Night Owl Cards

I've been doing fairly well adapting to life without baseball games to watch. At the beginning of this pandemic, I was like every fan, trying to get my fix with old games on youtube and the MLB Network. Then those reruns lost their thrill and I settled in for a long, boring summer. But it hasn't been that bad. I haven't moaned about missing baseball much at all. The one time I did miss it, noticeably so, was last Sunday, Father's Day. To me, Father's Day IS watching baseball games on TV. That's about all there is to that day. Pop open a beer and watch the game. Then watch another and another. Beer and baseball viewing go together exceeding well, as you know. And, damn, I was missing that combination dearly one week ago. Beer and baseball combine so well that I once compiled my own All-Beer Team . And here's another illustration of how well beer and baseball go together: There are some baseball players for which you remember them because of the...

(Welcome to National Honesty Day. Yep, to balance out the first day of April -- a day for lies -- the last day of April has been reserved for telling the truth. In the spirit of that, here is my bit of honesty:  I don't understand 80 percent of what's on Twitter. So there you go. Time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 182nd in a series): If you were lucky enough to experience the major league baseball season in 1980, you know the first half of the year was consumed by a man named Super Joe Charboneau. Charboneau was a one-year rookie sensation. He was one of the first rookie sensations I ever knew. David Clyde came first, followed by Mark Fidrych and then Bob Horner. And then came Go Joe Charboneau. The stories about him were repeated so often that I had them memorized. Got stabbed by a crazed fan with a pen knife. Performed his own dental work. Fixed his broken nose with a pair of pliers. A lot of the stories revolved around beer, as good stories often do. C...

I'm afraid I'm going to have to split this card show report into three separate posts. I just don't have the time to scan all the cards and then write about them all in one sitting. I'll deal with the first two-thirds of the show here and then wrap it up in the next post. I mentioned that I arrived at the show late. It runs from 10 a.m.-4 p.m., but I almost always get there around 12:30-1 p.m. That's so I can avoid the big mob scene for whoever is signing autographs that day. (Yesterday it was former Syracuse great Floyd Little. I care nothing about SU, and yes, I know Little's history). But this time I didn't get there until 2 p.m. Just collective laziness on our part, I guess (and the fact I have a 14-year-old kid in the house). After getting out of the car, I practically ran to the building. Once inside, my eyes shot to one of the two places in the hall where my favorite dealer usually stands. He wasn't at either place. I traveled the entire ...