Night Owl Cards

Big day tomorrow. A full slate of football to watch as usual, plus Game 5 of the World Series and ... oh, yeah, we're supposed to hand out candy to kids for four hours.   Halloween on a Sunday means I can't hide behind my "I have to work" excuse for avoiding the parade of urchins scrambling up my porch. I like the little dudes (except the ones who yank the door open), there's just so many of them. I think that's how it will happen anyway. With last year's COVID Halloween, it's difficult to know what to expect. But I'm anticipating many candy addicts. As I've mentioned before, people come in from the country, park their tractors on the street and send the kids out to demand treats from suburbanites. So between sports and squirts -- and no daughter around to do our door-attendant bidding -- I'll be too busy to blog tomorrow. This is my Halloween post. I remember well being a kid on Halloween, carting an orange plastic pumpkin around. My main ...

Way back in 1981, when a portly unknown from Mexico was winning game after game for the Dodgers, everyone was trying to learn what they could about this Fernando Valenzuela. It wasn't easy back then. There was the language barrier, of course. And all we had were newspapers, some magazines and a couple of national TV games a week. It's a wonder "Fernandomania" got started in the first place. One thing I gathered from those early reports was that Valenzuela liked to eat. Here are some samplings: From Sports Illustrated, March 1981: "Language has not been an impediment to Valenzuela's appetite. 'I go to a restaurant and point at what I want on the menu,' he says. 'I have been surprised, but never disappointed.'" From People, May 1981: "Fernando is capable of looking out for himself. 'Steaks, salads, avocados, Mexican food, carne asada, beans, rice -- I do like to eat,' he declares." From the Washington Post,...

I have wanted a pizza-product baseball card ever since Shakey's Pizza produced a few different sets during the mid-1970s. I had a mild obsession with Shakey's Pizza as a kid. One of the chain restaurants sat next to the Dairy Queen where we went as a family. We'd sit in the parking lot and eat our sundaes or Buster Bars and I'd turn to  look out the back window at Shakey's Pizza. The two places shared the same parking lot! Couldn't we just go over there and look inside? That Shakey's closed down eventually and just the Dairy Queen was left. But later I learned that Shakey's Pizza was producing baseball cards -- albeit far, far away -- and I thought they'd be a nice way to remember that restaurant I never entered. I never did get any Shakey's cards (the above image was pilfered). And there are far fewer Shakey's Pizza restaurants now than there were when I was a kid. And food-issue cards? Well, with the unholy alliance between Topps a...

I love this card so much that I bumped it up in the received card package rotation -- setting off all of my OCD bells and alarms in the process -- to feature it here. It arrived from the Junior Junkie , get a good look because I probably won't feature the rest of his cards until your favorite NFL team's season is left for dead (sorry, it's the ROTATION, man). As you can see, it is a rookie card of Eric Karros -- presented by a sausage company. I have plenty of food issue cards. Hell, I have food issue cards from sausage companies. I adore them all. But this one struck a chord in a way that it has never been struck before. Sure, I've often wondered why I give these particular non-licensed cards a pass while I practically spit on Panini's non-licensed offerings. But this time I thought "what the hell is wrong with me? Why do I love these so much and hate Panini's so much? Am I THAT particular? Am I THAT fickle?" And I determined rather quickly...

As a few of you know, COMC is holding several "challenges" to help recatalog their inventory of cards. I'm more than happy to help COMC because, from the beginning, I've found it the easiest way for me to obtain cards online. Also, I get the feeling that Beckett doesn't like COMC very much, so that's more inspiration for me. The challenges are pretty tedious -- name the team, name the card number, etc. -- but if I have the time, and I turn on my tunes, I can whip through a handful of challenges in a single sitting until insane boredom hits me. The best part of the challenges is you accumulate store credit by doing them. Before I knew it, I had a healthy amount of "found money," and I decided to go shopping. I spent a little bit on my still unannounced card contest winner and then determined how I'd divide up the rest. I decided I would devote them to Dodger cards that I'd never think of to buy online, or cards that I didn't eve...