Night Owl Cards

Tonight the "Long Gone Summer" documentary airs. Unlike the Jordan documentary, which didn't interest me, I do plan to check out ESPN's review of the 1998 Home Run Chase. I've never been a Mark McGwire or Sammy Sosa fan. That doesn't mean I don't like them or anything. I'm just indifferent. They played on teams I don't root for during an era in which I followed baseball only casually. I didn't collect cards. To demonstrate, the above two cards are the closest I can get to having a 1998 McGwire or Sosa card. That McGwire card is from 2000 and the Sosa card is from 2003. There is a seven-year gap, between 1996-2002, in which I own no Sosa cards. I did follow the home run chase. Who didn't? We posted home run update boxes in the newspaper every day and I was watching when the record fell and when McGwire hit 70. I'm aware of all the ugliness that followed and how the home run record doesn't mean much these days. But the detail...

This card always puzzled me. I don't know if my depth perception is off or if it's the way the card's cropped, but it looks like they cut around Santo's likeness and then pasted him in the forefront of a Cubs spring training scene. I realize this photo was likely taken in 1973 and photoshop wasn't around, but the photo just looks weird. But that's not the reason why this card is here. It's here because the Hall of Fame Veterans Comittee on Tuesday announced their list of 10 candidates for the Hall from major leaguers whose careers began in 1943 or later. Santo's on that list. So is Gil Hodges, Joe Torre, Luis Tiant, Maury Wills, Tony Oliva, Jim Kaat, Dick Allen, Al Oliver and Vada Pinson. On December 8th, the committee will announce whether they've selected anyone from this list, or from the previous list of players whose careers started before 1943, for the Hall of Fame. And that got me thinking: why go through all the hand-wringing? This debate...