Night Owl Cards

There was a story out of Oklahoma City yesterday that the Dodgers are moving their Triple A affiliate from Albuquerque to Oklahoma City for next season. The Dodgers have been affiliated with Albuquerque for the last six seasons, and before that, the city and the Dodgers were together from 1972-2000. I grew up thinking that Albuquerque had been the top affiliate for the Dodgers for forever (although most of those great '70s Dodgers actually played Triple A games in Spokane, which was L.A.'s top affiliate throughout the '60s through 1971). Even though I've never been to Albuquerque, I don't like that the team is moving from there. The word is that Dodger management wants a better place to evaluate talent. Albuquerque, with its high altitude ways, has always been known for inflated batting stats, and that often doesn't translate to the majors. Of course that was an issue the first time the Dodgers were in Albuquerque (see Greg Brock/Mike Marshall), which ...

I received a couple of cards from a couple of Dodger fans recently that are really making me question the mental sharpness of our youth. Sure, these cards are from over 20 years ago, but are we really seeing more intelligent kids coming out of our classrooms today? (I have no facts to back up this sweeping implication). Look at this card. Someone is seriously deficient in the paper-cutting arts. This is some sort of National Highway Traffic Safety card. It's slightly smaller than your average card, and that's before someone took a screwdriver, or whatever inadequate tool  it was, to cut the card out. I'll give the youngster passing grades for the top edge and even the left edge (which looks suspiciously O-Pee-Chee-ish). But things went a little haywire on the right side and the bottom. It looks like he/she even bent the card in the cutting process. This card was sent to me by Spiegel . I hope he didn't pay anything for it. Here is a card sent to me by Greg ...