Night Owl Cards

There was a time when I thought baseball players suddenly appeared one day on a baseball field on TV or on a baseball card. There was no sense of "where they came from," their family history, or even the path that they took through youth baseball, the school years and the minor leagues. For awhile, I was aware of only the player, and if that player had a dad who played in the major leagues, I had no idea. Baseball players didn't come from other people. They were just THERE. That changed a little bit when Topps issued the Father & Son subset in the 1976 set. That's where I found out that Buddy Bell and Bob Boone had fathers who also played in the majors. When Cal Ripken Jr. arrived in the majors in 1981 and became a sensation in 1982, I'd hear about how his father -- Cal Ripken Sr. -- was a coach on the team. But since I didn't live in Baltimore and didn't care about coaches, that knowledge faded quickly. Somehow, while collecting cards in t...

During my teenage years, there were a lot of movies about the devastation of nuclear war. I saw "China Syndrome" in a movie theater. It kind of freaked me out. I saw "Special Bulletin" on TV. It kind of freaked me out. I saw "The Day After" on TV. It absolutely freaked me out. That's a lot to put on a kid who is just trying to become an adult and wondering if he'll ever make it there. But I made it there, and the only collateral damage is I watch a lot more sitcoms and funny movies than I did back then. I can take my seriousness only in small quantities, and I probably have nuclear disaster movies to blame. Also, in my continuing effort to spin something negative into something positive, I've come up with yet another blasted series on this blog (let's see how quickly I forget this one). It's called "The Card After." This is a series that celebrates the forgotten cards in our collection. There are a lot of cards th...

While doing my annual delayed post-Christmas shopping yesterday (you will never find me in a store Dec. 26), I snagged a long-awaited ipod for meself. I don't know what took me so long. I also grabbed a rack pack of random cards at the drug store. It was a toss-up between the jumbo pack of "100 Baseball Cards" that I wrote about previously , and a rack pack of 2010 Topps 206. Hmmmm. Let's see. 12 cards for 5 bucks or 100 cards for 5 bucks. Why are we buying current cards again? I already knew what would be in the pack with the picture of Anonymous Baseball Man. Lots of junk wax. But there'd be a few random gems, too, which makes this pack much more interesting than a pack featuring Placido Polanco's round, bald skull. I waited to open my 100 Baseball Cards in the hazy, buzzy first few hours of 2011. Skipping all of the junkiness, this is what was left: I am hopelessly attracted to any Fleer product issued between 2000-04. 1985 Donruss i...