Night Owl Cards

  One of the most frustrating things to me is that no matter how much you prepare, research, take advice, it feels like there's no moving forward for very long. It's one step ahead and two steps back.   Maybe this is the point I'm at, actually moving out of middle age, or maybe it's just a period of time that will go away, but I'm dealing with more than a couple firsts in my life that aren't very pleasant.  This is why the hobby means so much to me. There are fun firsts popping off all the time. Every new arrival is a first. I just added the 1969 Topps Gil Hodges and Joe Pepitone to my collection. Welcome newbies! (Actually, this isn't the first time Hodges has been in my collection, I foolishly got rid of my original copy -- don't remember how).   So that's a fun first and I'm eager to recall other fun -- or semi-fun -- firsts to take the edge off of these present-time dumb ol' firsts. So here's the sixth edition of Firsts, where I rand...

The post I wrote the other day got me thinking about holding onto the memories before they disappear. And that caused me to remember the "firsts" posts that I've written. I haven't done one of those in almost three years so it's about time I added to the series . If you've forgotten what those are about (join the club), it's where I go through random "firsts" in my life, usually stuff that happened in my first 20 years because that's when most of the firsts occur.   Here we go:     First All-Star Game that I watched   The first All-Star Game I watched was in 1977, which was played at Yankee Stadium, newly renovated at the time. The National League won that game 7-5. They scored four runs in the top of the first inning.   So that follows that the first All-Star Game home run I saw was by Joe Morgan since he hit one in the first at-bat of the game against Jim Palmer. In a sign of the preference for starters at the time, Palmer stayed in the ga...

  I did my usual blog post ritual Tuesday, writing it up in the early afternoon and then setting a publish time for a few hours in the future.   The post did publish and it appeared on everyone's blog rolls, but it didn't show up on the blogger dashboard/reading list. That's happened periodically over the years and eventually it does show up. I waited and waited and it still didn't. It's on the reading list now if you go back a day or so on the dashboard, but I have a feeling some readers missed it.   So let's see what happens with this one. There's a weird synchronicity going on with the 1974 Topps set right now. Maybe that's not the right description but that's what I'm calling it.   For starters, it's the 50th anniversary of the first set I ever saw, the first cards I ever owned. I've written about that lots and have mentioned that it's the anniversary of my first baseball cards several times this year. One of the more recent ones...

  The first Topps cards of the season are scheduled to hit the market a week from Wednesday. I don't know what this means for me. I'd like to acquire a few packs off the retail shelf as has been my tradition for 45 years but we'll see how many hobby hypsters are still out there. Before the month is out I'm guessing you'll see some 2022 cards on this here site. And with that my posting of my very first card of the season. It's been pretty easy to catalog my first card of the season since I started this blog. I've posted it pretty much every year. But what about all those years before? That's a lot tougher. For some years, I know exactly what the first card I pulled was -- it was an epic moment in my history. For other years, I can only guess. Some I have zero idea. For example, the 1976 Topps Steve Carlton I know was one of the first in my collection. That beat-up creased thing was still in my collection decades later until I finally upgraded. But I don...