Night Owl Cards

  I'm not sure where I got this post idea, it's possible it came from Nick's blog , but the spark from wherever made me wonder about switch-hitters and cards. How easy was it to find separate cards of a switch-hitter hitting from both sides of the plate, or at least posing as both a left-handed batter and right-handed batter? My guess was it's probably pretty easy. And in researching, I found that it's very easy. Just to have a frame of reference, I found this article from three years ago, presenting a lineup of the best switch-hitters in MLB history. Then I went to work going through my collection. Even in this era of being able to find almost any card image on TCDB, etc., I still would rather pull cards from my collection when I can. Yeah, it takes longer and, oh, the putting back , but I'm a slave to tradition.   Here is a look at the team (remember, I didn't pick this team) and a card of each player as a lefty and righty swinger:     Left field: Tim Ra...

I think I've figured out a temporary work-around with my temperamental scanner that will allow me to scan items until I can get a new one, or at least fix the current one. So you should be seeing freshly-scanned cards in the posts to come. But meanwhile, I'm taking advantage of a post by Shoebox Legends a week or so ago in which he cleared out his scan folder of images and magically created new content! I can't think of any more perfect time to create such a post than when your scanner is on the blink! Normally, I don't have a lot of leftover scans (I certainly don't have all the spare autographs and fancy stuff I saw in Fuji's "I Just Had These Lying Here" post). Pretty much everything that I scan winds up showing up on Night Owl Cards. But I managed to scare up a few images that will generate some words from me. Some of these pictures were dedicated to posts that never were, some never made a post I wrote. I guess they were cut for time ....

This exercise is getting more and more difficult each year. But P-town Tom has issued another year-end contest challenge and I can't resist a quick post idea. What is my favorite card issued in 2017? Hmmm. I haven't bought much 2017 product, just a sampling of each brand, basically. And while I won't bag on everything issued this year -- except for you, Topps flagship -- there is almost nothing made available this past year that stood out for me. I'm a Dodger fan, so it would make sense that in the year of the Dodgers reaching the World Series, my favorite would be related to that. But nothing is jumping out. I probably should have bought a ToppsNow card of the Dodgers celebrating their NLCS win, that would have been smart right about now. But I didn't. Cody Bellinger was rookie of the year in 2017 but my favorite Bellinger card isn't any of the ones with a rookie logo on it. It's his minor league issue card from his time at Triple A Oklahoma Cit...

The Dodgers are cleaning up, on the field and off, and I'm posting about yesterday's news. That's how I roll. I think you know by now. I had planned to run an updated "Most Hall of Famers" post once the 2017 class was announced during the winter. But I promptly forgot about it until the Hall of Fame induction ceremony took place yesterday. The last dozen or so years I have watched the induction ceremony religiously. But yesterday I missed most of it. I think it's because most of the players that I grew up with, who are eligible for voting, have been inducted already. The classes are now starting to move completely into '90s ballplayers, which doesn't interest me nearly as much. The lone exception yesterday, of course, was Tim Raines. I was a teenager when Raines reached the major leagues. I followed his career through the '80s. He was part of the stolen base generation of the '60s, '70s and '80s. So, in honor of Raines' ...