Night Owl Cards

(Greetings, I'm back after a rare two-day break from posting. While I appreciate out-of-town visiting more than ever these days, I still feel lost without my cards. So let's get back into it. It's time for Cardboard appreciation. This is the 301st in a series): As much as I loved baseball cards as a kid, I wasn't very observant about them. The aspects that stayed with me back then were the design, the player on the card, what team they played for and probably the pose, or the action shot. On the back, I noticed the stats and the cartoon, if there was one. I glanced at the bio sometimes, too. That was about it. The elements that jump out at me these days -- that the player was airbrushed into a different uniform, that there is a teammate in the background, that there is a piece of equipment in the background, that a word is misspelled or incorrect information provided -- almost always sailed over my head. I'd like to think I was like most kids in that way. Too many i...

  I'm probably about the last blogger to get around to the holiday Pick Pocket goodies I snared from Julie at A Cracked Bat . So I best get to it. Most of what I want from the Pick Pocket offerings are Dodgers, of course, but also cards that feature players from my younger days or players from the '50s and '60s. So that usually means oddballs or retro cards. Julie has a lot of those and these are popular with some other bloggers, particularly Bo , who is way quicker on the draw with these cards than I am. But I managed to find a few and I thought I'd play a game with them that I am calling "Want List Worthy." The best cards often mean I like them so much that I want to complete the set that contains that card. And before I know it, I'm creating a want list for the set. So let's see which of these cards from Julie are from sets that are Want List Worthy: Raul Mondesi, 1994 Flair, Wave of the Future insert Chances of making a want list: 0% The main reas...

    I finished a week-long binge session of "The Queen's Gambit" Thanksgiving night.   Unlike many of my wife's Netflix interests, things like "The Crown" and various family comedy/dramas, I knew I'd be interested in "Gambit" while she was watching it. I'm a sucker for the "intelligent, pretty girl breaks up the boys club" story, and the fact that it featured chess was intriguing.   I haven't played chess since I was a teenager, but I used to play it regularly, not that I was any good. My uncle was. He would play in various local tournaments and come back with stories about the weird habits and tactics of his chess rivals. The gist of his stories was "this is something you don't want to do." But it sure sounded interesting. As Anya Taylor-Joy says, the mini-series isn't really about chess. The character she plays, Beth Harmon, has a lot of problems, a terrible family back story and substance abuse issues. She...

I am on vacation this week. During these pandemic times, with limits on where I can go and what I can do, this would be a prime 7 days for getting some chores done and catching up on sleep, right? Nah. The city is working on my street again. I had no idea this was going to happen. A couple days ago, two doors down from me, whatever tool they were using shook the ground and knocked me right out of my nest. This morning, two doors down on the opposite side, they've been using a loud vacuum thingy to suck away my sleep. This throws off my night owl schedule. I end up napping in spurts, not really getting anything done, and on the back half of the day -- baseball takes over. I'm not a TV watcher. It's ball games and that's it, and even then I'll get up and do things while the game is happening. But postseason baseball requires your undivided attention, especially if your team is playing. And this season, they play EVERY NIGHT. There are no breaks, no catching your brea...