Night Owl Cards

  Another monthly card show has come and gone.   I was surprised it was that time again. I had scrambled the dates and thought it wasn't for another two weeks and didn't realize it was today until yesterday! I had planned on not doing anything today, but I guess I'll get out of bed for a show!   It's a real life of leisure around here, knowing that there's a show to go to every month. I took my time getting there this time. I didn't have a lot of money (it was supposed to be in two weeks!) and there were other things to do.   I showed up with about two hours left in the show, just enough time to visit two of my regular tables, and see what they had.    A couple of 1969 Topps needs crossed off the list. I had been eyeing the Lee May card online for a couple of weeks but gave up after it was swiped from my ebay cart. Good thing though, because I could buy it for less here! It's an off-center beauty, just like '69 Topps should be.   The Gary Wagner is one...

  I became aware of this card probably several months ago, filed it away as a future conquest, promptly forgot about it, then came across it again a couple of weeks ago.   It's now in my possession and it couldn't be more fantastic. I grew up with Luis Tiant as a key member of the Red Sox and then wrapping up his career with the Yankees and Angels (I was not old enough for the Indians and Twins version of Tiant). He is firmly entrenched with the AL East in my mind, one of my childhood favorites, and that's why it's so bizarre and so wonderful to see him in a Dodgers uniform.   Sure, El Tiante is part of a low-level team in the Dodgers' chain, but it doesn't make the card any less intriguing.   It's part of a litany of cards of players and other baseball figures in unfamiliar uniforms.   We've all seen the short-term stops cards for players, there's been plenty of blog posts about those. But what about coaches and managers? There's some weirdness ...

  (How much you wanna bet Pete is checking on the ponies?)   I have been trying to update my want lists on the blog for three years now.   It's slow going because it's super tedious and not in the "fun tedious" way like updating a binder.   Mostly what I need to update are Dodgers team set wants. I've been working my way backwards and I'm at the tail end of finishing the 2002 wants with Upper Deck and a few randoms to go. Working on these sets makes me realize how many evil sets were created while I wasn't collecting in the first part of this century. There are so many sets where half the team set is short-printed, rookies you never heard of are short-printed, just really annoying stuff. Do I even have the energy to track down an SP'd card of someone named Rick Roberts? Those are the things that go through my head when I'm updating these lists, and then I get deflated, lie on the ground and groan and stop.   I still have 2000 and 2001 to go and the...

The Dodgers and Yankees are playing a doubleheader today and the first game pretty much went the way I expected. Plan on the same thing for tonight. It doesn't matter much to me because I was around for the previous time the Dodgers and Yankees played at Yankee Stadium (although it was the older stadium). In that game, the Dodgers demolished the Yankees 9-2 in the decisive Game 6 of the 1981 World Series and my satisfied smile was all my Yankee fan high school classmates saw the next day. The Dodgers and Yankees haven't played each other in the World Series since. That is why I will always like the MVPs from that Series, Pedro Guerrero, Steve Yeager and Ron Cey. It doesn't matter to me that Guerrero wound up a Cardinal, Yeager a Mariner and even Cey a Cub. No, the worst thing would be if they wound up a Yankee. Seeing Dodgers as Yankees or Yankees as Dodgers is very disorienting to me. They are two distinct franchises who are guided by different principles and back...

This card threw me a little, although it shouldn't have since I was collecting in 2008 and fully aware of how insane it was that year. I received the card from Mark at This Way To The Clubhouse . I had to turn it over to determine the set. The "LA14" makes me reasonably certain it's from the team set, those cards you find in blister packs hanging from racks at Walmart. Emphasis on YOU. The only ones I find are Yankees or the occasional Mets (and one really odd time, Angels ). I'm sure I knew about the card back in '08, but had since forgotten about it. That's not necessarily a bad thing as if I had known about it I would've been plagued with the knowledge that there were three totally different 2008 Topps Joe Torre cards to obtain. The regular base set version. The "limited edition" team set version. And the "regular" team set version. I don't think there's ever a reason to have three distinct manage...

More on these guys later. Last week, in a fit of laziness/writer's block, I wondered who the scariest-looking players in baseball history were. I received a variety of responses. I will try to show most of them here. As I clarified in the comments, by "scary" I meant, "this guy looks like he wants to kill me" scary. So, although folks like Otis Nixon and Willie McGee and Zane Smith, look "scary" in an "unfortunate-but-his-mom-still-loves-him" kind of way, that's not what I was going for. What I was going for is this: Maybe Randy Johnson is "ugly scary," too. But there is no doubt that there were a few batters that feared for their life facing him. He had the ability, and he definitely had the look, which is the main point of this post. The intent was to find players so frightening-looking that it set the "human fear response" into motion. Like this guy. He certainly featured an intense look on the mound. Th...