Night Owl Cards

  My place of residence hit a new low for degrees below zero early Saturday morning. Don't get excited, that's for the season, I've experienced 40 below previously, though thankfully that was back in the '90s.   But 22 below does cause you to ponder a few things. That is, until two days later when you get hit with a foot-and-half of snow and the brain switches into physical labor mode.   One of those things I pondered was a sometimes series I've done on this blog, and by "sometimes" I mean twice. I did it once in 2014 and once in 2021 . I would've done a few more of them but I tend to forget. Probably all that snow.   The series is based on what I used to do with my cards as a youngster: I'd go through an entire set and determine which players had the worst career batting averages. I'd place the 10 worst on the floor and then slide the cards over as a new contender entered the bottom 10.   So in 2014 I determined the bottom 10 for 1979 Topps. ...

Look at that picture. Doesn't that look like the dumbest thing you've ever seen? Not only is it ridiculous that people are actually playing baseball -- everyone knows that nobody plays baseball anymore -- but look at all those fans! Why on earth are they congregating so closely? And those fellows lined up neatly on the field! Not one of them looks like they're six feet apart. But the most ridiculous, ludicrous, preposterous, nonsensical aspect of this card -- and no, it's not that American Idol finalist singing the National Anthem on the video screens -- is that the weather is sunny and beautiful and the perfect conditions for playing games outside. Nobody is playing games outside -- or doing anything really -- around here. It snowed last night. I don't mean a few flurries. I mean cover-your-lawn-and-your-lawn-furniture-apparently-put-out-way-too-soon snow. Figure-out-where-the-heck-the-snowbrush-went snow. This is what we get on May 8th. I saw the f...

That is the outdoor temperature where I live as I write this. It's a conversation starter, but it's really no big deal. We north country folk can depend on the temperature plummeting to this number or below just about every winter. You deal with it for a few days, then it gets warmer, and maybe you deal with it again later in the winter. On you go. The most amusing part is seeing how other parts of the country handle that same cold front. In those parts, it's maybe 18 degrees and oh, what a crisis. This also happens during a snowstorm. The more populated portions of the Northeast will get 6-8 inches and they've been "hammered." Meanwhile, the lake effect machine in the north country will stir up maybe 2-to-3 feet in a 24-hour period almost every winter, and we're a mere chuckle on the Weather Channel. No state of emergency, no run on gas and food staples. It's just Friday here. In fact, today I went outside without a coat. I had to let the dog...