supporters imply that the past suggests we're safe: There's a big area where Tiangong-1 could land, no one has been killed by a falling spacecraft, only a portion of the craft will make it back, Air Supply and the Little River Band are almost impossible to duplicate.

I say we're due and that the information that a piece of spacecraft weighing 2,000 to 10,000 pounds can hit me is hardly comforting.

Also bad: Apparently, the most dangerous part about Tiangong-1 might not be the debris, but potentially hazardous materials, including hydrazine.

Oh. Em. Gee.

Hydrazine!

(What's hydrazine?)

Space apologists insist the odds are less than winning the lottery or getting hit by lightning, but people win the lottery and get hit by lightning every year, right?

One report indicates there is only a 1-in-10,000 chance that the spacecraft will hit a populated area and damage buildings.

Seems logical . . . but you know what else had a 1-in-10,000 chance? Air Supply and the Little River Band.

I'm not taking any chances and neither should you. Get a helmet.

And start polishing up on the lyrics to "Lost in Love" and "Cool Change."

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Columnist seeks outstanding closing catch phrase

In the 30-plus years of writing a newspaper column, I've achieved nearly all my goals: Won a Pulitzer Prize (actually, it was a Wurlitzer Prize, the chance to briefly sit at an organ in a store), been read by a president (actually, it's the president of the Fairfield-Suisun chapter of the Wham! Fan Club. Namely, me), had a column adapted to a movie (Titanic) and never been suspended (yet).

But an elusive goal remains.

In the thousands (he writes, hoping he hasn't made a horrible math error and that the correct word is actually "dozens") of columns I've crafted, I've never had a catch phrase with which to end the column.

You know, like they do on television. And, likely, in successful columns.

I have no "Seacrest, out" like on "American Idol," or "That's the way it is, Jan. 14, 2018," like Walter Cronkite said in the day, or Paul Harvey's "And now you know . . . the rest of the story."

(Side thought: The fact that two of the three examples I cite were spoken by men who were born 100 years ago is a frightening example of my pop culture relevance.)

Anyway, I haven't given up. It makes sense to have a catch phrase to end each column, so you, the reader, is comfortable.

Not to knock other Daily Republic columnists (which is a lie. I constantly knock them in private), but none have catch-phrase endings. (OK. Kelvin Wade has a catch word, but that doesn't count.) This would put me in the lead in a competition with other columnists that exists only in my mind. I could have a 10-point bonus for having a catch phrase.

So what should it be? The topics I write about are widespread (in the past two months, for instance, I wrote about a Solano County quiz, a message to extraterrestrials, the Toy Hall of Fame, a 53-year-old's baseball comeback and more).

"Seacrest, out," wouldn't apply to those topics and Cronkite's and Harvey's catch phrases are too identified with the late legends.

How about "Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the sky"? (Nope. Casey Kasem, who said that, wasn't as old as Cronkite and Harvey, but he was born in 1932.)

It's time to brainstorm. And to get the session started, here are some ideas:

• "This is Brad Stanhope, standing for hope." Instead of rolling my eyes at all the variations of my last name like I have for decades, I embrace it!
• "You can take that to the bank!" This option works best if you're capping off a column with a prediction or bold statement rather than, say, a missive on your fear of the bubonic plague or desire for a pet monkey to serve as a butler, but still . . . worth considering. Although it's from Robert Blake (born in 1933) in his role as TV's Baretta.
• "Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll be among the stars." This Casey Kasem-like phrase seems encouraging until you realize it makes no sense. The stars are way, way, way, way beyond the moon. Right?
• "I don't mean to brag, I don't mean to boast, but I like hot butter on my breakfast toast." It's a lyric from "Rapper's Delight," (released nearly 40 years ago) but it's also kind of boastful, if you consider the admission that you like butter to be boastful.
• "And remember: I'm not perfect, but at least I'm not Tony Wade." Simple. And true.

There are certainly other options worth considering. I welcome suggestions, so feel free to email me with your picks . . . especially if you remember Walter Cronkite and Paul Harvey. And Robert Blake. And Casey Kasem. And "Rappers Delight."

Stanhope, out.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Government agency on ETs means we need to share message

The truth is out there. And we need to spin it. Stat!

A report last month by The New York Times confirmed what those of us who celebrated the crop circles near Larry's Produce in 2003 have long believed: Extraterrestrial aliens are real.

Just ask the U.S. Department of Defense.

Well, kind of.

The DoD (as insiders call it) may not confirm that extraterrestrials are real, but it takes them seriously enough to investigate.

The Times reported that an agency called Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) existed for years, getting about $20 million a year in funding from the government until it was shut down in 2012.

Allegedly shut down.

Insiders say it still exists.

AATIP began in 2007, largely at the request of Nevada Sen. Harry Reid (Area 51 is in Nevada, by the way. Coincidence? Hardly). Most of the government money went to a research company headed by a man who told "60 Minutes" that he was convinced that aliens exist and have visited Earth.

They have visited Earth! That part's obvious. Is there any other explanation for Gilbert Gottfried?

But our government pursued them.

During the AATIP's years of official standing (which coincided with Alex Smith's career with the 49ers. Coincidence? Hardly.), the program compiled reports that described sightings of aircraft with technology that went beyond contemporary aeronautical science. The UFOs weren't possible for humans.

Members also studied video of encounters between UFOs and American military aircraft.

Of course, this is nothing new: The Air Force investigated more than 12,000 UFO sightings from 1947 to 1969 (Which is when Woodstock happened, which allowed the government to ascribe all UFO sightings to brown acid. Coincidence? Hardly.).

Regardless, let's make the obvious jump: UFOs are real and the government knows it. Otherwise, why spend millions of dollars every year?

Fellow humans, we need to be proactive. Aliens are investigating us, so we need to communicate with them.

The next step is to fashion our message. They are among us.

I'm here to help and the work begins with where marketing professionals always begin: Who is our audience? What is our message? How do we best communicate it?

Audience: It's obviously extraterrestrials who are curious enough to visit us.

Message: It should be simple: Don't hurt us. We stay in peace. We want to be your friend. Phone home. Dilly dilly.

Method: Social media is likely outdated to anyone with technology to visit far-off planets. Television and radio signals – the preferred method in decades past – are already passe on Earth. Sometimes the best method is simple and here's my recommendation:

Reprint this column. Leave it out for the aliens to see. Refer extraterrestrials to the Daily Republic web page. Read it aloud, in case they're listening.

And if you're an ET and you're reading this, here's what we have to say:

Don't hurt us.

We stay in peace.

We want to be your friends.

Phone home.

Dilly dilly.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

Bradstradamus gives you a preview of 2018

So another year goes in the books at midnight and we welcome 2018, which will hopefully bring better news than this year.

The past year in review? Strife, fires, disasters.

And that's just the seasons for the Giants and Raiders, right?

Anyway, we're finishing the time of year when news outlets highlight the top stories of the previous year, so I'm doing something different: Predicting what's to come.

That's right, this is a worldwide scoop. Below are 13 things that will happen in 2018, predicted by Bradstradamus. Take these to the bank!

Jan. 17: While at the grocery store, you see several lines and pick the shortest one. By the time you reach the cashier, the other lines have cycled through twice and have no one standing in them.

Feb. 14: Social media fills with people saying how much they hate Valentine's Day, which reminds you: You don't really like it either, you just don't say it.

Feb. 20: Midway through the Winter Olympics, everyone agrees that NBC's coverage of the Games is terrible and we lament that coverage isn't like it used to be – hearkening to a time when we . . . complained about the coverage and lamented that it wasn't what it used to be.

March 5: A day after watching the Academy Awards on TV, you declare that you'll go see that movie that won all the awards. Then you wait until it comes to Netflix. Then you forget it.

April 28: Midway through the NBA playoffs, I insist that there is no guarantee that the Warriors and Cavaliers will meet for the fourth consecutive year in the Finals, because anything can happen.

May 31: Warriors and Cavaliers begin their fourth straight NBA Finals.

June 22: On the second day of summer, state leaders warn that this could be a terrible fire season, due to the lack of rain (or abundance of rain, or regular amount of rain) during the winter. In other words, when everything dries out later in the year, fire danger will be high. Hmm.

July 5: You wake up exhausted, due to watching fireworks (they don't start until after 9:15 p.m.!) and being kept awake by insane neighbors who make your neighborhood sound like a war zone. Welcome to America!

Aug. 22: President Donald Trump tweets something that inflames his opponents and excites his supporters, even though it's just a tweet from a 72-year-old man who doesn't know the rules concerning capitalization. #Sad!

Sept. 17: A man at Allan Witt Park spends much of the afternoon teaching his 12-year-old poodle how to fetch a stick, thus disproving the old saying that you can't teach an old dog new tricks.

Oct. 31: After seeing a coworker or friend dressed up for Halloween, you have an idea of how you could dress up next year. Within 10 minutes, you forget it. Until Oct. 31, 2019.

Dec. 23: I write another of the "Solano County quiz" columns, alternately boring and thrilling readers. Mostly the former. (Bet the farm on this one.)

Dec. 31: You see (on a website, social media or TV) a list of all the bad things that happened in 2018 – dramatic news, natural disasters, celebrity deaths – and think, "2019 has to be better." Because you already forgot that a man taught an old dog a new trick just a few months earlier.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.

The annual 'How well do you know Solano' quiz

It's another Christmas Eve, which means it's time for my annual quiz to see how well you know the county in which you live.

Unless, of course, you don't live in Solano County, in which case you can view this as a quiz to see how well you know the county in which I live.

Anyway, it's 20 questions and it starts . . . now:

1. There are nine Bay Area counties. Where does Solano rank in population among them (first being the largest, ninth being the smallest)?

2. Name the seven cities in Solano County.

3. Which is larger: The inmate population at the two prisons in Vacaville or the number of students who attend Solano Community College?

4. What was the No. 1 crop in Solano in 2016, based on earnings?

5. What baseball Hall of Fame member lives in Solano County?

6. Within two inches, what is the average annual rainfall in Fairfield-Suisun (measured at Travis Air Force Base)?

7. Name the five counties that touch Solano.

8. What two members of the House of Representatives represent parts of Solano County?

9. When was the last presidential election in which the Republican candidate carried Solano County?

10. What two cities in the county are closest in terms of population?

11. Who is the largest non-governmental employer in Fairfield?

12. Fairfield is 37.6 square miles. Within 3 square miles, how large is Suisun City?

13. What is the largest high school in Solano County, in terms of students?

14. On the Wikipedia page about Vallejo, who are the first three individuals mentioned? (One right gets credit.)

15. Within 10 years, when was the first Solano County Fair held?

16. Which movie theater has more screens, Brendan Theatres in Vacaville or Edwards Cinemas in Fairfield?

17. Which city has a larger population: Fairfield, Calif., or Fairfield, Conn.?

18. Which Wade brother is my favorite?

19. In terms of size, what is the largest public park in Fairfield?

20. What is the official name of the Solano mall?

ANSWERS

1. Seventh, behind Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, San Mateo and Sonoma, but ahead of Marin and Napa.

2. Benicia, Dixon, Fairfield, Rio Vista, Suisun City, Vacaville, Vallejo.

3. The college. It has about 10,000 students, while the two prisons combine for about 6,500 inmates.

4. Walnuts, with $44.8 million in gross earnings.

5. Orlando Cepeda lives in Fairfield.

6. 24.89 inches. So you get credit for guessing 23 to 26 inches.

7. Contra Costa, Sonoma, Napa, Yolo, Sacramento.

8. Democrats John Garamendi and Mike Thompson.

9. Ronald Reagan in 1984.

10. Suisun City (28,111) and Benicia (26,997)

11. Vallejo Kaiser Permanente, with nearly 4,000 employees.

12. 4.2 square miles, so take credit for estimating 2-7 square miles.

13. Armijo High, with nearly 2,400 students.

14. Zodiac killer, Mac Dre and E-40.

15. 1950.

16. Trick question! They each have 16 screens.

17. California, with a population of about 112,000. The population of Fairfield, Conn., is about 61,000.

18. Kelvin.

19. Rockville Hills Park at 633 acres.

20. Solano Town Center

SCORING

0 to 8: Remember when Suisun City was rated as the worst city in the Bay Area about 30 years ago? That's you.

9 to 15: Pretty solid. Treat yourself to a movie at the largest theater in the region. (Get it?)

16 to 20: Expert. About twice what I got after I wrote the questions.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.