Night Owl Cards

  Joey Votto announced his retirement yesterday in his usual quirky-and-lovable way . It was another sad reminder that my old gang is breaking up. First Evan Longoria and now Joey Votto. I'll explain. I feel an odd kinship with the rookie class from 2008, at least those players who received rookie logos in 2008 product. That's because I started when they started. I began a blog in 2008, and that was the first year that I was fully into modern cards since the early '90s. I returned to modern collecting in 2005 and 2006 but 2008 was when I became aware of everything, every last dumb product available, because the wonderful blogging world had told me so.   So I knew all the rookies that were around that year, hot or lukewarm. You couldn't miss them, card companies were shoving them down our throats. Ross Ohlendorf, Brian Bass, Kevin Hart (no, not the comedian), Chin-Lung Hu, I knew all their names.   There were some decent players, too, guys like Jay Bruce, Carlos Gonzalez...

My Allen & Ginter mini frankenset features 27 empty slots. You'd think that even in a 350-card frankenset with 323 slots filled that it would not be extremely difficult to fill up the remaining spaces. You'd think that even if a mini wasn't going to fill an empty slot, it could still crack the frankenset. Look at the above page. It's filled with players like Ryan McMahon and Yunel Escobar, guys dying to be knocked out of the club. Just about every other page is like that, too. But I find that time and again, minis are trying and failing to make the binder. Some of this, I believe, is because Topps earmarks certain numbers for certain "types" in its A&G set. And if I like that "type" -- perhaps it's a baseball legend or a notable off-beat nonsports card -- then a card at that number may be continuously denied. You could be a card of Ryne Sandberg but there is only one Rod Carew, son. But still, I get hopeful when I come into a c...