Night Owl Cards

  I was looking through cards recently when something drew my attention and I thought, "that's a post." Maybe it wasn't a great post, but it was something a little bit interesting to me, and those are all the qualifications here.   Through my many years of being a Dodgers fan, my favorite catcher to wear Dodger blue during that time is not Mike Piazza. It is Mike Scioscia.   Scioscia was not the hitter that Piazza was, few catchers are. But he arrived during a more impressionable time in my rooting history -- my only experience with Dodger catchers up until that time was the light-hitting Steve Yeager. Plus Scioscia, unlike Piazza, can say he contributed some key hits to a Dodgers' World Series championship cause.   But Scioscia's most apparent skill was on defense, calling pitches and particularly the lost art of blocking the plate from oncoming runners. I was gaining an appreciation for the defensive side of the game during those early '80s, so Scioscia ...

  The Dodgers announced yesterday that it will retire Gil Hodges' uniform No. 14 and that the ceremony will take place June 4 when the Dodgers play the Mets. It's been a long time since the Dodgers retired a uniform number. The organization, with one exception, does not retire a number until the person who wore it is elected to the Hall of Fame. I think this is the proper way to retire numbers, rather than the "just-because" reasons that several other baseball teams do. The last time the Dodgers retired a uniform number was on Aug. 14, 1998 when they retired Don Sutton's No. 20. Twenty-four years have gone by since, but, heck, people have been waiting for Hodges to reach the Hall of Fame for a lot longer than that. So I figured I would revive a blog series that I haven't done in years -- just to continue the whole "what you waiting for?" theme. This is where I review all the players who have worn a certain number for the Dodgers. Today we're look...

As one of the few card bloggers currently blogging who was also blogging in 2008, I can divide those who were writing nine-plus years ago into a few different categories: 1. Still blogging, who knows why 2. Quit blogging, but still collecting 3. Quit blogging, ditched cards, and took up butterfly watching or skeet shooting or whatever 4. Basically quit blogging but throws a post on the old site maybe once a year I don't want to speak for everyone who was blogging in 2008, but I think anyone who was writing about cards then, whether they're still blogging or not, is somewhat disenchanted with the current state of cards. Anyone who isn't, hasn't been blogging for almost 10 years. I think that's only natural. As you grow more experienced, your tastes become more well-defined. You know what you like and don't like. Newer items aren't appealing because they don't match your established tastes. And so it is when I buy current cards. I still mak...

There is one unmistakable truth about this major league baseball season: The Dodgers are a bad team. I'm OK with that. I expected it going into the season, although maybe not on this level. But it's OK. My focus is on seeing a brand new owner in the executive offices as soon as they can get McCourt to slither out of his gold-encrusted hole. What I'm not OK with is an unmistakable truth that has gone on for the last 15 years. The Dodgers cannot beat the Angels. Interleague play is bad enough without the Dodgers getting a six-game lesson in failure every year. How am I supposed to work up any enthusiasm for Selig's pointless gift to the fans when my team goes in the tank every June because they have a mental block over the Angels? The Dodgers just completed another futile series in Anaheim, scrambling to come back in the 9th inning to salvage one game of the three. They'll face the Angels again this weekend and we'll see what sub-.500 record they ar...

Ah, the early '90s. Once, ballplayers were simply ballplayers. They ran, hit and threw. That's all. Once they left the field, a few of them signed autographs before disappearing into nothingness, only to reappear the next day (or night) to run, hit and throw again. At least that was the world that was painted for us in baseball cards. Things began to change slowly in the 1980s. Card backs, specifically, introduced collectors to the more personal side of baseball players with blurbs that might reveal a family or a hobby. The glamorization of ballplayers increased rapidly from there. By the 1990s, they were full-fledged fashion models, thanks to some of those Stadium Club and Bowman abominations featuring players in collared shirts and slacks. But perhaps no set provided better insight into the ballplayer's "inner self" than Studio. Everyone remembers the portrait-style photos on the front. Studio captured the Olin Mills feel quite well. Awkward. Uncomf...

I won myself an unopened wax pack and some Dodger cards just for answering a simple question over at Closet Full of Cardboard . I'll show the Dodgers some other time when the mood strikes, but I need to open the pack now, because it's something I've never done before. I know. This is a pack of 1988 Fleer. I can hear you groaning already. But you can't assume that everyone was 10 and opened garbage cans full of cards in '88. I was 22, on the verge of college graduation, and had met my future wife only five months earlier. I spent '88 mostly in the company of my girlfriend, and I promise you the topic of baseball cards never came up once during that year. Twenty-three years later, the secret is out. My wife is all too aware of my obsession with baseball players on cardboard. I open packs right in front of her without shame or remorse. She's even bought some cards for me when she's feeling brave and daring. Things are a lot more comfortable now...