Night Owl Cards

  As a young baseball fan in the late 1970s, I really wanted the Baseball Encyclopedia.   The one I saw in advertisements in every baseball publication, The Sporting News, Baseball Digest, etc., had been just released in 1977 and it really drew my attention.   I eventually bought the softcover version of the Hy Turkin Baseball Encyclopedia from an ad in Baseball Digest. I don't remember how much it cost but it was a lot for me at the time, maybe $12.99 or something? When it arrived, I took it everywhere. I distinctly remember taking it across the street onto the porch of our lifelong friends, two girls who didn't care a wit about baseball, and just pouring over the details right there on the porch.   The thrill for me was having every player's record, every team's record right there for reference. I never had to wonder about this stat or that, I could pull it off the bookshelf built into my bed and read it right there in bed. And I did. Many times.   I don't kno...

I hate it when the teacher's right. I thought I didn't have any answer for Fuji in his latest contest question. He wanted to know what kind of memorabilia we collect besides cards. I don't collect any memorabilia besides cards. I stopped doing that when puberty hit. I have a thing about too much clutter (a gene inherited from my mom). At an early age I discovered the rush one gets when the garbage goes to the curb. Spring cleaning is a special kind of high that too many collectors never experience. So when I was young -- as I've mentioned a few times -- I collected Matchbox cars and stamps and bottle caps and coins and stuffed animals and baseball yearbooks and newspaper comic strips. Yes, I would cut out the daily Peanuts or Blondie or Hagar the Horrible from the paper and stack them up in desk drawer until I decided after four months that this was stupid and tossed them out. But I hadn't done any of that kind of collecting in years. Decades in fact. I j...