Night Owl Cards

    I posted this card last night in response to a Twitter request to "post a baseball card." It seemed like an appropriate response that wasn't the freakin' Ripken F-face or '89 Junior card yet again. I hope everyone knows the '75 Rudy May by now, even if it's just by me mentioning it a couple dozen times. It's truly bizarre in the most wonderful way and all comes together as a happy accident, right down to May's mournful face. But what I keep thinking about when I see this card is "how did they get that logo so wrong?" The Yankees logo isn't that difficult to replicate. I remember trying to draw my own baseball cards as a kid, down to the logos on the hats. The Yankees logo wasn't an issue. Sure, it wasn't Cincinnati Reds easy but it wasn't that blasted Detroit Tigers logo either. Throw a few more brush strokes in there, English D. Here is the standard Yankees logo. A wide "N" with the end "legs" curv...

I recently received a handful of early 1960s Post cards from a couple of different folks. This is very cool because not long ago, I lamented that I didn't have any of these kinds of cards. Yet, just in the past year, several kind collectors have sent me some to admire up close and personal. Post cards, for whatever reason, seem to be an invitation for people to write on them. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because you had to cut them off a box and they already had a homemade feel, so you might as well add your own little mark. Both Post cards that mr. haverkamp sent me contained "updates." I can appreciate these because that automatically means the card has a back story. And any journalist worth his digital recorder loves a good back story. The first one I particularly admire because it's a true update. Whoever owned this card previously was so taken with Wills' MVP season of 1962 that he or she had to update Wills' 1961 Post card. The handwri...

(I'm tired, it's late. This is Cardboard Appreciation. The 53rd in a series): Everyone knows this card, right? It's an airbrushed masterpiece. And by masterpiece, I mean something so ineptly awful that it is worthy of a standing ovation. There have been many odes to this card. There's not much more I can add. But in an attempt to properly measure just how horribly wonderful the '75 Rudy May card is, here are some other "so-bad-it's-good moments" in other walks of life: The 1975 Topps Rudy May of film: "Plan 9 From Outer Space." The 1975 Topps Rudy May of music videos: Anything by the Spice Girls The 1975 Topps Rudy May of food: Either bacon or Captain Crunch with Crunch Berries. The 1975 Topps Rudy May of restaurants: "Hot Dog on a Stick." (purely for comic value) The 1975 Topps Rudy May of fashion: 1970's jumpsuits (see above). The 1975 Topps Rudy May of music: The Final Countdown," by Europe (the...

Alright, I've been threatening to do this for months, so I finally had an hour to kill and went through my cards to find 20 bespectacled candidates for "The Best Glasses in the History of Baseball Cards, the Sequel." The last countdown was Topps only. That didn't seem very fair to me. So I'm doing another countdown of non- Topps cards to see if the claim still holds up: does Kent Tekulve have the best glasses in the history of baseball cards?" He easily won last time, against what was probably much tougher competition. My non- Topps cards only go back to 1981, so there are none of the wacky frames from the '60s and '70s to challenge Tekulve . Also, I limited it to 20 players, instead of the 25 I went with the first time. I realize that no glasses countdown is complete without this card . But I don't have it, so as far as this countdown is concerned it doesn't exist. On with the countdown. Hope you enjoy it as much as the first: 20. Jeff ...