Night Owl Cards

  I had to grab the 2023 Topps Dodgers team set for a reason only team collectors can explain, and probably do it sheepishly. The Topps team sets aren't as fun as they were 10 years ago or even five. You always knew you were going to get "repeat" cards -- the front and back are the same except for the card number -- but there was enough variety to make it interesting. Either there were a few new players or a picture or two was different. There's been less and less of that and now we team collectors are basically paying for a package of dupes. But I'll show it off anyway. These are the players who appeared in Series 1, all identical pictures except the Topps logo isn't foil.   The only player from Series 1 that doesn't appear in the team set is Cody Bellinger, now a Cub.   These are the players who are on the checklist for Series 2. Part of the fun of the team set is at least getting to see what the Series 2 cards will look like. I kind of ordered this late...

  Every starting pitcher in the Dodgers' rotation this year has had injury issues, except for Clayton Kershaw. It's particularly ugly right now (also grrrrrr to the schedule-makers for pitting the Dodgers against the Padres, Twins, Cardinals, Braves and Rays consecutively with the back two-thirds on the road and just one day off). Only Kershaw and Gonsolin are able to pitch, and I think maybe Syndergaard. Almost none of them can go more than five.   I received this Big League Noah Syndergaard card from madding of Cards On Cards recently and it's to be determined if the diminished Thor is the Dodgers' top offseason acquisition of 2023. J.D. Martinez and Jason Heyward are also in the running but nothing's been too inspiring so far. A couple of weeks ago the blog Red Sox Fan In Nebraska listed out the Red Sox's top offseason transactions for each year going back to 1991 . I thought that was interesting and looked up the same for my Dodgers. But I went through the ...