Night Owl Cards

Do you remember when the most exotic statistic on the back of a baseball card was slugging percentage? I do. When slugging percentage first appeared on Topps cards in 1981, it was one of those statistics that had to be explained. As a young fan, I was used to automatically understanding every stat. Batting average and earned run average were the only measures that took a little calculating and they were easily grasped. But slugging percentage -- which I'm quite sure I first saw in The Sporting News -- took a few attempts. It wasn't mentioned much during games on TV and didn't appear in boxscores or on the backs of baseball cards. Looking at it now, it was remarkably easy to grasp, too. It's merely dividing total at-bats into total bases. Like so: I added it to my repertoire in no time. Unfortunately, using statistics to support my arguments is no longer an option. I left numbers behind for letters a long time ago, and while I was away, the numbers e...

In 1978, I was introduced to the concept of "double-printing." I didn't know the term for it at the time. All I knew was that I was pulling cards of Barry Bonnell at a puzzling rate. I didn't have any idea who this Barry Bonnell character was, or why I had triples of his card after only a few trips to the drug store. I was buying more cards than ever at that point, so I figured that it had something to do with that. But soon I noticed that I pulled other players' cards over and over again. Lenny Randle and Cecil Cooper and Pete LaCock. Star players like Pete Rose and Ron Guidry. And nobodies like Jose Baez and Tommy Boggs. A few years later, I learned that Topps double-printed a number of cards in the 1978 set. It continued the practice for another three years, which is why Tucker Ashford kept reappearing in '79, Larry Hisle was all too common in '80, and Matt Alexander was wearing out his welcome in '81. If you look in price guides, there is a...

They're putting in new curbs on my street. You would not believe the noise outside my windows at before 9 in the morning. So, since I'm up, this post is being produced bright-and-early even though it won't appear until the final hours of daylight. As you read this, keep in mind that I can barely hear myself think as I type (at least I think I'm typing, I can't HEAR anything besides "rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat-a") out the latest installment of Gint-a-Cuffs. It's time for packs 17-20. When we last left off, I had 144 points, which is since corrected to 146 because numbers ain't my bag. Onward ... PACK 17 297 - Travis Hafner, Indians (0 points) 268 - Dallas Braden, Athletics (0 points) 96 - Daniel Boulud, french chef (0 points) I'm not showing the card of Boulud because he doesn't need any more publicity. The write-up on his card is like twice the size of most of the non-player cards and reads like Boulud wrote it hims...

That Mark A. is a clever fellow isn't he? I go and squawk about waiting on the Gint-a-Cuffs III rules, so he releases them a few hours later , knowing full well that I'm at work, dealing with a mammoth overhaul of our business's computer system, which is scrambling everyone's freaking MINDS, and won't be in any kind of shape to unveil the first Gint-a-Cuffs III-scored pack when I get home, so I'll go to sleep, and while I lie in a stupor subconsciously preparing for whatever work horrors appear the next day, 48 different bloggers will put up Gint-a-Cuffs posts, so by the time I get around to mine (I usually wake up around noon, thank you very much), I'll be the 49th person to comment on how boring the Hometown Heroes insert set is. Very clever, sir. Very clever. So, all I can do now is address yet another A&G related phenomenon. It's one that irks me a bit. It's the horizontal A&G card. Normally, I love horizontal cards. I've m...