Night Owl Cards

It seems strange to say in our phone culture, but there used to be a time when you didn't necessarily take pictures when you went to a baseball game. You certainly didn't take pictures of yourself, I know that. I own zero photographic proof of the first Major League Baseball game I ever attended, the Royals and Yankees at Yankee Stadium in July of 1978. My father may have taken some photos with his camera, he was the picture-taker until my mom took over. But I've never seen any. Any images of that game have resided solely in my mind's eye for 42 years. Such was the case for a number of major and minor league games that I attended through the 1980s and '90s. Camera? Why would I want one of those? There's a game to watch out there! And food to eat! There's no time for snappy, snapping! Well, that thought process certainly changed. Look at the stands of any baseball game. The phone, with that camera, seems much more interesting to many people in the ...

With all the hubbub over that situation in Boston, I was wondering whether I should post anything today. Nobody seemed to be interested in somebody's baseball cardboard anymore. They just wanted to talk about bombs and shootings and cops and CNN and "24." And then I realized that was only my Twitter timeline -- where nobody can stay focused -- and that we're not all in lockdown. Card bloggers know they can still blog about cards, thank goodness. And I thank you all for continuing to show cards and not suddenly transforming into the Police Scanner Blog. But I want to acknowledge Boston in some sort of card-related type way. I have affection for Boston. My brother used to live there. His former in-laws still live there. I have enjoyed my time there immensely, which is not something I can say about every big city I have visited. Yet, in the last 10 years or so, I have encountered too many people trashing ... well, mostly the Red Sox. But by extension, the fans ...