Night Owl Cards

  I decided to go a little deeper into my calculating of which players have the most cards in my collection. I wanted to further illustrate how dominant the late '90s/early '00s are when you're totaling up something like this. I also wanted to see who the top five non-Dodgers are in my collection, going beyond Nolan Ryan and George Brett. When you look deeper into numbers, that's when you catch mistakes. It turns out George Brett doesn't have the second-highest number of cards in my collection among players who haven't played for the Dodgers.   I somehow overlooked Reggie Jackson, who, of course, should have a lot of cards in my collection. I have 106 Reggie Jacksons, which is more than the 98 George Bretts.   The other mistake was in mentioning that Ron Cey was 37th on the list. He's actually 38th. I missed Roy Campanella. He appears in 143 cards in my collection, three more than Cey. Much like Jackie Robinson, precious few of the Campanellas in my collecti...

There's no baseball on TV tonight, which is probably a good thing for me. I could use the rest from all the bad (and deliberate) relief pitching and every last close play going against the Dodgers. During the welcome break I've been watching Game 6 of the 1975 World Series. It happened 41 years ago today, and as I mentioned before, Carlton Fisk's game-ending home run in the 12th inning is my first baseball memory. I've been trying to determine whether the photo on this card from 2001 Upper Deck Decade 1970s is of Fisk's swing on his famous home run. I know Upper Deck wants you to think it is, right down to the fact that it made this card No. 27, Fisk's uniform number with the Red Sox. But everything about the photo matches with that moment. It's the right helmet and uniform. Fisk was wearing those exact batting gloves on both his hands and the black undershirt. Here are just a few screen shots of Fisk after his home run at the height of his backsw...

I've been immersed in one of those all-consuming work periods, day after day of tasks and deadlines, during which you dream about what you're going to do when you finally get that day off. In younger days, I'd be plotting an outing, maybe a road trip or concert. But with family commitments and advancing age, those daydreams have become much simpler. I just want to get some errands run. I had it all plotted out for today. I had lined up everything that I needed to do, long-overdue commitments and purchases and payments. And then a weird thing happens: you get out in the fresh air, after being sequestered in that work cave, and you can't remember what you were supposed to be doing. I sat in the parking lot for several minutes, racking my brain on what those things were that I wanted to do. Even when I reached the card aisle, I stood and stared kind of lost. I knew that I had a plan. I had repeated it to myself in my head during one of those "if only I had ...

I remarked the other day that I missed everything that was on this card. That's almost true. I do miss seeing Carlton Fisk behind the plate. I do miss food issue cards with team logos prominently on display. I do miss Drake's cakes. I even miss those goofy-yet-functional '70s-style sun hats that folks in the stands are wearing. But if I'm being objective -- and not merely nostalgic -- I don't miss the uniforms the White Sox wore then. Sure, I like the idea of those uniforms, the time period of the crazy, everything-goes uniform style. But, really, the White Sox looked downright dorky when out on the field with another team that was wearing a regular uniform. It looked like they were playing a split-screen game, one-half from 1980 and the other half from 1911. This made me wince because, really, the White Sox were better than that. I like my established teams to wear classic uniforms. These uniforms do not change every 10 years or so. They remain basically...

Two recent, unrelated events conspired to remind me that I have not added anyone to the "I'm Badass and You're Not" Club for a long time. The first one was the realization that it is Dave Stewart's birthday. The famed "death-stare" pitcher for the A's and Blue Jays, who started out with the Dodgers, was as bad-ass as they come on the mound and already a worthy member of the Badass Club. The second one was receiving a pair of cards from AdamE of Thoughts and Sox . They are both going to my goal of completing the 2001 Upper Deck Decade '70s set, and each card features the same player: It's my catching hero from when I was a kid, Carlton Fisk. Fisk was legend in New England. New England-born and bred, he was the Olde Towne Team through and through, or at least that's how Red Sox fans looked at him. And even if you didn't grow up in New England, if you grew up in a family of Red Sox fans -- and Yankee haters -- then y...

Before I hit you with the second Cardboard Appreciation tournament and the weekly polls that come with it, I thought I'd squeeze in one more poll before that. Here's the deal: I was watching that commercial that's playing during baseball games this season. I can't even tell you what they're trying to sell. Credit cards or drugs or something. It's that one where they show little kids playing baseball, imitating famous home run moments of the past. The usual stuff: Carlton Fisk in '75 and Kirk Gibson in '88. That made me think about something that I've thought about before. The Fisk home run in Game 6 of the 1975 World Series is pretty much the epic home run of that decade. (Sure, there was Reggie Jackson in '77, but he hit three of them in Game 6. The drama is in the quantity more than the timeliness). The Gibson home run in Game 1 of the '88 World Series is the epic home run of the '80s (Cardinals fans will argue Ozzie and Royals ...

Topps wasn't the only company that decided to finally change with the times in 1992. Donruss made a few overdue alterations with its own '92 set. First, I'll address the front. Gone were the kiddy designs. Apparently the 5th graders Donruss hired to draw the designs for the late '80s/early '90s sets got the boot. Child-labor laws or something. Instead, Donruss chose to emphasize the photo on the card. I wasn't crazy about the light-blue bars, but it sure beat the snot out of what Donruss did in 1991. However, this is the card BACK countdown. So let's talk about the back: For me, the '92 Donruss back is so-so. It has its good points -- like continuing the Donruss tradition of featuring a player's full name, only much larger. And I like the organizing of the career highlights, as well as the contract status blurb. Also, the head shot is a first for Donruss. The drawbacks for me are the limited use of stats (always an issue with Donruss), and ...