Night Owl Cards

  I'm not sure where I got this post idea, it's possible it came from Nick's blog , but the spark from wherever made me wonder about switch-hitters and cards. How easy was it to find separate cards of a switch-hitter hitting from both sides of the plate, or at least posing as both a left-handed batter and right-handed batter? My guess was it's probably pretty easy. And in researching, I found that it's very easy. Just to have a frame of reference, I found this article from three years ago, presenting a lineup of the best switch-hitters in MLB history. Then I went to work going through my collection. Even in this era of being able to find almost any card image on TCDB, etc., I still would rather pull cards from my collection when I can. Yeah, it takes longer and, oh, the putting back , but I'm a slave to tradition.   Here is a look at the team (remember, I didn't pick this team) and a card of each player as a lefty and righty swinger:     Left field: Tim Ra...

  Even though it's clear to me that I'm enjoying the hobby more this year and being much more productive as far as my collecting is concerned, I still need convincing. I've collected by buying packs at the store closest to me since I was a wee owl 45 years ago. It's a habit that's been difficult to break when that's all you've known as the Way To Collect. But now that card aisles remain vacant, I keep coming up with good reasons why regular pack purchasing is pretty pointless. Earlier today, while continuing to sort through all of my Dodgers dupes, I noticed again how rookies overrun Topps products. My dupes from the last 10 years were absolutely saturated with rookies that are now long forgotten, even if the product is only a couple of years old. Players like Zach Lee, Trayce Thompson and Alex Guerrero dominated my recent doubles. People can't wait to get rid of these sudden no-names. And when you look back on that product from three years ago, you real...

If you look at my Twitter profile page , you will see that Twitter says I joined the social media site in September 2012. Like almost everything on Twitter, that's only partially accurate. I actually joined Twitter in 2010. Then after just over a year of viewing non-stop angst, constant self-promotion and a relentless stream of topics that I didn't sign up for at all , I scrapped my Twitter account. But several months later I decided to give it another try. Twitter had tweaked itself enough so that you could streamline what you wanted to see a little better. The mute button -- what I think is possibly the greatest creation of the social media age -- ensured that I could remain a part of the electronic Tower of Babble without going insane from daily inanity spewing from my timeline. These days, what I view on Twitter is mostly information about trading cards and baseball. That's really all I care about when it comes to screen time. Oh, people try to pollute my tim...

I really wish Topps would stop releasing next year's design on a day when I'm incredibly busy. Some quick thoughts that you've probably already read before and then I'll get on with what I was supposed to be writing about today. The above design was not a surprise. Given the previous two flagship designs and Topps' apparent desire to make the design look as digital-friendly as possible, I fully expected full-bleed with various TV graphics elements. And that's what this is. It's executed a heck of lot better than the 2016 look and also better than 2017. I don't see any tinkering with the picture here, which was a serious drawback with both 2016 and 2017. Still, I'd rather have borders. They make an individual set distinctive and memorable. They also don't make parallels irrelevant. And they make the cards more collectible. I won't be collecting this. Three straight years of this stuff means Topps may be challenging 1996-2000 as th...

Today is Eddie Murray's 61st birthday, and for that occasion I have now trotted out this 1985 Topps card of Murray on two social media sites. It really is the greatest Eddie Murray card. Even though I am a Dodger fan, I identify Murray with the Orioles, of course. He played for Baltimore for the first decade of his career and only a handful of years with the Dodgers. For 10 years, there was nothing but Murray Orioles cards in my collection. Murray almost never talked to the press, which is a reason for me to dislike him. But I can't help it. I still like him. Someone who I know also likes him is Commish Bob . He just happened to showcase a bunch of Murray cards on his blog yesterday, Murray's birthday eve. And I just happened to receive some cards from Commish Bob recently. None of them are Eddie Murray cards, but they sure are great. I'll lay the most spectacular on you first. Those are a bunch of 1956 Topps off my want list. Not many names I know -- alth...