Night Owl Cards

  I am very unprepared for the new MLB season from a viewing standpoint.   I cut my cable midseason last year, which means no MLB Network, and no Mets or Yankees broadcasts. I had a subscription to mlb.tv during the 2021 season but scrapped that to save money and also because I was mad at the labor strife prior to last season. I could re-up but the service was always wonky on my smart TV, which I possibly could rectify by upgrading the cable/internet connection but since nobody's coming to my house to upgrade it for me, it would all fall on me and I'm sure I'd screw it up and erase the few remaining channels we have, and Netflix and Hulu and Amazon, as well as zapping all the gaming stuff we have connected to that thing to coax the daughter to come back and visit every once in awhile. And since MLB isn't partners with youtube anymore, there goes that, too -- MLB just wants all us fans to go away I guess.   So I was in a bit of a snit about having nothing baseball-y to w...

Topps recently announced that it's looking for collectors to vote for their favorite Topps baseball design for each decade since the 1950s. There is a site where you can go to place your vote . Topps says that the winning designs for each decade will appear in packs of 2020 Topps Series 1. It doesn't go into detail about what that specifically means so I don't know if we're going to see regurgitated reprints of cards from the design, or cards with buyback stamps on them, or actual old cards from those designs (the much preferred option). This is all well-worn territory for both Topps and collectors who obsess about past designs like me. But since I like that stuff, I thought I'd go through each decade and make my selections and post them here for all to see. Also, I'll add some extra stuff like those people do when they're handicapping the Oscar winners and I read it all the time even though I have no idea what the movies are. My votes: 1950s ...

I'm sure many fans are happy to see more players being selected to the Hall of Fame the last few of years. I am, too, if only to quiet the whining about it, somewhat. But one area where "more Hall of Famers per year" complicates things is in my exercise to find out which Topps flagship set features the most Hall of Famers. The 2019 class is six people large, just like last year and just like 2014. That's a lot of additions to the sets for which I've already totaled the number of Hall of Famers. Throw in the new sets that I add every time I do this and this becomes a multiple-hour project. But it's worth it, right? Sure. Meanwhile, I continue to discover errors in past Most Hall of Famers posts. I found a big one recently. I listed Pete Rose as being a Hall of Famer in the 1972 Topps set. Astonishingly, no one called me on that. Once I removed Rose, the '72 set then dropped out of a first-place tie with the 1969 and 1983 Topps sets for the mo...