Night Owl Cards

Trotting out one of 1956's big guns for a brief post. As you know, 1956 Topps features action shots as the backdrop on many of its cards. It's one of the key elements of the greatest set ever made. And that element is the most mysterious aspect of the set. That's because the plays on the front are not captioned. If you want to figure out the who, what, when, where and why of those action depictions, you have to do the work yourself. Many people have. And many bloggers have. I have. More than five years ago, I addressed the action shot on this card: I determined that this was an illustration of Jackie Robinson stealing home against the Cardinals and catcher Bill Sarni on August 29, 1955. I mentioned that the play was part of a triple steal by the Dodgers. But now I'm not so sure. Let's return to the Robinson card. The illustration on this card has been examined by several people in the past. Most recently by The Chronicles of Fuji . He and the...

If you do a daily tour of the card blogs like I do, then you know this card. It was used as the header at Play at the Plate for a little while. Play at the Plate is featuring a different card in his header these days -- a much better card in my estimation -- because Brian isn't a fraidy cat about changing his blog header more than once every two years. I, on the other hand, will probably have the same header until everyone pictured in my header is dead, I'm dead, blogging is dead, card collecting is dead, there is no cardboard, there are no trees, and the world is dominated by robot zombies. The only thing that will have survived from this current world are 87 copies of a 2010 Topps card of Shin-Soo Choo (because we all know that 2010 Topps isn't cardboard). Anyway, enough of the future. The past is a much happier place. The card in PATP's header is a 1956 Topps card of Cardinals catcher Bill Sarni. Brian featured it in his header bec...