Night Owl Cards

Thousands of names fill the major league baseball archives. With the sheer volume of players who have competed in baseball for the last 140 or so years, there are bound to be names that repeat. Not just Smith and Jones, but less common ones like Darwin, Hampton and Moreland. Since baseball is a family game, the same names pop up all the time. Bell. Boone. Canseco. But have you noticed that every once in awhile, a couple of players show up at around the same time with the same name and they aren't related? In fact, you may have never heard the name previously, at least not in a major league setting. There are two players with the last name Cain in baseball right now -- Matt and Lorenzo (yes, I know Matt hasn't played a game this year). They've each played together in major league baseball for the last five years, after there were just three previous Cains spread out over 125 years of baseball. There are lots of other examples of this, and sometimes I wonder how it h...

I made it to the card show. It's incredible the road blocks I dodge to get to one of those things. You'd think it would be a lot easier. A show at the mall, for example. Plenty of parking, easy to get to, peruse some cards while the significant others do some shopping, and grab a bite to eat at the end. Why can't it be that simple? No, around here, it has to be complex, oversized and inconvenient. You want a hobby, night owl? You're going to have to work for it. The show was at the state fairgrounds in Syracuse. That's slightly more than an hour away from me. Normally, the show is in the agricultural building. I know the routine, where to park, etc. But this time someone saw dollar signs and decided to combine the show with the grand finale of Super DIRT Week (this actually happened once before and I refused to go). If you're not familiar with Super DIRT Week, it's the last blast of the season for dirt track auto racers around the country and it...

(So, the Dodgers have reached the off-season. I think you could say it was a decent year for my team. I never expected them to be in contention until the second-to-last day of the season, and there's a lot more optimism in store for 2013 than there was for 2012. Not much to complain about really. Other than having to root against some awful teams in the playoffs. So let's turn to cardboard. This is the 161st in a series): There is a particular cliche that baseball people love to use. Here it is: "That's one thing about baseball. You always see something you've never seen before." Every time I hear that tired, old quote repeated cheerfully by some manager or broadcaster as if it's the first time anyone has ever uttered it, I think, "you could say the same thing about any damn ritual that has ever been devised by man." If cooking or walking or shopping or exercising or playing with your kids or riding the bus or going to the bathroom...

A little more than three years ago, I made a list of the 10 players that I am the most sick of pulling from packs. Those are the players that show up the most times when I buy packs, or maybe it's just a player that I've never heard of who keeps popping up over and over. Or maybe it's a player who's a downright irritant, no matter how many times he appears. I decided to update that post , even though I don't buy nearly as many packs as I did back then and don't exactly feel qualified to do this post. It was interesting to look back on my innocent viewpoint back then. For one, I didn't have much of a problem with Mark Teixeira, relatively speaking anyway. I also had barely heard of Zack Greinke. For those who don't enjoy clicking links, here was the top 10 three years ago, in reverse order: 10. Mark Teixeira 9. Alex Rodriguez 8. Jose Vidro 7. Nook Logan 6. Zack Greinke and Tom Gorzelanny 5. Jeff Weaver 4. Eric Chavez 3. Carlos Lee 2. To...