Night Owl Cards

  I'm working on a story for my paper on an old baseball team in the area. Posts might be less frequent than usual this week because of that.   While doing some research for the article, I visited our newspaper library, which is right in the building on the same floor as my office. It's a great, old reminder of what newspapers were and are and every time I'm in there, I nearly have to stop what I'm doing just to absorb how much history sits in that space.   Those who are familiar with newspaper terminology know libraries like this are called "morgues". A newspaper morgue is where a newspaper stores clippings of past stories and categorizes them by subject in alphabetized file cabinets. My paper has been around for more than 150 years so there are a lot of file cabinets!   As you can guess, I don't use the morgue that often anymore. We started storing articles in digital format in 1988 and the old microfilm machines gradually disappeared as they became too ...

This is the most sentimental day on the calendar for me. It doesn't have anything to do with baseball (although I did take a tour of old Busch Stadium in St. Louis on that same weekend in 1987). So I avoid slipping into mushy thoughts here by putting a baseball spin on the day. Last year I celebrated a milestone moment for this day by opening a rack pack of 1987 Topps. And in previous years, I've talked about my fondness for the city of St. Louis because of Oct. 29, 1987. But since that time, I've soured on the St. Louis Cardinals, the media there, and some of their fans. In 1987, I rooted for the Cardinals against the Twins in the World Series and turned off the TV in disappointment when Minnesota won. But if the same two teams were involved today, I'd be rooting for the Twins. I'm not sure why I rooted for the Cardinals that year anyway. It was two years removed from Jack Clark, Ozzie Smith, Whitey Herzog and GOD, I hated that team. So what possessed me...

Throw the word "Holland" and "baseball" at me and my only thought for decades was "Bert Blyleven." Blyleven's place of birth was one those early trivia nuggets that I used to throw out to impress the girls, long before ESPN's Berman started labeling him with his supremely unfunny nicknames. As a youngster, I used to enjoy pronouncing Blyleven's Holland hometown, "Zeist," relentlessly. "Zeeeest! Zeeeeeeeeeeest!!!" I didn't care that I wasn't pronouncing it correctly (it's pronounced "Zest," like the soap brand). But fortunately, thanks to card blogs, I have another answer for when people come up to me on the street and yell, "Quick, what's the first thing that comes to your mind when I say, 'baseball' and 'Holland'?" I will yell in response: "The Dutch Card Guy!!!!!" And we'll all have a good laugh. I completed my first transaction of any kind with...

I thought about listing my 2012 collecting goals as others have, but I quickly lost interest in writing about that. That's because, first, any collecting goal that I have on January 1, is likely toast by the end of the month. I've found that life absolutely hates specific collecting goals. Or goals of any kind. Life wants you to do the same thing you've always done, be the non-contributing blob you've always been, always. Life, basically, is an insecure control freak. Secondly, I've already recorded my collecting goals for everyone to see. They're right here . I'll make any 2012 additions as soon as I know what the hell is out there. So, instead, for tonight, I thought I'd just ramble about a few things that I've noticed, probably only of interest to me ... just like, you know, personal collecting goals. One has to do with Lineage (I promise this is one of my last posts about this set -- except for the minis). I have noticed that Lineage is ...