Night Owl Cards

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 cards during the 1970s is that for several years Topps would feature the full names of players on the card backs. First name. Middle name. Last name. The whole shootin ' match. I became fascinated with players' middle names. There were some dandies. Maybe it's not as big of a deal now, with the wide variety of first names you see. In sportswriting , we're forever struggling with the growing number of unique names attached to high school athletes. (My two cents: parents, the name doesn't make your child unique. Your child makes your child unique). But back when everyone was named Jim, Joe, Mike and John, middle names gave parents a creative outlet. And with baseball players, boy were they ever creative. I'm going to feature a team of my favorite middle names, all from the 1975 Topps set. Why '75 only? Well, time is short and I had to focus on one year, and why not do it for my favorite set of all time? Here is the starting li...