Night Owl Cards

Not much time today. But I wanted to let people who are interested know that I have begun updating some of the tabs on the 1985 Topps blog . It will give you a little bit of an idea of what I'm going for on the blog, besides cards. Hopefully, I can keep it going. I still don't plan to post any card entries there until some point in January. I haven't even scanned the first card yet. But for those who might be unfamiliar with the '85 Topps set -- and that seems incredibly unlikely -- here is a look at the back of a typical card: As far as the look of the card back, it's not too exciting. Christmas colors. A red-on-green format that is difficult to read. Out-of-date trivia question. The best part of the card back is that some of the write-ups give you some personal insight into the ballplayer, which was a departure from many of the Topps card backs that immediately preceded the '85 set. Back then, whenever I read something like "the former C...

This post was inspired by the Spastik Mooss. So you can blame (or credit) him. You all remember the pop singer Tiffany, don't you? When she hit it big, I was in college. I didn't pay a lot of attention to that kind of music. The college alt-rock scene had boomed in the late '80s and that's what I listened to and liked. But you couldn't avoid "I Think We're Alone Now" at the time or the basics of Tiffany's story. She was 16. She sang in shopping malls. She ripped off a song from the '60s. OK, it was a teeny-bopper homage. Whatever. She seemed cute enough, but that's all I knew. Later it came out that she had family issues. There were career control problems and later an inevitable Playboy spread, and suddenly the perky teenager who sang before screaming kiddies in the mall was gone. Tiffany was not who I thought she was. Even though I hadn't given her much thought at all. OK, now for the baseball card parallel story. I...