Night Owl Cards

  I realize that I am fortunate to have a card room. Not every collector has one, in fact I didn't have one until three years ago, and I've been at this collecting thing for a long, long time. (My first packs weren't in '97 or in '87 or even in '77. Try 1975).   Inside that card room I have a card table and a card desk. I'm fortunate to have those, too. I have two binder shelves and a separate shelf cabinet for some card boxes. All very fortunate developments.   That's why I've been a bit concerned about my treatment of my room recently. Sure, some of the resulting mess was because I was upgrading some shelving (see photo above) and also launched a time-consuming giveaway.     But there's really no excuse for the clutter-fest on my card desk. I need to treat it better.   I know it doesn't look that messy. But that's deceptive. I'm losing cards, you guys, because of the way it looks. The bottom left third of the card desk is reserved f...

OK, I've decided that this is a "thing." "Match the Song Title" is a "thing" now. It's a series on this blog. I like it. I'm having fun with it. Two of these posts in two weeks means we are officially "an item." To recap, I find an album, I give you a list of the songs, and then I match a card to each of the song titles. It takes my enjoyment for baseball and music and mashes them up in simple, bite-size, semi-effortless chunks. It's easy, breezy fun. Last week I went with "El Camino," the latest effort by The Black Keys. Apparently, that was too modern for some people. I'm amused by that because I'm 47. I don't stump people with my youthfulness very often. But really, it's a terrific album. If you like driving rock, blues, all that stuff, you'll like the Black Keys. But let's go back to something that is in some older folks' consciousness. Let's go back to 1984. Van Halen was T...

When I am writing blog posts late at night, I almost always play music on my computer in the background. It helps me think. Although I am at an age where I should despise modern music, I don't. Not all of it anyway. I like a wide variety. But more often than not, I'll go back to the good ol ' days for my background tunes. And for me, that is the '80s, when I want to remember high school and college, and the '70s, when I want to remember childhood. So that's where the deaths of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett hit me, right in the middle of memories that I will always treasure. Michael Jackson's music was the soundtrack to my senior year in high school. "Beat It" was the anthem to the final four months before graduation, and freedom. You were nothing, and I mean nothing, if you didn't own the album "Thriller." You name a month in 1983 or 1984 and I can tell you what the hit Michael Jackson song was at that time. Farrah Fawcett wa...