Night Owl Cards

  I hate to be the blog known for bringing up the deaths of past ballplayers. Part of me wishes the blog could be happy and light all the time. But whenever I hear about one of the players from my younger days moving on, I feel like I need to recognize it as a form of respect from a longtime baseball fan. Today I heard that Bill Plummer passed away. He's known as the backup catcher to Johnny Bench during the 1970s. I've mentioned before that I almost had the chance to interview Plummer. He was managing a minor league team in California at the time and a player from our area was playing for the team. But the interview with the player fell through (he wasn't keen on talking) and I never talked to Plummer. Plummer is the 181st player or manager featured in the 1975 Topps set who has died -- yes, I keep track of that, too. It's alarming that so many of those people who I collected in my first year of buying cards are no longer with us. So, I decided to put a positive spin o...

  I buy cards a lot. That's how most of the cards arrive in my collection. It's the best way to build a card collection, as painful as it can be for the wallet. I buy from dealers at card shows, from various well-known online sites and periodically from individual sellers on Twitter. There are a lot of people selling cards now. A LOT. It's grown, and is still growing. There are folks on Twitter who sell nonstop. I sometimes have to mute them because I can't take the relentless shilling, even if they're not annoying about it. Then I've noticed that people who used to just tweet regular stuff, their tweets started being all about selling stuff, and, well ... you only have so much cash. And patience. I won't turn my Twitter account into that. I won't sell stuff on here either. Not that a blog is an effective -- or even appropriate -- place to sell cards. The blog world, to me, still is where generosity reigns. It's not as apparent as it once was. I mean...

    Big news for a lot of people's card collections yesterday, the Hall of Fame announced the selection of six players for induction. My collection isn't nearly as exclusive as those that feature only rookie cards of Hall of Famers and such. My collection doesn't focus on Hall of Famers at all actually. I do need to update my "sets with the most Hall of Famers" series greatly now, although I'll wait until the BBWAA vote next month for a new post. But as far as my collection, it reflects what I think about who has played the game, not who is in the Hall. There has been a lot of greatness, whether they're on a plaque in a building or not. I've written about stuff like this before. In fact, I already voted a bunch of the guys who the Hall picked yesterday into the Hall years ago .   "Small hall/big hall," "stats worthy/not worthy," I don't have time for those debates. What I do have time for is focusing on the players elected and s...

When I was a kid making visits to the Baseball Hall of Fame, the least interesting part of the experience was that room with all the plaques. Oh, is that the actual "Hall of Fame"? Yeah, that . That was the dullest part. Some of my boredom had to do with the presentation -- staid head shots on hunks of wood mounted on a wall in a room that felt like church. My footsteps echoed. I thought I was about to be shushed. I could feel myself getting math-class eyes as I attempted to read the words on one of the plaques. The other sections of the building -- what I guess was the museum part -- were so much more interesting. Tales of the World Series and baseball players' feats. Famous teams and uniforms. Characters of the game and baseball cards. Giant photographs, batting gloves, awesome pitching feats, lit-up scoreboards, old contracts, quips and quotes, barnstorming ballplayers, the old Federal League, the previous year's postseason. Every last bit fascinating. ...