Night Owl Cards

(Today is National Pizza Day. One thing I miss about living in a larger city is the quality of pizza. People where I live act like certain pizza places in town are better than others, but frankly, it doesn't matter. Nobody here can do it like Bocce's in Buffalo or those places I ate at in Chicago or that one time in Philly. It's tough to screw up pizza. But something about those city pizzas put everyone else's pizza in their place. Time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 289th in a series): Perhaps you heard the other day that Roger Kahn passed away at the age of 92. Roger Kahn is one of the most acclaimed baseball writers who ever put pen to paper. He wrote "The Boys Of Summer," about the 1952 and 1953 Brooklyn Dodgers, a book that has been praised as the greatest baseball book in history. I don't know whether that is the best baseball book or not. But I do know that because of that book, I am a sportswriter. Still. It's not easy to b...

This was meant to be a simple trade post featuring some fantastic cards sent to me by Wicked Ortega . But as Tina Turner once said, "we nevah, evah do nothing nice and easy." So get ready for a "nice and rough" post through my scatter-brained, rolling on the river mind. I opened the package from Wicked about a week or so ago. As usual it contained plenty of fantastic cards from that bottomless well in southern Florida. There were want list needs, Upper Deck disasters from 2010, relics, and this card: That is a 1954 Bowman of Billy Cox, the third baseman of "The Boys of Summer," Brooklyn Dodgers. It's terrific. I've owned only one '54 Bowman in my entire life, although I once had a chance to buy a handful and stupidly turned down the guy flat. So the awesomeness of finally holding a Dodger '54 Bowman in my hand did go through my head. But the first thing I thought of was the first thing I always think of when I think of ...

It seems like every blogger except the Dodger fan is pulling Clayton Kershaw autos. Am I jealous? Sure. I buy retail. I buy hobby. I get squat. Lately, anyway. But I have something they don't have. Or at least I think they don't. Maybe they do. Maybe they're just waiting to spring it -- ah, never mind. Behold! An autographed 1974 TCMA Boys of Summer Carl Erskine card! Mr. Erskine signed and returned this card to me in a mere eight days! Erskine is one of my favorite all-time Dodgers, especially from Brooklyn's golden age of the '50s. He's also on my list of favorite Dodgers to collect. Erskine's accomplishments are well-known. He once held the record for most strikeouts (14) in a World Series game, set in 1953. He is one of the few Major League pitchers -- Mark Buehrle was the latest -- to throw two no-hitters in his career. He pitched in five World Series, appearing in 11 games. Erskine was a prominent figure in Roger Kahn's "Boys of Summer...

Elwin Charles "Preacher" Roe died Sunday at age 92 (although, his exact age seems to be up for debate). Roe was one of the "Boys of Summer," a member of the 1952 Brooklyn Dodgers immortalized in Roger Kahn's book. I remember reading the book and thinking that if I was a fan back then, I would really like Preacher. A lot of my favorite players tend to be pitchers. I can identify with them somehow. I especially like the left-handers, because I'm left-handed. Preacher was left-handed, too. And I like the quirky pitchers, and Preacher was quirky. Preacher was known for throwing the spitter. He was the subject of a famous story in Sports Illustrated in 1955 in which he admitted to using the pitch. Baseball establishment was outraged over such a confession, and Roe was ostracized for a time because of that admission. But what bothered him the most was the fact that people thought that was the only pitch he threw. He actually had a variety of effective pitches. ...

You thought I was going to post about blue refractors didn't you? Sorry, we're going in an entirely different direction. The Dodgers clinching a postseason berth tonight got me thinking about why I like the team. And while a lot of that can be explained by card collecting and the fact that the Dodgers were one of the top teams around when I was a child, there's more to it than that. My appreciation for the Dodgers comes down to history -- Brooklyn Dodgers history, and more specifically, the Boys of Summer. Roger Kahn's book, "The Boys of Summer," based on the 1952 Brooklyn team, stayed with me more than any other book I read during college. And I read a lot of books in college. Kahn's book was like "Ball Four" and "The Bronx Zoo," in that it finally depicted players as people and not mythic legends. And while that idea may seem to contradict the practice of collecting pictures of players on little squares of cardboard, I don't thin...