Night Owl Cards

It's amusing to me that the last two Dodgers I needed to complete the Topps Series 2 base team set were two shortstops for the Dodgers who are no longer shortstops for the Dodgers. Of course, there's Rafael Furcal, seen earlier today making nice-nice to Albert Pujols during St. Louis infield practice. Be careful Albert, he breaks easily. And there's Ivan DeJesus Jr., who's been squeezed out of his shortstop position by the Dodgers' new shortstop, Dee Gordon. DeJesus is now playing second base for Triple A Albuquerque, which is good because L.A. really needs a second baseman who comes with a future. Both of these cards arrived last week from madding at Cards on Cards  (that's right, a Cardinals fan sent me a card of a player who is now a member of his team). All that's left for me now from Series 2 are some of those blasted Dodger inserts, and of course some diamond parallels. But it won't be enough for me to buy anymore Series 2, unless Topps h...

Unless Ned does something Ned-like, the deal between the Cardinals and Dodgers is virtually done and Rafael Furcal will be hauling his 476-year-old body to St. Louis. Raffy spent six seasons with L.A., which translates into roughly 1.45 years when you measure it in Furcal's time present on the field. A friendly warning, St. Louis fans: when Furcal is playing, you will be convinced that he is the most amazing player in all of baseball and puzzled why he is not getting his due. But when he's not playing -- and, damn, an entire country could go into and out of and back into a recession in the time he spends on the DL -- he is a frustrating, infuriating, old, old, old man, made out of glass and put together with model airplane glue. But Raffy was destined to be gone by the offseason at the latest, so I just hope we can get someone out of this deal who can turn into a starting catcher, or third baseman, or second baseman, or first baseman. I think we're going to be ...

Delino DeShields, 1996 Pro Magnets. Magnet on the back. Raul Mondesi, 1999 Stars N' Steel. Made from polished steel. Let the experiment begin ... Magnet placed on top of steel ... And ... ... ... ... They do NOT attract. I think we haves a '90s card FAIL. Oh, well. Maybe DeShields and Mondesi weren't meant for each other. Still love the '90s. Still love the '70s. Oooooo. Ooooooo. Ooooooaah . (Thanks for the "card," Greg L. )

I normally try to space out Gint-a-Cuffs posts a little more to give the A&G haters a break. But since I have only four packs left, and I don't like posting these things on the weekend, I'll throw this one post in and we can all say "Phew!" together. One thing I want to know with this year's A&G is: where the hell are all the autographs? You used to get at least one per box. I can recall only a handful of people pulling an autographed card out of this year's version. What's with the difficulty? Again, I like A&G for the base cards and the crazy variety, but a declining rate of autos is not a selling point. All right, enough whinery. Time for Packs 21-24, which historically have been the dullest packs of the box. Observe: PACK 21 50 - Carl Crawford, Red Sox (0 points) 28 - John Lindsey, Dodgers (+1 favorite team) It's very cool that Lindsey is in this set after so long in the minors. But I don't get why Topps included him...

Greetings from the '70s! A heartfelt thank you for voting for my childhood, Buick Skylarks, and strange photography. The Luis Alvarado card has advanced out of the first round in the Cardboard Appreciation, the Review 2 contest. It even beat out the '74 Steve Garvey card, which is very impressive. To be honest, I probably would have picked Alvarado over Garvey as well. That's how much I enjoy the awkward '70s. Here are the final votes: 1. 1973 Topps Luis Alvarado - 18 votes 2. 1974 Topps Steve Garvey - 14 votes 3. 1954 Topps Jim Gilliam - 4 votes 4. 1991 Topps Oscar Azocar - 4 votes 5. 1995 Upper Deck Wonderful Terrific Monds - 3 votes 6. 2010 Bowman Chrome Bo Bowman - 3 votes 7. 1975 Topps Bobby Murcer - 2 votes 8. 1982 Topps Traded Cal Ripken Jr. - 1 vote That's right. The Topps Traded Ripken received just one vote. I like my readership. The next group of first-rounders isn't nearly as strong as last week, unfortunately. I expect a certai...

They're putting in new curbs on my street. You would not believe the noise outside my windows at before 9 in the morning. So, since I'm up, this post is being produced bright-and-early even though it won't appear until the final hours of daylight. As you read this, keep in mind that I can barely hear myself think as I type (at least I think I'm typing, I can't HEAR anything besides "rat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat-a-tat-a") out the latest installment of Gint-a-Cuffs. It's time for packs 17-20. When we last left off, I had 144 points, which is since corrected to 146 because numbers ain't my bag. Onward ... PACK 17 297 - Travis Hafner, Indians (0 points) 268 - Dallas Braden, Athletics (0 points) 96 - Daniel Boulud, french chef (0 points) I'm not showing the card of Boulud because he doesn't need any more publicity. The write-up on his card is like twice the size of most of the non-player cards and reads like Boulud wrote it hims...