Night Owl Cards

I was scrolling through the Twitter this morning and coming across various May Day references as one does on the first of the fifth month. I'm not one to get into political meanings of holidays, I much prefer the whimsical, and fortunately there was some of that to see on the first of May, too. One referenced all the cards of baseball players with the last name of "May" that played during the 1960s and 1970s. That's always been cool to me and I pointed it out at least a couple of times on my 1975 Topps blog. Lee May, Milt May, Carlos May, Dave May, etc. But it didn't dawn on me until hours later that the Dodgers have their very own May celebrating his day today, and I have several of his cards from this year in my very own collection. I've already mentioned that Dustin May's Turkey Red card this year (above) is an early candidate for Card of the Year. That thing is phenomenal. And the same goes for other 2020 cards of his that I've acquired: ...

Yesterday, I was reminded again that Melvin Upton Jr. is a Blue Jay. It's difficult to keep track these days as players seem to be change scenery more and more often. And in this very "life goes too fast" year of 2016, I'm in a perpetual state of catch-up. It doesn't help that players like Melvin Upton Jr. are on a new team each year. It doesn't help that players like Melvin Upton Jr. didn't even have the same name he did less than two years ago! Yes, Melvin Upton Jr. started out on very different terms not so long ago. He played for a team formerly known as the Devil Rays. And Upton was formerly known as "B.J." That transition was marked by Topps in 2015, with a card in flagship and a card in Update: And a very helpful notation of the name change on the back of the Update card: That got me thinking about other name changes. I'm not referring to wholesale name changes, like David Arias transforming into David Ortiz,...