Night Owl Cards

Topps is never going to change. For as long as I have been collecting baseball cards, more than 40 years now, Topps has been creating alternate reality on its baseball cards. It has placed players into uniforms of teams for which they never played. It has moved an entire ball game scene from Boston to L.A. It has erased umpires and bat boys. It has pictured living players posing with dead players. And it hasn't just been Topps doing this. Fleer and Upper Deck and probably others each have their own very well-known examples. But this is a Topps card so I'm making it an example: what the heck are the Dodgers doing wearing red numbers on their uniform backs? This has been pointed out by at least a couple of other bloggers already, but I can't let it go as a Dodgers devotee. Red numbers have been a part of the Dodgers' uniform since 1952. They were created for TV. Owner Walter O'Malley liked the idea of bright numbers on the front that TV viewers could see....

The Dodgers are doing something that is very difficult to do. I don't necessarily mean all the games they're winning. I mean that they are repeatedly getting all the attention in the newspaper for which I work. Normally, our newspaper sports section, when it comes to baseball, is all about the Yankees and Mets. This makes me extraordinarily sad, but I get it. I live in New York, people in New York, for some bizarre reason, like the Yankees and Mets. So they dominate coverage here. The Dodgers are almost always ignored. However, this year, they are repeatedly leading the baseball roundup. There are more photos of them in the section than I ever remember in over 20 years of doing this job. And, in today's sports section, they showed up on the cover, with a very large photo. Of course, that large photo was of Rich Hill, and the news wasn't good if you're a Dodger fan. Hill pitched a no-hitter for nine innings, but lost the game 1-0 when he gave up a barely...

You've read me whine many times about how busy I am during the month of March. It is annually my busiest month of work. Or at least it used to be. I'm finding that June is quickly surpassing it. I won't go into details, because nobody cares, but the added responsibilities at this time of year over the last couple of years has led to many extra hours on the job. It actually begins in May and didn't end until, well, yesterday. Needless to say, I slept until 1:15 in the afternoon today, which is shocking even for this night owl. During my wildly busy time, I put on a good front on this blog, attempting to sample what was new in the card world. But I didn't focus on it at all and there is much I don't know about everything that has been released during the spring -- Bowman, Bunt, Archives, Series 2 -- I know the basic details only. Heck I just got my Dodgers want lists up for Bowman and Archives today. I can't tell you what half the cards that I need ...