Night Owl Cards

In the process of wrapping up the selections for the Greatest 100 Cards of the 1970s countdown, I've come across cards that I've forgotten about or am looking at in a new way after becoming so immersed in this hobby. One of the last things I did in my research was look through the Hostess cards from the '70s. While they are among my favorite oddballs and very much a hoot, most of them are regurgitated/rejected Topps photos and very few Hostess cards are great enough to make the final 100. There might be 1 or 2 on the list. This George Hendrick Hostess card from 1979 lies just outside the top 100 and it is there solely because Hendrick may be the only player to wear a '70s track suit on his baseball card. Hendrick is a unique individual when it comes to baseball cards. And because of this, he is the man that resurrects my "I'm Bad-Ass And You're Not" feature after a long period of inactivity. Hendrick -- although not really overlooked among f...

There are certain topics that circulate through the blogs over and over again. Sometimes the same topic comes in bunches, only to disappear for awhile, and then re-emerge a year or two later when new blogs start up. One of these topics is finding cards of players on teams for which you never knew they played. It pops up repeatedly. Jose Canseco as an Expo is often cited. Al Oliver as a Dodger is another one. There are probably many more that I forget. I decided to finally do a post on this, just to keep my blogger license. You have to write about this topic -- and players with goofy hair -- or "they" will come and find you and tell you can't waste your time rambling about cards anymore. I didn't have a lot of time to dig up cards, so I went directly to my Topps Traded sets, since that's where a lot of these examples occur. I don't have all the Traded sets, or even half of them -- including some pretty common issues, like from the late '80s. So I k...

I hope that when you were a kid you traded cards with other kids. I have no knowledge about whether this still takes place. Boys, to the one person in my house that cares about such things, are still "weird." So my contact with that demographic and what they may or may not collect is zero. But 30 years ago, it was the thing to do. I had a number of trading partners. But by far the best was my good friend Mario. Whenever I think of the sets from 1975, 76 or 77, I almost always think of him. He was a crazy baseball fan just like me. If I remember correctly, he liked the Yankees. Everyone has a flaw, don't they? As I get older, I remember fewer and fewer details about being a kid. So I'm going to mention what I remember about Mario here: -- He came from an Italian family. His parents either were born in Italy or moved from Italy as children. His mother was a great cook. -- He sported the glasses that you would see on kids who grew up in the 1970s, thick lenses with dark...