Night Owl Cards

  Apologies for the morbid post, but I'm discovering that this is going to be a difficult time of year for me from now on. My mom passed away two years ago on Mother's Day and my dad a month later. It's the second anniversary of that time period and the fragility of life is naturally on my mind. It doesn't help that the players on my baseball cards keep leaving. Nothing underlines one's mortality quite like the news that another player whose card you collected as a kid has died. I periodically recognize those recently departed players from my youth with individual posts but those passings of players from the very first set I ever collected -- 1975 Topps -- have been coming so frequently this year that I can't keep up. Often I'm just too shocked to write anything (For frequent commenter, steelehere, who often randomly mentions a former Dodger player's death on my posts, I do pay tribute to them on Twitter, even if I don't mention it on the blog. Here ...

One card. One lousy card left to complete my 1986 Topps set. And it's Joe "bleeping" Orsulak. Can you believe it? The strangest cards end up being the last ones needed to put a bow on a set. Not Puckett, not Mattingly, not Rose. Orsulak. I don't know where Orsulak is hiding, but I do suspect this: Someone is protecting old Orsy because they can't let go of a card that has (RC) next to his name in the Beckett price guide. Well, let me tell ya something, rookie card fanatic. No. 102 of the 1986 Topps set is not Orsulak's rookie card. His rookie card is what's at the top of this post, No. 89T from the 1985 Topps Traded set (There's an '85 Fleer Update card, too). So, now that that is out of the way, I'm asking ... no, I'm begging: please PLEASE trade me this card. A solitary hole in a binder of 792 cards is about as sad a sight as you're ever going to witness. Sadder than "Marley and Me" (and you thought that was a happy movie...