Night Owl Cards

I've been eagerly awaiting the binders that Kenny from Torren' Up Cards had promised me a couple of months ago. I know that sounds sad. What has my life become? Waiting by the mail box for something I can pick up down the street for a couple of bucks? But ever since I've gotten my card room in order, with everything in their place on their respective shelves, I've come to terms with exactly how many binders I need and that I don't have enough of them. I counted the total amount of binders with cards in them. I have 91. Yeah, that sounds like a lot. It's not enough. I believe I need about 100 to have everything worth storing in a binder stored in a binder. I could probably comfortably store all that without having overflow issues. But nine more binders amounts to money I don't want to spend (the bargain-basement binders at the dollar store or wherever fall apart too easily for my liking). So free binders in the mail? Yes, please! Kenny sent me...

I'm not sure if everyone connected the dots in the comments in yesterday's post about the Ron Cey-signed birthday card I received in the mail, so let me do that here. The card, indeed, was created by a blogger, my good bud, Rod of Padrographs . He orchestrated the whole thing. He created the art for the front, the penguin and the owl, and the inside. He then shipped it off to Cey's address in Southern California and wrote him a little story about me and my blog. He said that I write a post about Ron Cey each day on his birthday and gave him the link to my website. He told him when my birthday was and asked Cey to sign the card and then send it to the address Rod provided. Cey mailed the envelope a week ago Monday and it arrived at my home yesterday, well ahead of time for my birthday. That's eight days to get from Portland, Ore., to Woodlawn Hills, Ca., to Watertown, N.Y. But Cey is the most prompt TTM signer that I know (not that I'm versed in that stuff),...

Since this is the one day out of the year when I get to decide things that I want to decide, I decided I didn't want to write much on the blog today. But before I leave for the day, remember the quandary I presented a couple posts ago about those Bazooka sticker cards? Well, with a little help from the comments on that post, it occurred to me -- duh! -- they're stickers! So, I added one other version of these cards that was in the binder, looking very awkward with Phillies and Padres and Braves on it ... ... and then I did this: I feel much better now. To all the dads out there, I hope your Father's Day is also filled with righting wrongs and sticking stickers. Enjoy!

I'm a team collector. And that means I do things like this to myself. I put cards like this in my binders, which are supposed to be devoted to Dodgers and nothing else. I reconcile the sight of Tigers and Braves and Cardinals appearing in my binder by blaming the card companies for their diabolical schemes in which they put players from opposing teams on the SAME CARD. It places the guilt on their shoulders and absolves me of my own guilt for having non-Dodgers enclosed in a binder of such honor. But team collectors know this scenario well, and both I and they have written many posts about this particular predicament. And that's why, in a matter of days, I received the above card from Max of Starting Nine , as well as this card ... ... and then these two cards from Paul of Paul's Random Stuff ...    I'm telling you, Bazooka was evil. But both Max and Paul know that being the completist that I am, I'm required to have these cards. Even if a Dodge...

(Happy Halloween, kiddies. Welcome to the day that I call "just another work night." Instead of handing out candy to children both cute and rude or hitting the party circuit, I'll be toiling under artificial light at my usual post. Have a Reese's on me. This is Cardboard Appreciation, the 191st in a series): Don't you just hate those collectors who seem to have a card for every occasion? "Oh, it's 'Arbor Day,' here's my card of a ballplayer climbing a tree! Hey, it's April Fool's Day, here are all my Milton Bradley cards!" I admit, I try to be that collector, periodically. But it's only periodic because most of the time I can't find an appropriate card or cards. I just don't have that varied of a collection. I also didn't collect much in the 1990s, which is a definite drawback when trying to match a card with any occasion. Trust me. But every once in awhile, my love for Wacky Packages pays off. This one ...

When I had finally come to grips with the fact that there were three baseball card sets to collect instead of one in 1981, I turned my attention to what each company had to offer in conjunction with their baseball cards. Topps had gum, of course. Inedible yet comforting pink slabs. They were always good for a lick or two before you tossed them on someone's lawn. Donruss had puzzle pieces. Yeah, right. I'm going to assemble a puzzle. Puzzles were schoolwork without being in school. No thanks. Fleer, clearly, had the best "perk" in their packs. They had stickers. This wasn't a fair fight at all. I was aware of Fleer's stickers from the previous year. In 1980, you could get team logo stickers -- with a piece of bubble gum -- five to a pack. On the reverse side was a drawing for each World Series from 1940-79. I was hooked. A historical illustration of each World Series game? Even as a youngster, that was right up my alley. I immediately forgot about th...

Satire. It's everywhere. Even in the 1970s, it was everywhere. In newspaper editorial cartoons. On Johnny Carson. In a new late-night comedy show called "Saturday Night Live." But as a kid, who didn't understand newspapers yet and who couldn't stay up that late (who even knew that a TV worked at midnight?), there were only two places where we could find satirical content. At the corner store and at my grandmother's house. My grandmother's was a haven for satire and parody in the form of the high holy trinity of humor magazines in the '70s: Mad, Cracked and Crazy. I believe Mad is the only one left standing. Now if you knew my grandmother, you'd know she didn't have a satirical bone in her body. She was a pleasant, quiet-spoken woman who baked cookies, watched birds and grew up on a farm. But her son -- my uncle -- operated a music studio in her home, providing piano and organ lessons to just about everyone musically incl...