Night Owl Cards

  I have the latest selection of freebies from Johnny's Trading Spot that have been sitting for a little bit waiting for me to say something profound about them. But these aren't profound cards, they're pretty nondescript, with the only thing they have in common is that they're modern and most of them are needs. So when nothing springs to mind, you know what that means on NOC. It's countdown show time! Yes, that thing that is all too easy but has been a staple of this blog since the beginning. It will never not be fun to me, and those who don't like rankings just aren't fun. It's what I do. So let's see how these nine cards stack up. 9. Grant Holmes, 2016 Bowman Platinum This is a dupe. And Holmes is still toiling in the minors seven years later. That was not the plan and all the cards of Holmes in 2016 is proof. 8. Kenta Maeda, 2016 Bowman Platinum Also a dupe and also a 2016 sensation. But Maeda actually made the majors and is still there, althoug...

When I was in college I took a journalism interviewing class. Taught by a former reporter and editor at The Buffalo News with a sarcastic/sadistic streak, it was the most challenging and probably the most influential class of my entire college career. I likely have never encountered interviews in my professional life as difficult as three separate ones I did in that class. Anyway, one of the students in that class was your stereotypical bleach blonde of the late 1980s. My professor liked sports and so did many of the males in the class. She looked at sports with disgust and went on a brief rant about them one time, but fortunately I can't recall her words. Obviously, as someone who blogs about sports and whose work life and free time is about sports, I didn't agree with her. I still don't. However ... That's not to say I can't enjoy a world without sports. In the past three years or so I've gravitated a little more toward nonsports cards. I've...

This is the time of the year that folks trot out their year-end reviews and top-10 lists. It's been going on for ages and I've always looked forward to the retrospectives. As a youngster, I couldn't wait to see Sports Illustrated or Time magazine as they reviewed the year that was. And on the radio, Casey Kasem or some other knock-off radio show would count down the top songs of the year. The top 30 or 40 list would balloon to a top 100 list and it was glorious. If you got lucky, it would be the end of the decade and not only would they count down the top songs of the year but the top songs of the decade. During the early '80s, lists became a huge fad and books of lists suddenly appeared on bookstore shelves (you remember bookstores, right?). I received a couple of those books and ate them up. Then Late Night With David Letterman started his nightly Top 10 Lists and sports programs like CNN Sports Tonight and ESPN started regularly issuing lists and countdowns and,...