Night Owl Cards

Imagine pulling the likes of Fred Norman out of an insert set issued by Topps in 2020. You can't. It would never happen. Sure, Norman pitched for a World Series championship team the year before this card was issued, the 1976 Cincinnati Reds. He was the starter in Game 2 of the Series. But he was hardly a star. His stats were respectable but if anyone was going to mention pitching on the Reds -- and no one hardly did because the Big Red Machine operated at the plate, not the mound -- it would be Don Gullett or Jack Billingham. But still Kellogg's placed Norman at card No. 8 in its 57-card set in 1977. Another pitcher. Same set, same story. Doug Rau was a solid thrower for the Dodgers. I thought he was underrated and didn't get enough attention. He was definitely No. 4, though, on a starting rotation list that consisted of Don Sutton, Tommy John and Burt Hooton. Some days, even No. 5 hurler Rick Rhoden surpassed him. But do you see Sutton, John or Hooton i...

My daughter started sixth grade today. I keep telling her it's going to be all right. She doesn't believe me. Fifth grade left her a little gun shy. And I say, it's always like that. Fifth grade is painful and sixth grade is fun. At least that's the way it was for me. And then I throw the punchline at her: "It was fun because of baseball cards." That always gets an eye roll. But for me, that's what put sixth grade over the top. We had a lively teacher, we did all kinds of interesting activities. Contests. Auctions. Class elections. Free periods. For some reason, we were always sitting on top of our desks. I can't even remember using a text book in sixth grade, although I'm sure we did. On top of that, just about the entire class collected baseball cards. In fact, in 1977, it seemed like the whole world collected baseball cards. There was my friend down the street. And his friend. There was my other friend down the other street. And his rel...