Night Owl Cards

  Just one more World Series-related post to finish off the week. I can tell by the views that people no interested in my Series discussions, but I wouldn't be a fan if I didn't write about my team when it gets to the championship and wins. What am I supposed to do, discuss Topps Update? That's what the offseason is for.   I don't know when the next time the Dodgers will reach the World Series will be (and judging by some fans' typical reactions, I may not want to write about them if they win again next year), so I'm taking advantage.   This post will tie up some loose ends and thoughts about the Series.   First off, I need to mention "the blob" and "the king of the hill" on this post. Long-time readers will know that "the blob" is the player that makes the last out in the World Series. It comes from when I was a kid and me and my brother would determine "the blob" each year. I most-recently updated the World Series blobs ...

  OK, I'm back to the big box of cards-and-such from Johnny's Trading Spot . This is the baseball portion of the box. I'm still not done sorting through it. He sent two long boxes packed with Dodger cards. Apparently one box used to house a 1985 Fleer set? I just completed that set a couple months ago, I'd still rather complete it traditionally than buy the whole thing at once, although for what I want that's left from the '80s, I may be done with traditional means. So with all those Dodgers -- a lot of them from the '90s and early '00s -- I'm on round two of going through the boxes because you miss those dumb parallels and other things. It's actually quite fun finding stuff the second time. There are a bunch of parallel needs now. The color parallels like the Gypsy Queen Jansen jump right out at me, but stuff like the '96 Stadium Club Martinez and the '96 Fleer glossy thingies (there was a lot of '96 in those boxes) got past me until...

I entered one of Sports Card Info's many card contests a couple of weeks ago. Andrew's been holding these giveaways for probably as long as I've been blogging, but I rarely enter. Plus, it's one of those deals where if you comment on the post every day, you have a better chance of winning, and I never remember to comment more than once. My forgetfulness didn't matter this time though and I won the above Alex Verdugo "player-worn memorabilia" card! My enthusiasm aside, I think we're all past relic cards these days. The peak era for relics probably ended almost 10 years ago, and ever since we've been accumulating them absent-mindedly, knowing that they're probably not legitimate, a victim of our habits and nostalgia and ... I don't know, a difficult-to-shake fondness for laundry bits, I guess. I never go out of my way to obtain a relic card. Even when they were "the shit," as the kids-who-are-now-adults say, they were ne...

I've written before about my high standards for baseball prospects as a kid collecting cards. During the '70s and early '80s, prospects appeared on three- or four-player cards because back then there was a hierarchy, dammit. No prospect was getting an individual card. I appreciated the rules at the time because I looked at the multi-player rookie cards as a proving ground. There was a pattern: appear on a multi-rookie card and then get your own card. This was why I became so dismissive of players who appeared on multi-player cards multiple years. I've cited the Dale Murphy example repeatedly. How could he amount to anything? He had failed the pattern! Hello! Appearing on a multi-player card once means you appear on your own card the next year! This was not realistic of me and obviously an inaccurate barometer of talent as Murphy went on to a long and productive career (just not as a catcher), even if his first solo Topps card wasn't until 1979. Besid...