Night Owl Cards

I'm starting to get down to the end of my list of Brush With Greatness subjects. I think I have only 5 or 6 left. As I've said before, my on-the-job writing/reporting has trickled down to next to nothing as my editing responsibilities have increased. On Sunday, for just the fourth time in the last year, a story with my byline appeared in my newspaper. And as always, I barely had time to write it. Still, if the chance to talk to a big league ballplayer for a story arose, I'd take it. Because those opportunities are slim around these parts. My opportunity to talk to former major league John Mabry came when I was doing the story on George Kissell , the late legendary coach of the Cardinals. The conversation I had with him wasn't terribly interesting, but it highlighted something that has always been on my mind. When you read an article in a newspaper or in a magazine or wherever, and you read the quotes, how do they sound to you? What I mean is, when you read the quote, ...

I figured it would be timely to feature Mark Sweeney as the latest player on the Brush With Greatness thread. Sweeney recently retired to become a coach with the Dodgers. And I also just received this card from Matt F. of Heartbreaking Cards . The addition of the Sweeney Topps Black card means I need just four Topps Black Dodgers from Series 1: Ramirez, Park, Pierre and Blake. That's pretty good for not seeing a single blaster of the stuff in my neighborhood. The bloggers take good care of me. Anyway, I came away from my conversation with Sweeney as impressed by him as any other baseball player I have interviewed. I am not surprised at all that he became a coach. He seems like one of those players who absolutely loves everything about the game of baseball. I think he'll be involved in baseball until he takes his last breath. Some people get Mark Sweeney mixed up with Mike Sweeney, who was the longtime Royals star and now plays for the Mariners. But Mark was a part-time player ...