Night Owl Cards

(Greetings! I am three days away from vacation. I have no plans, no goals, no objectives for the coming week. Just how I like it. This is Cardboard Appreciation, the 208th in a series): Yes, I know. That's not 1909. You're very observant. But first things first -- MY 1975 TOPPS MINI SET IS PAGED!!!!!!!! Bells! Lights! Whistles! Now that you are deaf and blind, I'll move on to the Cardboard Appreciation portion of the post. This is the last item from the wonderful package that I received from reader Dave a couple of weeks back. It is the second T206 card that I have received in the last month after having none before that. If I didn't know any better I'd think that someone is trying to coerce me into collecting the team set. I haven't quite lost that many of my brain cells. I've stopped keeping track of all of the variations and parallels in modern cards, so the last thing I need to do is tackle the king of all variation sets, the 190...

There's been a lot of talk about age in the sports world lately. With the deaths of Bob Welch, Tony Gwynn and Chuck Noll, you've heard the following in casual conversations: "He was too young." "He lived a long and good life." "I'm not that much younger than he was." We are obsessed with age, which really means we are obsessed with death. And death is why we are very obsessed with youth. And by "we" I mean the whole damn nation, maybe the whole damn world. In case you haven't noticed, this is a youth-driven culture. Nobody reads anything, looks at anything, mentions anything unless it involves someone young: News break: 55-year-old woman robs bank with husband. Everyone: Meh. News break : 14-year-old girl robs bank while carrying 3-year-old she was babysitting. Everyone: Was she hot? This is the world in which we live. It is particularly apparent online. Check out virtually any news site that is not connecte...