Night Owl Cards

  I shelled out for an off-condition card of the interestingly named John O'Rear to get me within one of completing the 1980 TCMA Albuquerque Dukes set that I have loved since I was a young teen. I'm in a bit of card buying freeze right now but I'm fortunate in that my tastes aren't that expensive. All that's left to finish the set is Don Crow. Yeah, not Scioscia or Stewart. Don Crow. But that doesn't matter for this post. Neither Crow nor O'Rear were in the back of the book that I cared about when it came to upcoming Dodgers prospects. Before Bowman became a prospects thing, I figured out who the hot prospects were in the Dodgers' organization by turning to the back pages of the team yearbook that I had ordered. Here is the first prospects page in the first Dodgers yearbook I ever bought, the 1977 issue. Here are the next two pages. In my mind back then, those were all of the Dodgers prospects. And I wanted all of them to make the major leagues and kick...

(Welcome to Presidents' Day. I am old enough to remember when there were separate school days off for Lincoln's birthday and Washington's birthday but no full weeks off between Christmas and Easter. Somehow we made it through. Time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 221st in a series): Apparently this is "favorite players of the past" week. Orel Hershiser, watch out. I am relieved to read that Pedro Guerrero is doing a little better after initial reports this morning that he had suffered a stroke, brain hemorrhaging and was hospitalized in ICU in his native Dominican Republic. The latest reports say that he has suffered minor bleeding in the skull after losing mobility in his left arm. But there was no stroke, and he's talking and in good spirits. Guerrero, as I've mentioned before, was my favorite player when I was in high school. He was probably the first player that I followed from the minor leagues and knew about his greatness long befor...