Night Owl Cards

Up until the last day or so, trades had dried right up for me. I've had no time to strike up any deals, and with Listia and a card show and some online arranging going full force, cards were occupying my time in other ways. But the time has come for me to get off my ass and actually be a fully functioning member of the bloggery again. Now that I've scrounged up some money for mailing supplies, a few select people will be getting some cards next week. And then a few more after that. Before you know it, it will be 2009 again and we'll all be clawing our eyes out because of all the trade posts. One person who hasn't stopped sending out cards recently is Spiegel . I got a very cool assortment of cards from him a couple weeks ago and am just now getting finding time to discuss them. So let's see if I still know how this "show your latest cards" thing works. I think you turn it on ... Like this ... Is it working? Ah, here we go ... I shall st...

Since Opening Day sits just four days away, I present to you a cautionary night card. Any Cleveland Indians fan knows that the 1987 season was a disaster. Sports Illustrated famously put Joe Carter and Cory Snyder on the cover prior to the season and proclaimed the Indians the best team in the American League. The rational for doing this was basically because Cleveland had finally enjoyed a winning season in 1986, going 84-78. It was its first winning season since 1979 (when the Indians went 81-80), and the Indians had never been that far above .500 since 1968. The Indians had also scored a bunch of runs in '86, so, SI figured, someone must be doing something right on that team. The problem was there was a whole lot of wrong on that team, too. The Indians simply managed to keep it hidden well in 1986. The Indians' top two pitchers in '86 were knuckleballers, Tom Candiotti and Phil Niekro. And Niekro was about 240 at the time. Their No. 3 pitcher was Ken Sc...

I did warn you. Cory Snyder is my witness. I said I had a bunch of card packages to post. And it is time to do the dirty deed. Isn't that right, Cory? Cory says, "hell, yeah." I'll be combining two packages into one post. These cards are from Chris of On Card Autos and from Rhubarb_Runner of e rayhahn , rayhahn (no, I don't know what that means). It's a delightful mix of the newer cards and the older cards. So, let's get to it. First, Chris threatened to send me every Dodger card he owned. And I responded in the only proper way to respond to a threat. I said, "OK!" Here is a review of just some of the cards that found holes in my Dodger collection. Edwin Jackson, 2005 Donruss Team Heroes: I'm hoping that if I post enough cards of Edwin Jackson, that the Tigers will trade him to the Dodgers, for, like, Juan Castro. Orel Hershiser , 1992 Leaf gold. Weeeeeee ! A Hershiser I don't have. Between the black borders and the gold foil, I exp...

"The Final Unveiling," is a little grandiose, but I'm sure it was good enough for the subtitle of some horror movie sequel at some point. This is where I open the 15 packs of 1993 Upper Deck, Series Two that I kept from the hobby box bought at the card show last month (the spent cluster of wrappers up top are all that remains from that box). You might remember I gave 15 other packs away to Andy of the '88 and ' 78 card blogs for being the winner in my contest. The remaining six went to Chris Harris. Chris opened his on A Pack a Day TV, which you can see here . Not a bad six pack but a few too many doubles. I haven't heard what Andy found in his packs, but I know he received them. So now that everyone has their packs, it's safe to open mine. A warning: opening 15 packs with 15 cards each makes for a looooooooong post, so I'll keep the comments to a minimum. If Andy has a short attention span, he might want to fast forward to Pack 12. There's some...