Night Owl Cards

Peter from Baseball Every Night offered to send me this fine 2019 Topps card of Ross Stripling. It's much appreciated and I'll answer him back with some cards around about late May (you think I'm joking, I am not). I like this card because although I touted the benefits of being able to see the full ballplayer on yesterday's post, closeups are fun if they're presented in an interesting way. This is. It's horizontal, the glove is giving off that 3D vibe and Stripling is making funny faces. My guess, though, is that Stripling doesn't (or won't) like this card when he saw (sees) it. Let's flip to the back for why: That's a rundown of Stripling's many, many stats -- it's so nice to have complete stats on the back of baseball cards again. If you filter out all the minor league stats, you will find that Stripling has three years of major league experience, in 2016, 2017 and 2018. His earned run averages for those three years, as ...

This week I've been the poor sap filling in for someone on vacation. You never hear about the poor sap. You always hear about the people on vacation. "I'm on vacation!" they scream on the social media forum of their choice. And everyone responds with a like or a heart or a hashtag and they all feel good that someone out there has beaten this oppressive system that we've constructed for ourselves if only for a brief period of time. Except for the poor sap. There are no likes or hashtags from them. He or she simply plods forward, in real life, bearing more of the burden than normal, if only for a brief period of time. Fortunately, the vacationer returns today and things can revert back to normal (until I go on vacation). It's just in time, too, because yesterday I was so drained that I actually thought "I really need to get my butt back to a card aisle." It's been awhile. Under normal circumstances this year, I wouldn't consider ...