Night Owl Cards

  Fifty years ago today, Major League Baseball played the All-Star Game in Milwaukee. The National League won, 6-3 (yay!). Bill Madlock and Jon Matlack shared the MVP award. (Reggie Jackson went 1-for-3).   At the break, the Dodgers had played 92 games or 56.8% of their schedule. This season -- 50 years later -- the Dodgers reached the All-Star break having played 97 games or 59.9%. Yet I read a social media complaint just a week or two ago about how the All-Star Game -- the supposed "midsummer classic" -- takes place too late because more than half of the season has passed.   The All-Star Game hasn't shown up at the halfway point of the season in a very long time. (And we're not even close to halfway through summer).   The ASG regularly pops up on either the second or third Tuesday of July. It's been that way for decades. It doesn't matter when the season starts, or how many games have been played, the second or third Tuesday of July is when the ASG exists.  ...

  Two things I've noticed since posting the first half of my hobby box of 2024 Heritage the other day. The first is that out of all the regular player and manager cards I've pulled so far, not one features a posed shot. Those were staple shots for Heritage all the way through last year. Just about all of the base Dodgers cards from last year's Heritage are posed shots. To go from that to absolutely none seems like a decision was made. We were still in posed territory in 1975 Topps, plenty of it, in fact. How I long for a hands-on-knees photo in 2024 Heritage like Robin Yount or Roger Metzger or Tommy Helms. But there's been none to be found. Every photo is either an action shot or a candid photo (both, obviously, were in '75 Topps). I don't know why posed shots have been scrapped. Perhaps Fanatics said "no more fake backgrounds"? If that's the case, applause, applause. But I think the non-posed pix is one of the reasons I can't find anything in...

  It's Opening Day and, as I suspected, MLB was a wee-bit ambitious. But that's OK.   I'm not here to write about this baseball holiday. I'm here to write about another baseball holiday ... well, what used to be a baseball holiday.   We don't care as much about the All-Star Game anymore. You can argue that point all you want, but if you were following baseball in the '70s or earlier -- heck even in the very early portions of the '80s -- then you know there's no disputing that statement. It's the truth. The ASG was bigger in every baseball fan's mind 40 years ago.   There are a few reasons for the ASG's decline -- the blending of the leagues, the bells-and-whistles installed around the main event, the influence of agents on when and how long a pitcher can perform -- but this is a post theorizing on when the ASG began losing its luster and when that attitude that the game was "nothing special, just an exhibition" started.   It began i...

I am on vacation this week. During these pandemic times, with limits on where I can go and what I can do, this would be a prime 7 days for getting some chores done and catching up on sleep, right? Nah. The city is working on my street again. I had no idea this was going to happen. A couple days ago, two doors down from me, whatever tool they were using shook the ground and knocked me right out of my nest. This morning, two doors down on the opposite side, they've been using a loud vacuum thingy to suck away my sleep. This throws off my night owl schedule. I end up napping in spurts, not really getting anything done, and on the back half of the day -- baseball takes over. I'm not a TV watcher. It's ball games and that's it, and even then I'll get up and do things while the game is happening. But postseason baseball requires your undivided attention, especially if your team is playing. And this season, they play EVERY NIGHT. There are no breaks, no catching your brea...