Night Owl Cards

  I kicked off what I thought might be a regular series last February with "Joy of a subset," hoping to regularly recognize a forgotten yearly component of Topps sets. I kind of forgot about it, as I often do, until reviewing my posts for the previous year. I'm always looking for post content so, let's revive this thing right away! This time I'm featuring a league leaders subset that is one of my favorites and rather unique in its own way, although the practice was actually started during the 1960s when I wasn't collecting. Is this the first time Topps used pyramid-style league leaders cards, in 1964? I don't have the time to do a full-scale investigation. Immediately prior to '64, Topps was preoccupied with floating heads leader cards. Pyramid leader cards continued through some '60s sets and into the 1970s with 1970 and 1971 and one example in 1973. Then Topps waited until 1976 to spring this on me: I was devoted instantly. I loved these. In loo...

The phrase "strange bedfellows" may be an odd one to apply to baseball or baseball cards. The phrase first appeared in Shakespeare's "The Tempest," in reference to a man who was shipwrecked and took shelter beside a sleeping sea monster. "Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows." But I am not referring to misery here. In fact, just the opposite. The "strange bedfellows" on this particular card were being honored for their exceptional year. It's a happy occasion. If there was any misery, the subjects kept it hid well, as Nolan Ryan and Steve McCatty led their respective leagues in earned run average. However, the combination of the two, 36 years in retrospect, is "strange". Ryan is a Hall of Famer, one of the greatest pitchers of all-time. McCatty played 10 years in the majors, struggled with injuries, and put together a single above-average season, enhanced by the 1981 strike year, to take the AL earned-run avera...

I am in the midst of my end-of-the-year filing of 2011 cards. Right now, I am in the middle of storing away the Topps base set. Unlike the last two years, Topps is not getting the binder treatment. It's going straight to the box. Filing the base set takes a little time as I've always got a bunch of those things. It can get a bit tedious, but I do find items that I didn't see the first time. It helps pass the time. For instance, why are there two Toppstown cards of Matt Garza? I know he switched teams last off-season. But still, it's Matt Garza. It took all the way to this year's update set to get a Toppstown card of Matt Kemp. If we're duplicating subjects on Toppstown cards, I think it's time to scale back on Toppstown. Speaking of scaling back, here is the point of this post: It's your friendly, familiar, flat-ass boring league leader card. Topps has been producing league leader cards in this style since its 2008 set. I just can...