Night Owl Cards

  Well, the timing for the start of this post ain't great after my Bills didn't show up last night. Thanks to the NFL's wild, any-and-all-days-and-times scheduling, that was the first time I've gotten to see them play on TV live this season (meanwhile I've seen the Ravens three times already). But I turned off last night's game pretty early. So in a slightly less triumphant mood, I just received a selection of Bills cards from Johnny's Trading Spot ! I'll get right to the weirdness. These are all from the same set, though it doesn't look it at all. Topps created something in 2023 called "Topps Composite". If you still have PTSD over Topps' Fusion baseball set from 2001, then look away. This is just like that -- except with football players. I suppose Topps had to do something -- it doesn't have a license to put out sets with current players, so I guess this was its idea to stay in the game? Aside from the wide variety of baseball-ce...

  It's time for a football post since that's all I've been hearing about lately. I'm sure that'll cause some baseball diehards to ignore this, but I don't think baseball is doing itself any favors right now, so I'll focus on a sport that's actually operating. I was talking football to a co-worker and the topic of Bills quarterbacks came up. I'm pretty hazy on NFL history, even for my favorite team, and he was trying to remember the names of the Bills QBs between Joe Ferguson's retirement and Jim Kelly's arrival. He started talking about Joe Dufek, who I don't remember at all, and then he was trying to remember the other barely-there Buffalo QB from that time. "Vince Ferragamo?" I offered. No, it wasn't Vince, he said. He never did figure it out. I did later. My football cards told me. Cards are good like that. It was Bruce Mathison. He started seven games during the Bills' horrific 2-14 season in 1985. Ferragamo started ...

Some of you may heard that the Dodgers set a modern major league record last night by winning their 13 th straight game at home without a loss to start the season (for the sake of historical accuracy: if you include pre -1900 teams, the record is 21 in 1880 by the Chicago White Stockings, precursors to the Cubs). As Orlando Hudson, one of the Dodgers' hottest hitters, is showing, 13 is just a number. A beautiful number at this moment. Here are a few other players who weren't/aren't afraid to fly their No. 13 flag proudly: Davey Concepcion made it so cool to wear the number 13, that Latin American infielders like Omar Vizquel , Rey Ordonez , Neifi Perez and Asdrubal Cabrera have worn the number. Ozzie Guillen liked the number so much that after he was finished wearing it as a player, he wears it as a manager. Even a Pittsburgh Pirate can wear the number 13. If someone asks McLouth why he would want to wear the number 13, he can respond, "I play for...