Night Owl Cards

Last night I was phenomenally bored with everything taking place on the internet. Bored by the blogs. Bored by Twitter. Bored by baseball. Just a whole lot of bleah . I wanted to attribute it to the fact that it's the baseball offseason. But normally that doesn't faze my interest in baseball cards. I'm just as interested in cards in November as I am in the middle of June. And the fact that there is very little new card product at this time of year doesn't affect my mood either. I can pick up those repacks of cards from the '80s and be just as happy, if not happier. So, I don't know what it was that made me feel that way. But to help chase away the card blues, I picked up my 1,800-page Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards for a little light reading. Actually I was trying to find some of the obscure cards that people have been sending me lately. You folks are really making me work. I didn't find much of what I was looking for, but I did come across ...

Dick Williams is remembered as the manager who led the Impossible Dream Red Sox to the World Series title and the Swingin' A's to back-to-back championships in 1972-73. He's remembered for his hell-raising, do-what-I-say leadership style that worked with the Expos and Padres, too. But Williams was a Bum first. He was a Boy of Summer who hit .309 in 36 games for that Dodger team in 1952. He is immortalized in Roger Kahn's book as a single, free-spirit who joined Kahn in a night of ogling dancing girls during the sportswriter's year of covering the team. Williams, as you know, died Thursday at age 82. The Hall of Famer is the latest of several Brooklyn Dodgers from that period to pass away in the last year. Duke Snider. Clyde King. Billy Loes. Ken Lehman went before him. And, of course, Jackie, Furillo and Hodges are long gone. Each time a Bum leaves this earth, you'll hear or read baseball fans say, with a note of resignation, "that's too bad. T...

(March sucks. Is it April yet?... And on that note, it's time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 103rd in a series): When a baseball legend dies, you do what you can as a card collector. You find the finest cards you have of the player and show them off, figuring the greatness of the card will reflect the greatness of the subject. That's what I did when The Duke of Flatbush died on Sunday. But there are lots cards of Snider that didn't appear on 1949 Bowman stock or were even created in the 1950s. There are cards of Snider worth pennies. Leafing through the giant Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards, I became all too aware of how many cards exist of Edwin Donald Snider. Many of them aren't worth much at all. I have some of those cards, Not a lot. But they are among my favorites, and there is something kind of a cool about having a card of a '50s superstar that is worthless ... monetarily speaking anyway. Here are just a few: This is one of se...