Night Owl Cards

Cliff from Capewood's Collections and I trade cards every summer. I kind of like the way he does trades: reserve a time period for them and then go nuts at that time. It frees up the rest of the year for, you know ... life. So, recently he sent a stack of cards and for most of them I knew exactly why he sent them. They were Dodgers. I collect Dodgers. Therefore, I need those Dodgers. But there were others that perplexed me. I'll get to those later. But first: Dodgers. I'll start with the greatest pitcher of my lifetime. Yes, I'm ready to say that now. Dwight Gooden couldn't keep it together and I wasn't paying attention during Steve Carlton's 1972 season. I suppose someone could mention Nolan Ryan, Roger Clemens or Randy Johnson, but really from where I'm standing I think the only person he needs to beat out for the title is Greg Maddux. Give Kershaw a few more years like the ones he's had and it'll be his. OK, I'm about t...

I figured I would go back to the first professional baseball game I ever covered. It's been awhile since I thought about it. In fact, it's been so long that I don't remember much about it at all. I knew it was a Triple A game between the Buffalo Bisons and the Louisville Redbirds in Buffalo, N.Y. But I had to go back to the clipping to refresh my memory about the rest of it. I try to keep all of my newspaper article clippings on file. It's quite the ancient process. I started in this business about a decade before the Internet came along, so I have been making photocopies of my clippings and storing them in a file cabinet box all of these years. I've never gotten around to filing them electronically . Frankly, I could look up any of my articles on the computer anytime I wanted, but for some reason, I still need the hard copy for posterity. So down in the basement I went to find the clipping. It turns out the game was very early in the season -- April 6, 1989. And ...