Night Owl Cards

  It's getting more and more difficult to fill the newshole -- industry term -- in a newspaper sports section these days. I won't get too much into the reasons why because: 1) it's still my job; 2) the rant will amount to the longest post ever; 3) you don't care, just look how many people have newspaper subscriptions. But just to transition to the cards more easily, I will say that NFL copy is always there for me. I've written about his before. The NFL never stops. There's no offseason anymore. It's June -- where once football would go silent for like four months until late July camps, now I can depend on a roundup of NFL news every single day. Granted, a lot of it is the stupid he said-he said, he said-she said, she said-she said stories that now pass for "news" in sports journalism (the latest example: the Caitlin Clark foul heard round the world). But empty space doesn't sell, so NFL it is!   The NFL is filling space on this blog today, too....

  Yesterday was Ron Cey's 73rd birthday and, don't you worry, I took care of acknowledging it. It didn't show up on the blog but it did appear on Twitter. That isn't even all of autographs in the collection. You can fit only so much in the frame. But the rate of me accumulating Cey cards, autographed or otherwise, has slowed dramatically. There haven't been many new Cey cards recently (Topps has mostly ditched its retro-appreciation of '70s/'80s players for, ugh, steroid-era '90s players). And all that's around for me to collect are a few autograph cards I don't own or a bunch of parallels. I've mentioned this the last few Cey birthday posts, and I was starting to get sick of hearing myself repeat this lament. But then one day, while pondering cards to obtain, I looked to the ceiling and that's when it struck me: Of course, north! Go north! O-Pee-Chee!!! I don't know why I never thought of that before. I have OPC Ron Cey cards in my c...

This post was originally going to be called "stuff I discovered on the internet," but I figured that would leave too much to the imagination. Before the internet came along, I discovered cards and card sets mostly through advertisements in the Sporting News or Baseball Digest, or through hobby catalogs that came to my house, like TCMA or Fritsch Cards. Later, I subscribed to Baseball Cards Magazine and found new-to-me sets in articles in that magazine. But I missed so much through those methods. Outside of what was selling in wax or cello packs at the drug or grocery store, that was all I knew. It wasn't until years and years later, when I ended up online like everyone else, that I discovered how much that I had missed. Once I became aware of card blogs, the door was open wider than ever. There were so many sets -- so many sets and cards that often had been issued right under my nose -- that I never knew existed. For example: I had no idea there were so many box sets fro...

As you can imagine, it took me almost no time to dispatch those Giants autographs that I opened on Christmas morning. The average time for me sending out cards in response to cards I've received is verging on between one and two months these days (March is a particular brutal month for this). But I was shipping out those Giants uggos within a week. I found the perfect victim ... er, recipient in Adam . I sent him almost all of the signed cards I received, with the noted exception of the Bobby Thomson. Despite his history against my team, I can't part with it, although I could be convinced. Adam then passed on some of the signatures to mr. haverkamp, and now you know the only two Giants card collectors that I know in the world. Then, both of them, sent me some Dodgers autographed cards in return! Boy, I think this blogging thing is going to turn out all right. I received seven autographed cards of seven different Dodgers. These days, I'm looking for autographe...

In 1992, U2 came out with a song called "One." It was hugely popular. I liked it, too. U2 was my favorite band since way back in 1982 when no one outside of the U.K. knew what a U2 was. But not long after One, Mysterious Ways and Achtung Baby, I started to lose interest. U2 got a little strange for me, and Bono, who was always the "look at me" sort, seemed like he was ready to swallow the whole band. In fact, if rock stars wore jerseys with uniform numbers, I'm pretty sure Bono would wear the No. 1. That's how some of us view that number, as a blatant way to draw attention to oneself. "Look at me, I'm No. 1" And then there is the corresponding reaction: "Who does he think he is, wearing the No. 1? This is a team game. Nobody is above anyone else. Nobody is "No. 1." But I get the feeling that for baseball folks, the No. 1 means something different. Or at least it does with the Dodgers. The Dodger associated the most wi...

I am on the verge of completing the 1981 Topps set. Normally, this would be a good thing. Heck, it still is a good thing. Just not as good as it could be. That's because I thought I had already completed my '81 Topps set. Generous reader Denis sent me the two cards that I thought had killed off the set. You'll see them in a minute, but first some other cards that he sent in yet another set quest. Yes, he sent me some glorious 1971s, including this wildly off-center photo of the former Dodger great. Those are the other ones. Aren't those tremendous? It really is a tragedy that Bill Hands was traded away from the Cubs seven years before catcher Barry Foote arrived in Chicago. I would pay good money to see a Hands-Foote battery in action. The addition of these 1971 needs means I'm 44 cards away from finishing off the set. It is now 94.1% complete. I get all tingly thinking about it. But back to the more serious matter of the '81s. Denis sent the las...