Night Owl Cards

My wife announced Sunday that she and my daughter were off to Rite Aid to get some makeup supplies. Now, whenever I hear the word "Rite Aid," only one thing comes to mind: "The last drug store on earth that sells baseball cards." OK, I realize there are other drug stores out there that probably sell baseball cards. But there were a lot more of them when I was younger. In fact, for the first, oh, 28 years of my life, the only places you could find baseball cards were drug stores and groceries. Every drug store sold cards. I could name a half dozen off the top of my head, and if you give me 5 minutes to think, I could name you about 10 more. It was just a fact of life. Open a drug store. Stock it with medicine, cigarettes and baseball cards. But, now, I can name only one. Rite Aid. So, immediately, I said, "they have cards there!" And I gave my wife some money to bring back a pack to satisfy my daily ripping urge. She came home with more than a p...

If you've been reading this blog for at least a couple of years, you know that every year at this time I take a trip to a guy's home and rummage through his file cabinet for a couple of hours. I know that sounds questionable. It's not. It's part of a giant yard sale, spanning three towns, and his garage happens to feature a file cabinet -- more like a card catalog cabinet -- packed with baseball cards. Each of the last four years I have made a pilgrimage to his garage. It is one of five major card stops every year -- the other four are card shows. It's tremendous fun. I love sifting through cards and you could stay there forever if you wanted. One year his wife even asked if I wanted something to drink. I didn't get anything spectacular each year. Most of the cards were from 1985-95. But every once in awhile, I would hit a card from the '60s. And his inventory from the junk wax period was so complete, that you could always find the oddest of the oddba...