Night Owl Cards

  I did this post last year and it got so many "more, more" requests that I'm doing it again this year. As a review, to avoid too much flack for actually daring to root for teams during the postseason for a whole entire post, I went with a "most, oldest, newest" post to recognize the annual October ritual. Yeah, I know I'm a little late. But I planned it like this. I don't know what that thing was that we just saw this week. I'm pretty much discounting the wild card as part of the postseason until they get it fixed. You got to win only two games? And teams that won their division are involved??? If you're going to have some crapshoot round, let the wild card teams knock heads, keep the guys who conquered everyone over six months out of it. Also, please, MLB, start reseeding after each round like pro leagues who know what they're doing.   So now we're at the division series, where things make sense somewhat -- though the Phillies should...

I wasn't around for the 1955 Dodgers. I missed the amazement, the astonishment of that day, when before fans' disbelieving eyes, the Dodgers were finally winning a World Series. "Wait 'Til Next Year" were just words in a book to me, devoted to an event that took place years before I knew what baseball was. "Next Year" -- 1955 -- was something I never experienced. But I had my own "Next Year". It didn't involve my favorite team, nor was it as long a wait. But it was exhilarating nonetheless. My attachment to the Kansas City Royals doesn't come from living in the Midwest or because their colors are similar to the Dodgers or because I want the Giants to lose when the World Series starts. It's not even because I remember the Royals' victory in the '85 Series. No, my attachment began in 1976 when the Royals took on the Yankees and were demoralized by Chris Chambliss' home run off of Mark Littell. The Royals then me...

Game 1 of the ALCS is already in the books, and I haven't even told you who will win the thing yet. Normally, I'd go through a careful position-by-position examination, presenting intricate mathematical formulas and graphs, simulated games and painfully detailed reasoning to come up with my prediction. But sadly, I need cards of the present day players for that, and I don't do enough modern collecting to showcase a card of each starting player on each team. What I can do is show you cards of each starting player from the last time each team was in a World Series. Let's face it. The only reason the masses are more interested in the ALCS matchup than the NLCS is because it's been so long since the Orioles and Royals did anything in the postseason. ... Well, that and the NLCS is filled with satan spawn. Outside of the Cubs and Pirates (and the teams that have never been to a World Series), no team has waited longer for another Series appearance than the ...

I'm writing this late because I fell into the trigonometry trap left by my daughter. Never again. So, as I write, the Royals are leading the A's 3-2, but that could all change and everything that I write from here on out may be obsolete in an hour or two. Oh, well. How often do I get to write about the Royals? The best thing about Kansas City playing a playoff game is it evokes memories of what I call my first collecting era. That era runs basically from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. Or, in other words, the same period of time that the Royals were winning playoff games and playing in the World Series. My glory card years were their glory years period. So I wanted to show some Royals card favorites from that period -- I kept it to 1976-85 since that is when K.C. began and ended its postseason run -- in recognition of this feat from what has always been one of my favorite teams. The trouble is, I've actually shown a lot of Royals cards from this time period a...