Night Owl Cards

One of the great things about cards during the 1970s is that for several years Topps would feature the full names of players on the card backs. First name. Middle name. Last name. The whole shootin ' match. I became fascinated with players' middle names. There were some dandies. Maybe it's not as big of a deal now, with the wide variety of first names you see. In sportswriting , we're forever struggling with the growing number of unique names attached to high school athletes. (My two cents: parents, the name doesn't make your child unique. Your child makes your child unique). But back when everyone was named Jim, Joe, Mike and John, middle names gave parents a creative outlet. And with baseball players, boy were they ever creative. I'm going to feature a team of my favorite middle names, all from the 1975 Topps set. Why '75 only? Well, time is short and I had to focus on one year, and why not do it for my favorite set of all time? Here is the starting li...