Night Owl Cards

  It's the ol' birthday again, which is why I was pleased to pull the Shoeless Joe Jackson card in my box of Diamond Kings the other day as he's probably the most notable sports person born on my birthday. I've done all that "born the same day as me" stuff already in past posts and I've done a lot of "how the Dodgers did on my birthday" stuff, too. I don't have a lot of creativity left for this day -- maybe I'll think of something for 365 days from now. But I do have some cards to show that I like. I'm calling it a birthday gift and since they're from Rod of Padrographs , it's possible they actually are. He's a good guy and he's sent stuff my way for my birthday before. You all remember that birthday card signed by Ron Cey, right ? There were more signatures in this package, a whole bunch of them, in fact. Just about all of them were Dodgers, because I'm not collecting scribbles from some inferior team. He sent som...

I've failed you and did not take a picture of my reorganization of my giant Dodgers box of dupes -- and accompanying satellite boxes of dupes. It took three days to finish and was conducted entirely while sitting on a hardwood floor. Needless to say, breaks were mandatory. I normally conduct this exercise once a year, in September. But life got busy and the dupes piled up and I finally found a little time last week. Normally I use the dining room table, but there were too many people about for that. So I commandeered the spare bedroom and started piling stacks of cards by decade that needed to join the rest of the dupes. Some may wonder why I go through such a tedious routine for cards that are duplicates. Why do I organize stacks, then ad those stacks to the box, then pull out more cards from the box, and join more cards from the stacks to the more cards from the box, and repeat the process over and over to a mind-numbing degree, more mind-numbing than reading this paragraph...

Every day is a good day for baseball cards, but there are some that are better than others. This is one of them. I don't know if it's the sudden arrival of summer here in the Northeast or just that July has always been the most spectacular month out of the year, but I can't help but notice how many players with cool baseball cards were born this very day. Let's take Moises Alou, for instance. This 1992 Stadium Club card of his has always been a favorite, one of my go-to cards from the entire set. Alou is a '90s player so you can always find something notable on a card for him, but this one is clearly the best: Montreal Expos uniform. Red Montreal Expos uniform. Montreal Expos helmet. The bluest sky ever. The chain link fence. Get me to a baseball game, stat! How about another '90s guy? Greg Vaughn was also born today. Again, we're' fishing in the 1992 pond, a terrible year in many ways, but for baseball cards the hobby was starting to dig o...

I've been known to put off the things I need to do from time to time. I'm a pretty responsible guy, but I have a procrastination streak that strikes whether I'm at home or at work, and in virtually every aspect of my life, from the mundane to the "life and death" issues. So it is with this blog. I get behind in posting trades, in posting posts that I promised to post (that's a tongue-twister), in posting regular features. For example, I skipped a night card feature this week, although I can't be blamed for that. It was Christmas Eve. So it's good to know there are others out there with the same issues that I have. The Writer's Journey is a great blog that I believe began as one man's attempt to chronicle the process of writing his first novel. But JT admits that the site more accurately reflects his avoidance of writing his first novel. You see, JT is not only into writing, but into rock n' roll and baseball. That's a trifecta I can...