Night Owl Cards

Earlier today, I conducted an interview with someone in the professional sports industry for a story I'll be writing for my job. As story interviews tend to do these days, talk turned to COVID and how strange our worlds have become, and she was talking about walking onto an airplane for the first time in three months. Flying is something she does a lot for her job but it seemed bizarre to her at that moment. "The normal has become abnormal," she said. What a perfect way, I thought, to describe opening a box of cards. I have not opened a box of current cards in almost five months, since a blaster of Heritage in late February. What was a monthly, sometimes weekly, occurrence for more than a decade has become a strange animal over the last 150 days. So that's why when I was opening some 2020 Big League cards for my birthday yesterday, the first Big League I've opened even though the product has been out for more than a month, it seemed so odd to me. ...

My 2020 Topps Big League team set arrived in the mail today. I mentioned the other day that I decided to grab the team set in a bid to avoid buying packs and blasters of a set that I traditionally like too much and therefore spend too much money. The incentive to do this, which was stronger than ever at the start of the year, is even stronger now that the card aisles at Target and Walmart are both danger and disaster zones. (I know I could order blasters online but if I'm not collecting the set, that doesn't make much sense to me). I realize this undermines the usual trades through the mail but hopefully I'll be opening packs of stuff at some point again this year. The pack rip itch will never go away. And the thrill of getting these Big League cards all in one shot was too exciting today. As I pulled the cards out of the envelope, Tom Cochrane's " Big League " ran through my head -- "my boy's gonna play in the big league, my boy's gonna ...

I need to tie off some loose ends about a few different topics, so I'll do that here and then I'll show you some cards from Fuji later. The cards he has been sending out have been all over the blogs lately so what I'll be offering isn't anything new. So, some housekeeping: 1.   Thanks for your comments on the expansion post from last night. I do appreciate them and I know how fortunate I am to receive the amount of comments I do. Sometimes, particularly after a very research-driven post that takes hours and hours over several days, if I receive a comment that says nothing but "you forgot this," it rubs the wrong way. That's what happened yesterday, a few times. I should have a thicker skin but I think I wore it off pulling all those cards out of binders and looking up web sites, and typing, typing, typing. I don't expect praise in every comment, but, you know, "yes and ..." is a little more helpful than "yes but ..."....