Night Owl Cards

I will be starting this book tomorrow. The timing is perfect because the 1976 All-Star Game was played exactly 40 years ago tomorrow. It was the first All-Star Game I ever watched. I don't remember a single moment from that game (before the advent of youtube anyway), which likely means I may have watched maybe the first inning or maybe just the opening introductions before I was shooed off to bed. My mother was coping with two of her sons' sudden insistence on watching every baseball game available (and there weren't many available then) and probably didn't understand it at all. By the following year, we had her somewhat in line and I recall staying up to watch virtually all of the 1977 All-Star Game in Yankee Stadium. Those late '70s All-Star Games are my favorite All-Star memories. The players who played in those games I consider to be "my All-Stars." I was watching a little bit of MLB Network's replay of the 1992 All-Star Game last night (you...

Just a couple of weeks ago I announced my official pursuit of the very colorful, very '70s, very funky 2001 Upper Deck Decade set. The set is an homage to everything I truly love about baseball and cardboard, glossed-up and modernized just enough. Well, not long after my declaration -- Monday, in fact -- my mailman handed me a package about yay big (pretend I'm holding up a baby pig). I opened it up and out popped 75 cards toward the set, direct from the always generous mr. haverkamp. I tell ya, this blog thing is genius, it really is. So after chopping my want list for this set in HALF, I decided to show off some of the cards. For anyone who lived through 1970s baseball, especially if they were a kid at the time, this set is a terrific trip, full of memories of when players were larger than life and dressed like they were float decorations in the Rose Bowl Parade. I get such a kick out of looking at these cards. The memories come flooding back. And the photos -- wh...

I like to have a story to go with my kid-handled cards. But as the brain cells disappear, I'm finding that not every mutilated card I owned as a child can yield a story. Either I'm too old to remember, or there was just too much going on in that 11-year-old, mile-a-minute life to pin down exactly when Randy Jones grew a crease directly through his clavicle. My best guess is I sat on it. Accidentally, of course. I was probably horrified as I turned and removed it from my posterior. Randy was a back-to-back 20-game winner in 1977, you know. What a terrible fate. This card has haunted me for a long time. Thoroughly creased all-star. No story to go with it. Except that worst-case-Randy-meet-my-ass speculation. Because of The Crease, I haven't even been able to admire his free-flowing Afro or the Padres' mustard-and-chocolate uniform. It's really an iconic card. And then there are those who have asked "WHAT HAPPENED TO THAT CARD?" "I have no...

This is probably better suited to my other blog. But that's what makes the 1975 Topps set so great. There is so much awesomeness in this set that it can't be contained to one blog! The aspect of the '75 set that I wanted to mention today concerns the All-Time Fan Favorites set that Topps put out from 2003-05. I've mentioned this before: it needs to come back . It was a great set. Plus, it can take a lot of the credit for my return to card collecting. When I started collecting cards again in 2004 my only goal was to complete the 1975 set. But the act of collecting perked my interest in cards that were sold in stores. I wasn't interested in the current card set of the day (2004 Topps still makes me sleepy). But I picked up a couple packs of '04 Fan Favorites and I was hooked. I tried to complete the entire set that year, but fell short. I'm still short a number of cards. But it's my goal some day to finish off that set as well as the 2003 and 2005 Fa...

I went to Target today to see if there were any 2010 cards. I kill myself. What was I thinking? So, instead I'll post about vintage. Besides, vintage cards will explain the pile of meat in the photo: I am really missing summer right about now. I miss baseball, the lake, vacations, everything. One of the best things about the summer is the food. Burgers. Potato salad. Corn on the cob. Ice cream sundaes. Great stuff. One my favorite summer meals of all is very simple: barbecue chicken, macaroni salad and deviled eggs. Barbecue is fantastic. I love it all. But I've never been one of those guys to buy the massive grill and spend half of July and August inhaling mesquite. I cooked on a grill both indoors and outdoors when I was in college, and that pretty much cured me. But I have noticed that baseball players from the 1970s are HOOKED on barbecue. Of course, it all started with Boog . He was the first former ballplayer I knew that got on the barbecue kick. And now, ...