Night Owl Cards

  I've mentioned before that work has been even more of a time-suck than previously. It's infringing on blog posting and I don't think I can go to my bosses and say this is the reason why something's got to change, but something's got to change!   The first three days this week I worked more than the usual eight hours (plus a couple hours on Sunday) and I was prepared to do the same Thursday. I had a story interview arranged before I started my shift and I thought, "welp, I just added more hours that I won't get paid for!"   But it didn't turn out that way. Thanks to some general panicking about the weather, every single sports event in our area was canceled last night. So I ended leaving work at 10:45 p.m! That never happens. Usually I'm there until 12-12:30 and on busier nights (like tonight), I'll close up shop around 1:30 a.m.   So I got to leave work early. That's a red-letter day around here! (I don't have much). But I should...

For someone who is as revered as a part of Red Sox postseason lore as Dave Roberts, there are not a lot of Dave Roberts Red Sox cards. I had to swipe this image of Roberts from the Topps Red Sox World Series set because I don't have any Roberts Red Sox cards. I have many, many, many cards of Roberts playing for the Dodgers though. What is more interesting for the respective managers of the two World Series teams is that it's even more difficult to find cards of the two managing for their respective teams. Go on, go to your collection and try to find a manager card of Roberts with the Dodgers or Cora with the Red Sox. You'll be searching a long time. Thanks to the licensing hysteria that just gets worse and worse by the year, Topps doesn't produce cards of managers anymore, not even for sets like Heritage, which pays tribute to designs of sets that had manager cards. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr. So anyway, the latest giveaway post is appearing barely an hour away from ...

Moving through year 5 on this blog, I feel like I am constantly repeating myself. So if I've mentioned this before, feel free to move on to the next blog. You won't hurt my feelings. I have this very loose rule about what makes an athletic activity a "sport." I know there is already a definition for "sport" that goes like this: "An activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others." That's all well and good, but it's too vague for my needs. I oversee a section of a publication in which the word "Sports" is printed in big, red letters at the top of the page. And what you find on that page and the pages inside are indeed "sports." Nothing else. But there is a limited amount of pages and space. And every day it seems like someone is inventing a new sport. Periodically we have certain folks affiliated with those more obscure sports demanding coverage. ...

I don't how many of you go back through your old blog posts. I end up doing it a lot myself, mostly for researching. Often I wince over what is written. It's not that I don't like the writing. It's mostly related to how ignorant I sound about cards. When I start reading those old posts, it becomes obvious that what this blog is really good at is explaining how little I know about cards. "I have no idea what this is," "can someone out there clue me in on what this is?", "clueless Night Owl here, don't know what this set is called." In a world of blogs and tweets in which people talk about how much they know and deride others about how little they know, I'm constantly pointing the finger at myself. I've got to stop that. But the fact is, there's a lot I don't know about cards, and sometimes I gain knowledge at a later date, and don't go back to the original post and comment or update with the new information...

I have always loved this card. The 2009 Topps set contained quite a few great photos and some cards got overlooked. This is one of them. But it's not good enough to make the "Best Dodger Card Ever Made" countdown. Yeah, remember that ? Four months ago, I announced that I would present a countdown here on the best Dodger cards in my collection. I'd find 100 of the greatest and then get all Casey Kasem on your upside and not stop 'til I got to the top. Then I forgot about it for a few months. Then I remembered it again. And it kept nagging, and nagging, and nagging, and nagging me. Until I said ... ALL RIGHT, I'LL DO IT!!!!!! JUST TOP TALKING, OK???????? Heh. So I went through all 12,000 or so Dodgers in the collection and came up with a list. Then I whittled down the list some more. I'm now down to 108 cards that I like quite a bit. Meaning that I have to trim eight more cards in what is sure to be a tortuous, agonizing exercise.  (...

If I made a concerted effort to focus on it, I'm pretty sure I could come up with an embarrassing moment for every day of my life. Fortunately, I am not a teenager anymore, so whether I am embarrassed is not something that I obsess over or will be the ruin of me. But it's true, embarrassing things still do happen. A lot. Fuji's latest question asked me to share with everyone an embarrassing sports memorabilia story from my past. Well, I'm afraid I can't do that. Because I'm going to share an embarrassing sports memorabilia story from my present. As in "today." I'm telling ya, every day, man. Ev-er-y-day. You see the Rafael Furcal Icons jersey card scanned here? See the big ol' wrinkle in the middle? That arrived in the mail today. I bid on that card. I won that card. I was proud that I won that card. I was proud that I won it and that it was free. I was the man. A relic card? Of a player on my favorite team? For free? Greatnes...

No, I haven't received the Manny Ramirez card already. The One-Card Challenge doesn't work that quickly. It's just that the usual has happened. I should never announce my set progress until I put that set into a binder. The binder reveals what the want list doesn't -- what cards I am REALLY missing from the set. After placing my 2011 Allen and Ginter cards in a binder yesterday, I discovered to my horror (I have experienced this horror about 57 times, so I really shouldn't be horrified anymore), that there were two other blank pockets besides the Ramirez card at #316. The second blank pocket -- #101 -- I filled easily, to my relief. Peter Bourjos was sitting in my dupes stack as I suspected. I was just happy that I hadn't traded it off. The other blank pocket houses card #77. Of course, a Dodger card. This card is already in my Dodger binder, which is why I'm not going to the One Card Challenge post and removing my Ramirez request. I stil...

It's been more than a week since the end of the World Series and I'm still pouting. No, not because the Cardinals won. I'm over that. It could have been much, much worse. What I'm still stewing over are the ex-Dodgers on the Cardinals. I know it's been awhile since Edwin Jackson pitched for the Dodgers, but it was only in 2010 when Ryan Theriot was being his scrappy self for L.A. and just this past summer when Rafael Furcal was finding new ways to hop on the disabled list with the Dodgers. Were they that crucial to the team that the Cardinals ended up winning the whole thing? And if not -- which I suspect is the case -- then how'd they get so lucky? When is a random assortment of "nothing specials" going to formulate on the Dodgers' roster and bring my team a championship? I'm getting more and more impatient that the Dodgers haven't won a title since 1988. Yeah, I know. Cubs fans. Blah, blah. But there really aren't a ton of t...

It's amusing to me that the last two Dodgers I needed to complete the Topps Series 2 base team set were two shortstops for the Dodgers who are no longer shortstops for the Dodgers. Of course, there's Rafael Furcal, seen earlier today making nice-nice to Albert Pujols during St. Louis infield practice. Be careful Albert, he breaks easily. And there's Ivan DeJesus Jr., who's been squeezed out of his shortstop position by the Dodgers' new shortstop, Dee Gordon. DeJesus is now playing second base for Triple A Albuquerque, which is good because L.A. really needs a second baseman who comes with a future. Both of these cards arrived last week from madding at Cards on Cards  (that's right, a Cardinals fan sent me a card of a player who is now a member of his team). All that's left for me now from Series 2 are some of those blasted Dodger inserts, and of course some diamond parallels. But it won't be enough for me to buy anymore Series 2, unless Topps h...

Unless Ned does something Ned-like, the deal between the Cardinals and Dodgers is virtually done and Rafael Furcal will be hauling his 476-year-old body to St. Louis. Raffy spent six seasons with L.A., which translates into roughly 1.45 years when you measure it in Furcal's time present on the field. A friendly warning, St. Louis fans: when Furcal is playing, you will be convinced that he is the most amazing player in all of baseball and puzzled why he is not getting his due. But when he's not playing -- and, damn, an entire country could go into and out of and back into a recession in the time he spends on the DL -- he is a frustrating, infuriating, old, old, old man, made out of glass and put together with model airplane glue. But Raffy was destined to be gone by the offseason at the latest, so I just hope we can get someone out of this deal who can turn into a starting catcher, or third baseman, or second baseman, or first baseman. I think we're going to be ...

( Note from the night owl: This is an actual new post. It is not a post you have read before. Blogger is somewhat back to normal. ... We now return you to your regularly scheduled post -- scheduled to publish Thursday night, that is). I received this "postcard" from Thorzul in a trade a week or two ago. I use postcard in quotes because although it's postcard size, the back is thoroughly blank. I don't think you can send this card through the mail in the traditional fashion, unless you want postal goons at your front door the next day. Thorzul had no idea what the card is or when it was issued, so he thought I might be able to figure it out. You know, because I'm a Koufax fan, and a Dodger fan, and have gobs and gobs of free time on my hands. Heh. But I enjoy a good research project. Besides, I didn't think it would take me much time to figure out. After all I do have this: You might be saying that this is a book about baseball cards and wha...

By next month, I will experience something for the first time in 28 years that most people experience every single week. I will experience a weekend as everyone else knows it. My hours are changing at work. For the first time since I started my career in sports journalism, I will be off on Saturdays and Sundays. I know this is no big deal for most people, but in my job, you just don't get Saturdays off. Unless I've been on vacation, I've worked just about every Saturday for the last 20-plus years. If you throw in the part-time jobs I worked after getting out of high school -- all of which required you to work most Saturdays -- then I haven't enjoyed Saturdays off on a consistent basis since my senior year in high school. I tried to pinpoint the period when I enjoyed a weekend as about 80-90 percent of the country does. I came up with early July of 1983. That's the last time when Saturday didn't mean one of the busiest days of the week. So, this, obv...