Night Owl Cards

OK, let's start with the name. Many people want to pronounce this poor, poor man's name "Harry Shytie." It's not pronounced "Shytie." Others want to pronounce it "Sh*tty." (What a sh*tty thing to do). It's definitely not pronounced "sh*tty." Harry Chiti's name is pronounced "chee-tee." Pretend that you are a flunkie in class and the only way you are possibly going to pass a test is by looking over the shoulder of the egghead in front of you. You are the "cheater." Egghead is the "chee-tee." Harry Chee-tee. Chiti played for poor teams his entire career. Signed by the Cubs as a free agent in 1950, he played for Chicago from 1950-52, left the Cubs for two years to serve in the Army (no truth to the rumor that he left willingly), and returned to the Cubs for 1955 and 1956. The Cubs finished no better than fifth during his stay in Chicago. He then went to the Kansas City A...

I will probably never watch an NBA game, for more than a couple minutes, for the rest of my life. This is no surprise. I've made it through half a lifetime without doing it so far. A guy tends to get set in his ways the second half of life. But it came to mind about a week or so ago when I heard about how excited Los Angeles was about its sports teams. The Dodgers -- the best team in baseball -- could barely get any coverage because the NBA's Lakers and Clippers were deep in the playoffs, and the NHL's Kings were making an unexpected charge to the Stanley Cup. And I thought, "if I was living in Los Angeles, I'd be pissed about this." I am a Dodger fan, and almost nothing else. The NHL sort of exists for me, but the NBA is a non-entity. Who cares what the Lakers, Clippers and Kings are doing? Who are they? The DODGERS are the best team in baseball!!! Everyone in L.A. should be paying attention to them! But then I'm an odd bird. Even when Mich...

I seem to have this habit of periodically annoying dayf at Cardboard Junkie. I don't mean to do it, but before you know it, I've said something, and there, I've done it. He starts insulting one of my favorite sets, and I say one of his favorite sets can burn for all eternity, and it's ... well, it's weird. Because except for the Braves, and the ponies, and the fact that I swear sometimes his blog is in a foreign language, I am quite interested in what he puts out there. I don't want to set him off, what if he leaves forever for Twitter? That would be terrible. But then I go and do something, like, well, like this ... A little while I go, I landed some Yankee cards that could only be found as a special promotion that went along with a new book release. I thought those four cards might be able to get me something nice that I wanted, and I told people to make me an offer. I got two offers. Two. Apparently, Yankees collectors aren't as rabid as I...

No time yesterday, no time today. You people with your five-day weekends. I have about as much time today as the kid who cut out this 1961 Post Wally Moon card. It looks like he started out fairly well up at the top, and then he got called to dinner, or Gunsmoke was starting, and sharp corners were the first thing to go. This card came from Max . I've already dedicated two posts to cards he sent. So I might as well dump the rest of the cards here and give some other card package a chance for once. Here are the rest of the goodies: 1994 Sportflics Raul Mondesi. Why do I bother scanning sportflics cards? 2004 Fleer Ultra Gold Medallion Brad Penny. I think "baseball player" was about 13th on Brad Penny's list of top career choices. 2004 Topps Chrome Eric Gagne. Someone asked me at work what I have against Jonathan Broxton. That gave me an excuse to launch into the glory of Eric Gagne and Takashi Saito. He was sorry he asked. 2012 Topps '8...

Among my favorite kinds of night cards are the ones in which a card company was forced to use a photo from a night game because the game was one of the only chances it had to feature that player in his new uniform. This often happened with late-season acquisitions, and it often happened in the early '90s when it was important to feature a player in his new uniform, avoiding airbrushing at all costs, but also when taking pictures during daylight hours was still ritual. Alejandro Pena was acquired from the Mets in late August of 1991, leaving Donruss just a month of the regular season to get a photo of him in a Braves uniform. Fortunately for Donruss, the Braves reached the World Series that year, so they had the whole postseason, too. And, so, unlike several other 1992 Donruss cards, the picture on the card matches the team listing on the card. A game at night saves the day. This card also serves as a nifty lead-in for the final results of the Biggest Improvement and Bi...

As in "certain" that this card is now in my collection. The Nebulous 9 is now down to a mere six cards. That's both due to my laziness in adding more wants and a sudden blitz on the list by fellow collectors. I've received four cards from the Nebulous 9 in the last couple weeks, including this mere 1989 Topps checklist, which came from cynical buddha . Now I can add it to the '89 binder with the rest of the unchecked checklists and everything will match. We must feed the OCD monster. Here are two other cards that came with the checklist: Two ugly Gypsy Queens (although the inserts are just a tiny bit pretty). I need one more base card Dodger and then you can expect never to see these cards on the ever blog again -- unless I'm doing an end-of-the-year post about which set most resembles the outside of a 12th century asylum for the criminally insane. Thanks, CB! This former Nebulous 9 need -- a 2002 Fleer Greats Maury Wills -- arrived fr...