Night Owl Cards

  A little more than two months ago I added this 1952 Topps Duke Snider to my collection during a card show.   That apparently woke me up out of my indifference over the 1952 set. No, I'm not attempting to collect it. I'm not even looking to add all of the Dodgers in the set.   But at some point after getting the Snider, I decided to see what I could do about getting the rest of the low-number Dodgers.   Just the other day one of those cards arrived.    This is such an odd card. Jim Russell had not played for the Braves for three years when this card was issued. He was with Brooklyn in 1950 and 1951, and in '51 he appeared in just 18 games with the Dodgers, spending most of the season with Triple A Montreal. He wouldn't appear in another major league game.   His obvious Braves hat and uniform is also the reason that it was one of the last '52 Dodgers I looked to get. He doesn't look like a Dodger at all!   Condition is not a requirement with addin...

  I stopped by Walgreens last week for a couple of items. As I almost always do, I swung by the toy aisle to see if there were any repacks. There haven't been any cards there practically since the pandemic, but habits. I've grabbed so many repacks from Walgreens in the past. One of these days they're gonna return. I reached the middle of the aisle, the customary spot for cards, and in place of the usual hooks and absence of product was this: Cards -- what few there are -- locked in a case. My first instinct was to laugh. Finally, Walgreens has something other than repacks, an actual hanger box of this year's Heritage, and it's in a locked glass case. I was also baffled. This store hasn't featured cards in months, possibly years, Is loss prevention pertaining to trading cards really a big deal for them? I figured it had to be corporate policy, across all the Walgreens, or at least those in the region or something. So I took a trip across town a couple days later ...

    I've received a few small envelopes over the last week or so that have included vintage cards. Couple that with the vintage that caused my jaw to drop a couple of weeks ago, I'm in a vintage frame of mind, more so than usual. So I think I'm going to call this "Vintage Week" and show some vintage throughout the week, ending with what will be one hell of a vintage post on Friday (fingers crossed). Not every card will be vintage in these posts, let's face it, not every card I want is vintage. But each post will include at least one vintage card. First, let's set the parameters of what is considered vintage. This is a question that comes up repeatedly. I instinctively think of vintage as any cards that arrived before I knew what a card was. I can do that because I'm old. There will be none of this "my first cards were 1987 so vintage for me is 1986." That idea, to me, is horrifying. The most recent year for which I didn't know what a base...

  The Dodgers announced yesterday that it will retire Gil Hodges' uniform No. 14 and that the ceremony will take place June 4 when the Dodgers play the Mets. It's been a long time since the Dodgers retired a uniform number. The organization, with one exception, does not retire a number until the person who wore it is elected to the Hall of Fame. I think this is the proper way to retire numbers, rather than the "just-because" reasons that several other baseball teams do. The last time the Dodgers retired a uniform number was on Aug. 14, 1998 when they retired Don Sutton's No. 20. Twenty-four years have gone by since, but, heck, people have been waiting for Hodges to reach the Hall of Fame for a lot longer than that. So I figured I would revive a blog series that I haven't done in years -- just to continue the whole "what you waiting for?" theme. This is where I review all the players who have worn a certain number for the Dodgers. Today we're look...

  I mentioned the other day that I picked up this 1953 Bowman Color Gil Hodges card on the occasion of his announcement to the Hall of Fame. It arrived yesterday and I'm proud to display it in all of its majesty.   The various creases and folds, the flecks of paper loss, cannot mask one of the greatest pictures of Ebbets Field to ever appear on a baseball card.   I'm aware that the setting is likely mid-day, possibly under overcast skies, but the yellow sign above and to the left of the red Bulova Watch sign makes it appear in my mind as a scene at dusk. Wishful thinking, of course.   But the star of the show, besides brand-new Hall of Famer Hodges, out in right-center field is the familiar Schaefer Beer scoreboard (with the Bulova clock at the top!). It's one of the certain indicators that your baseball card setting is in one of the most famous bygone ballparks in history.   The scoreboard began advertising Schaefer's beer in 1947 and I didn't know until today...

    Big news for a lot of people's card collections yesterday, the Hall of Fame announced the selection of six players for induction. My collection isn't nearly as exclusive as those that feature only rookie cards of Hall of Famers and such. My collection doesn't focus on Hall of Famers at all actually. I do need to update my "sets with the most Hall of Famers" series greatly now, although I'll wait until the BBWAA vote next month for a new post. But as far as my collection, it reflects what I think about who has played the game, not who is in the Hall. There has been a lot of greatness, whether they're on a plaque in a building or not. I've written about stuff like this before. In fact, I already voted a bunch of the guys who the Hall picked yesterday into the Hall years ago .   "Small hall/big hall," "stats worthy/not worthy," I don't have time for those debates. What I do have time for is focusing on the players elected and s...