Night Owl Cards

Place: 6th Votes: 1 It's crime: Character assassination How to fix it: Wait a second. He'll close his mouth. Really. He will. Place: 5th Votes: 1 It's crime: Creating non-descript shapes can cause imaginations to run wild. How to fix it: Turn the orange, gaseous-looking cloud into a parachute. How cool would it be for a parachute to be trailing Ramirez? I mean it worked for Metal in the late '90s. Place: 4th Votes: 3 It's crime: Lazy-ass laziness How to fix it: Pick a different photo of Joba! Come on! Topps' main offices are in New York! How difficult can this be? Place: 3rd Votes: 3 It's crime: Boring-ass boring. How to fix it: Um, I don't know. Like have the players DO something? Place: 2nd Votes: 13 It's crime: Bugs and celebrities don't belong in a baseball card set. How to fix it: If you're going to put Megan Fox in a card set, go all-out. I'll let you decide what "all-out" means....

I admit that I put as much effort into finding the worst cards of 2010 as I did in creating this graphic (yes, I design sports sections for a living). But it's not all my fault. Once Upper Deck left the arena, that left half the amount of cards that existed when I did this the previous time. It just wasn't that fun pitting Topps against itself. Also, I cut back quite a bit on buying current cards in the past year. There were a number of sets that I just didn't bother with, beyond opening one pack. That means that the candidates for this year's award may not be a fair representation of what was out there. If my collecting pattern continues, there won't be a "worst card of 2011" -- at least from me anyway -- because I have a feeling I won't be purchasing many 2011 cards at all in comparison to the last four or five years. I'm such a Bob Bummer. But before I take all the fun out of being negative, let's get another look at the candida...

Trying like mad to catch up on these "Worst Card" posts after slacking just about the whole year. So, either you'll see a whole mess of these in the next month, or I'll just give up and ignore the thing -- which actually sounds like the more probable option right now. But I can't wrap up the Worst Card segment without addressing dear Topps Update/Traded & Highlights. It always has some clunkers in it. This is a classic example. It's not even the only one in the set. There are several of these "dudes just standing around" cards. And Topps has been doing it in Topps Update/Traded & Pick a Name and Stay With It for a few years now. It's a big reason why I don't collect this set (well, besides the "no money" reason). Why would I go out of my way to collect cards that look like they were taken by some fan in the stands? Even if the fan showed me the photo that they took -- if it looked like this -- I'd say, "it ...

I intentionally used that post title because I hate the phrase. There are many phrases that activate the skin-crawling mechanism for me, and not all of them are uttered by Chris Berman. Here's another one: "the next level." This is used by hack local sports broadcasters to refer to area high school athletes who sign NCAA Division I scholarships. I recently saw a broadcast about some girls signing to play DI lacrosse, and the on-air idiot didn't say "Division I" a single time. He just uttered "the next level" over and over. Apparently, the girls are signing to play lacrosse on the second floor of their high school. Anyway, this is a housekeeping post in which I regurgitate some random thoughts such as the one above. Follow along, won't you? You may have heard that the Dodgers re-signed Hiroki Kuroda yesterday. You also may not care, but I do. This means the Dodgers have four reliable starters in the rotation and can work on what is really...

On Mother's Day, a face only a mother could love. Well, it's not really the face. It's more the facial expression. It's all in the timing, Topps. The professional photographers that I know would have hit the "delete" button.

I hesitated about doing this again this year. I intend to cut down on my purchasing of current cards, and because of that, I didn't think I could get an accurate assessment of the ugliness of 2010. But we know how that goes. The road to hell, and all that. I will probably end up with plenty of 2010 cards that I have no interest in, good intentions or not. Plus, folks are sending me cards that they believe are "Worst Card" candidates. I can't let those good people down. So, if you see a "Worst Card" candidate and can bear to part with it, send it to me. I'll be happy to take it and display it here -- if it meets my own stringent worstiness guidelines. And with that, here are the first two "Worst Card of 2010" candidates. Both have been featured on blogs a number of times already and panned by the majority, so I'm not sure how much insight I can add. But at least you know these two cards are now Certifiably Awful. We plunge into the...