Night Owl Cards

(Farewell to the Olympics I hardly knew. Between the time-zone difference, NBC showing only 5 sports the entire Games, and streaming being the main way to get a full Olympic fix  -- I'm not watching the Olympics on my phone -- I watched less than ever in 40 years. Maybe the Winter Olympics will be better, but I doubt it; we've got another 12-hour time difference! Let's move on to Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 305th in a series): Just as I was starting to prepare for this post and lead off with my memories of J.R. Richard (RIP), another notable from my teenage years passed away. Goodbye, Markie Post. She was the only reason I watched Night Court (one of my favorite Cheers episodes is when Post makes an appearance as Diane's college friend). It's tough losing people that I read about and watched so often, not even that long ago it seems. So I'm steering this post in a more pleasant direction. I thought I would give readers an idea of some of the posts I'...

This World Series is the first World Series for which I can say that it involves two teams that also faced off in a game that I covered. Since my game coverage was so long ago, now at 17 years and counting thank you very much MLB moving the Expos, I have never covered an interleague game, which eliminates any of my past covered games as being previews for the World Series. But the Astros-Nationals ... well, the Astros-Expos, I've done. In fact, it's the first Major League game I ever covered and, let me tell you, the two teams in the World Series were nothing like they are now in 1990. The Astros were 32-49 when I covered them on July 7 and battling the Padres for last place. The Expos were better, but everyone knew them as a middling team that had no chance of catching the Pirates or Mets, the dominant NL East teams of that time. The game progressed to form and the Expos won 3-1. Here is the boxscore from that game as provided by the Expos PR staff: I didn...

As a fan who roots for the Dodgers, I find three recurring elements of the game more frustrating than any other. The first is leaving runners on base. I'm sure every fan of every other team feels this way about their team, too, but the Dodgers I am positive have led the league in runners stranded for at least the last 35 consecutive years. The second is seeing a pitcher that your team surrendered willingly turn around and beat your team. I witnessed this with Eric Stults just a couple of days ago. I could sit here for 15 years and not come up with a reason why the Dodgers couldn't hit Stults. The third is seeing a pitcher own your team year after year as if the only reason for his career is to beat the Dodgers. I've been aware of this one since I could root for a specific team. Over the years, I've come to know certain pitchers dominate the Dodgers. John Candelaria, Dennis Martinez, Mario Soto, Chris Carpenter. But I never had any numbers to back it up. Was i...

One of the great things about collecting cards is there are so many different directions to go. I haven't studied other hobbies very closely, but I imagine some are a lot more limiting than card collecting. How many clay pots can you really make? Because there is so much variety and so much to collect -- and because my collecting interests are relatively varied -- I am forever coming across "firsts" in my collecting life. To me, that's pretty impressive. Keep in mind, I saw my first cards in 1974. That was 39 years ago. I should know a lot about cards and have experienced a lot. But most of the time I feel that I don't and I haven't. The other day -- OK, it was like 2 or 3 weeks ago -- I achieved one of those firsts. A very cool one, too. It has to do with the man you see on the card above. My Roy Campanella card collection is deceptively large. I have 92 different cards of Campy, including my pride-and-joy here, the "Symbol of Courage" ca...