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 "Favorite blog" seems like an outdated award even to me -- sounds something like "favorite cassette tape" -- but it shows that people are still reading and still enjoying and it's nice to have that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....

To recap, this is where I review some of the cards that I have bought over the past two months. It's kind of a retrospective of what the card companies were putting on the retail shelves in 2008. I tried to pick up a pack of as many brands as possible. I am giving away all of the packs that I bought. What you need to do in order to win the cards is take a look at the list of cards purchased along the sidebar, under "Win These Packs!" Guess which card I pulled first from each pack, guess which pack I bought first and guess which pack I bought last, and then leave a comment with all your guesses on this post or on this post . The person who guesses the most "first cards" wins all 120 cards. What I'd like to do now is count down what I think are the worst of what I received in these packs. Some of the comments will be common complaints expressed by collectors about 2008 cards, but most are just my pet peeves. I hope these cards don't prevent you from enteri...

In some corners of this great nation of ours tonight, there is much wailing and gnashing. Milwaukee, for example. Boston, too. Tampa Bay. Baltimore. Los Angeles. Possibly even Cleveland, although I think they already wailed and gnashed a few months ago. Yes, CC Sabathia is a Yankee. As a Dodger fan, and therefore a card-carrying member of the "Society of People Who Use the Words 'Evil' and 'Yankees' Together in Too Many Sentences," it's a dark day. But I won't say it's a black day. More like a shrug-your-shoulders-gray day. More like, "yep, the Yankees got another one. What else is on the tube?" (To me, the most disturbing thing about hearing the news Wednesday was learning that Brian Cashman watches MTV's Cribs. Huh?) I'd even guess that a lot of fans who root against the Yankees felt the same way. And I think that's because the Yankees haven't been in a World Series in five years and haven't won one in eight years. ...

My card brand of choice in 2007 was Topps Heritage. Even though some of the photographs, based on the 1958 Topps design, alarmed me with their super-close shots ("That's not a good look," my wife said after seeing the Johnny Estrada card), I could really get behind some of them (Aaron Rowand has an awesome card). So when 2008 Heritage came out, I was ready. I really liked the 1959 Topps design and couldn't wait to see modern players featured with that layout. When they hit the streets, I went on a Heritage buying spree. I was devoted. I was faithful. Until ... A new girl moved into the neighborhood. She was very pretty, with a classic beauty. She was athletic and alluring. She looked fabulous. I asked her name. I'm pretty sure she said, "Allen Ginter," which seemed a bit odd. I dismissed it as having heard wrong. Must've meant "Allie Ginter," I thought. Allie was fantastic because not only did she look great, but she was devastatingly smar...