Night Owl Cards

Apparently, the Dodgers still believe they're in this thing. I don't necessarily agree, although I applaud their optimism and Ned Colletti's enthusiasm, which was demonstrated in his shocking willingness to cough up once-and-possibly-still key prospects in order to land a relief pitcher. The biggest deal was getting Ted Lilly and Ryan Theriot from the Cubs for Blake DeWitt and a couple of minor leaguers. I don't like the swap at second base of DeWitt for Theriot -- the Dodgers are weaker at that position now. But Lilly I've always liked and wished the Dodgers never gave him up in the Mark Grudzielanek trade way back in 1998. But while every other fan's brain focuses on a mid-season deal in terms of "how will this affect my team now?" I think of it another way. I am always intrigued by the relationships that teams have with each other when it comes time to trading. Most teams go to the same trade partners over and over. The thing that interests...

With this post, I am getting dangerously close to a "when I was your age I used to walk to and from school uphill both ways" lecture. But it's the only way I can think of to convey how much I enjoy cards like this '68 Topps Jeff Torborg. When I was a kid, there were no boxes to bust, no card stores to visit, no way to send away for cards, and certainly no internet. The best and only way to get baseball cards was to visit your neighborhood drug store. And, yeah, I did walk there most of the time. Cards were hard to come by, even though they were around 10 cents a pack when I first started collecting. The occasions -- and they were truly occasions -- when I received cards were so seldom that I remember each and every one to this day. I remember which store, I remember how many packs. I even remember some of the cards that came from the packs. I didn't accumulate many cards over an entire year. Collecting the whole set was out of the question. I couldn't afford i...