Night Owl Cards

Moving through year 5 on this blog, I feel like I am constantly repeating myself. So if I've mentioned this before, feel free to move on to the next blog. You won't hurt my feelings. I have this very loose rule about what makes an athletic activity a "sport." I know there is already a definition for "sport" that goes like this: "An activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others." That's all well and good, but it's too vague for my needs. I oversee a section of a publication in which the word "Sports" is printed in big, red letters at the top of the page. And what you find on that page and the pages inside are indeed "sports." Nothing else. But there is a limited amount of pages and space. And every day it seems like someone is inventing a new sport. Periodically we have certain folks affiliated with those more obscure sports demanding coverage. ...

Throw the word "Holland" and "baseball" at me and my only thought for decades was "Bert Blyleven." Blyleven's place of birth was one those early trivia nuggets that I used to throw out to impress the girls, long before ESPN's Berman started labeling him with his supremely unfunny nicknames. As a youngster, I used to enjoy pronouncing Blyleven's Holland hometown, "Zeist," relentlessly. "Zeeeest! Zeeeeeeeeeeest!!!" I didn't care that I wasn't pronouncing it correctly (it's pronounced "Zest," like the soap brand). But fortunately, thanks to card blogs, I have another answer for when people come up to me on the street and yell, "Quick, what's the first thing that comes to your mind when I say, 'baseball' and 'Holland'?" I will yell in response: "The Dutch Card Guy!!!!!" And we'll all have a good laugh. I completed my first transaction of any kind with...

Me and my projects. Billy Koch is celebrating here because I have finally figured out a way to collect awesome night cards that will actually make me excited about my binder of night cards instead of saying, "eh, here's my binder of favorite night cards. There's no real reason for why these particular cards are here in this order." Yes, I know we had an Awesome Night Card tournament, and I put the cards that were voted the best in the front of the binder. But I need a reason for the positioning of all the cards in the binder. Because I'm fickle and impatient and scatter-brained and we've gotta do somethin' different. So I'm doing this: I'm sure everyone has heard of the Frankenset before. I'm not going to explain it because I tried to do so and confused myself and had to erase it from the post. If you want an explanation go to The Cardboard Junkie, and he'll mention the Frankenset every once in awhile because it's Allen ...