Night Owl Cards

    Back in January, when we knew the five former players who were going to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame for 2025, I wrote a post on those five players, mentioning how many cards I had of each of them.   I went back to that post to see if I had gained any cards of Dick Allen, Dave Parker, CC Sabathia, Ichiro Suzuki or Bobby  Billy Wagner since.   I did. None for Sabathia or Wagner, but one each for Allen and Suzuki and five for Dave Parker. That makes sense, since Parker is from my era and I always want his cards. But I was surprised I had gathered a whole five and I didn't know which ones those were (the one above is one of them though). The key thing to know is it gave me more than 100 Parker cards as in January the total stood at 99.   Dave Parker's induction was the one I was looking forward to most. Unfortunately, he passed away last month and now the induction ceremony is a lot less interesting to me as both Parker and Allen are gone. ...

  I keep forgetting to acknowledge TCDB and their members for voting my blog as "Favorite Blog" again this year. This makes it five years in a row and six out of the past seven. "Favorite blog" seems like an outdated award even to me -- sounds something like "favorite cassette tape" -- but it shows that people are still reading and still enjoying and it's nice to have that reminder. Or maybe it's like the Gold Glove award and people vote purely on reputation.   There is the medal table, except I get a crown. Now on to the honor that more people care about -- and they really do care about it. The Baseball Hall of Fame announced the baseball writers' selections for this year's Hall of Fame class. Three players are going in -- Ichiro, CC Sabathia and Billy Wagner -- joining the earlier committee picks of Dave Parker and Dick Allen. This means I need to update the Most Hall of Famers tally, which I'll get to when the 2025 class is inducted....

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, I attended my 30-year high school reunion last week. I didn't communicate with three-fourths of my class when I was in high school, but it was a pretty mind-blowing time last weekend. In fact, if you're approaching that same reunion milestone and have never gone to a previous reunion (like me), I recommend going. At the very least, it will be amusing. The most gratifying thing about that weekend for me may have been having the opportunity to return to a place where everyone remembered the early 1980s. The entire room was filled with people who knew the area where I grew up, knew how we got from there to here, and know how perplexing it is sometimes to live in our current virtual world of gadgetry. Everything that existed then is viewed differently by the people who came after. Our ways then don't make sense to them now. It felt good to be among those who could still make sense of those times. As one tiny example, take the Def L...

(This is the last week in a four-week winter sports season frenzy that is annually the busiest time of the work schedule for me. Appropriately, the first day of spring is Friday. And I'm appreciating March 20, because it means the end of the busy season, better weather, and BASEBALL. Here's another edition of Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 22nd in a series): Yes, it's an Opening Day card. No I am not kidding. I am actually featuring a Topps Opening Day card on Cardboard Appreciation. I do not appreciate the Opening Day set. I don't know many collectors that do. The release date for 2009 Opening Day was March 11. Do you hear any anguish from collectors because they can't find Opening Day packs? Nope. Opening Day is one of those sets that arrived during a period when I wasn't collecting cards. I believe the first year that I saw them was with the 2005 set. I didn't know what they were at first glance because they looked similar to the flagship set, with ...