Night Owl Cards

  Three years ago, Topps put a card of Giants outfielder Mike Yastrzemski in its 2022 flagship set and spelled his name wrong.   "Yastrzemksi"   It was amusing and annoying -- I mean, how --  how could Topps misspell a name linked in baseball lore, a Hall of Fame name? Sure Mike Yastrzemski was just a kid, but his grandfather was an MVP and won the Triple Crown! He is legend among generations of Red Sox fans. What the hell?  I have a specific perspective when it comes to spelling names. My job is to publish the names of local athletes almost every day and to edit all sports names before they appear in the next day's newspaper. I have done this for decades and I have watched as players' names have grown more bizarre and more difficult to spell. Yet, every day, we try to get them right.   Sometimes they are wrong -- often this is because the coach doesn't care enough to spell it right on the roster. Sometimes, it's us, we confuse a player with his older gradu...

     I've been dealing with an arm issue that is very similar to what pitchers encounter. On Wednesday I finally got myself to the urgent care, and after picking up a prescription, I went to Lowe's to scope out some garden fence to protect the new bathroom wiring in the attic from squirrels (long story -- and squirrels are evil). After all of that, I figured I needed some kind of reward. The Target is right there -- as it often is when you see a Lowe's -- and, sure, I'll check the card aisle for the first time in three weeks. It's gonna be nothing just like every other time since early 2021, but you never know riii .... Wow. I haven't seen a shelf stocked like that in person in over two years. I'm not going to speculate as to what that means. I'm half thinking that if I returned 12 hours later, it'd be all cleared out. But I don't do those things like that.   That's all I took -- one rack pack of Series 1 and one blaster of Heritage. I had to...