Night Owl Cards

I just read a story from last year from a writer who said we should be embracing college football's recent trend to schedule games on Fridays because it means more college football viewing for the couch potatoes at home. This is a thinly-veiled excuse for lining TV's pockets and for trampling all over high school football's big night (believe it or not, college football couch potato, there are people around here who would like to go to a high school football game and watch Syracuse University play, but they can't, because college football has to take every day of the week for itself). And I've added it onto the pile of reasons why I can't be bothered with college football. This is the state of angst I enter every year at this time. Football season is beginning this weekend (or already has begun for you Thursday players) and I'm told I need to be ready. I am ready. But I am bracing, not welcoming. Football has become too much of a bother to be truly en...

Nostalgia is a funny thing. What was once mediocre, or even disliked, becomes a sentimental landmark of a certain time and place. I'm one of the few baseball fans who doesn't care much about retro uniforms, but I do sit up and take notice when the uniforms of the '70s and '80s are worn by current players. These are the uniforms that I knew as "the way uniforms are supposed to be" as I was growing up, even though there is no clothing designer in the country today who would consider the Astros' tequila sunrise unis as the template for baseball wear. Baseball teams broke out their clothing freak flags in the 1970s and even those teams who weren't willing to go as far as the Astros, Padres, Pirates and Oakland A's, ventured into converting their traditional gray uniforms into -- *gasp* -- powder blue. The powder blue uniforms became so pervasive during the '70s and '80s that uniform traditionalists like the Yankees, Dodgers and Red Sox...

(Late August is proving to be uglier than usual. The car repair payment I have to make probably means selling a few cards in my collection. That's not good. But neither is draining the savings. It's time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 272nd in a series): I'm hoping that this happens to some other team collectors besides me. I'm always thrown off by combo cards. Those old standbys of the 1950s and 1960s, resurrected about 10-15 years ago in a much less friendly fashion, prove to be elusive when I'm trying to complete my Dodgers team sets, mostly because I forget about them all the time. Take this wonderful item, which was sent to me by Jeff at Cardboard Catastrophes. Not even a month ago, I was convinced that I had gotten down to a single Sandy Koufax card to complete my 1958 Topps Dodgers set. It was a semi-triumphant moment. All of that work was well worth it to get within a Koufax of completing the '58 set. I boasted about it in fact. A...

My card collecting friend R.C. sent me a few cards recently. He said he didn't have a need for them and hoped I might find them useful. These weren't your average cards so I can find a variety of uses for them. In fact, I can break the uses down into: 1. Keepers (Cards I can use in my collection) 2. Traders (Cards I'd be willing to use in a trade for the right deal) 3. Giveaways (Cards that I can use in a giveaway next month) Let's see the breakdown with pretty pictures. 1. KEEPERS This was not the only legends short-print in the package but it is the only one I will definitely keep. The 2009 set was the first one to add short-printed legends cards, I believe, and I remember the carefree days when this was a new-and-interesting concept. Plus, the 2009 Topps set is the first one I completed after coming to blogging. And you can't beat seeing Ryne Sandberg in a Phillies uniform. These are each upgrades. As a proud 1970s card collector, I...

Each year I notice a malaise that settles over the blogging community during late August. I'm not sure why that is. My guess is vacations come into play. In some areas of the country school has started up (which still strikes me as bizarre). Perhaps some folks are a little tired of baseball -- their teams are fading, the NL playoff contenders are a collection of gross -- and they can't get interested in cards. This is usually the time of year when everyone fails to comment on one of my posts, a rarity as a post earlier this week was the first in almost two years without a comment. And yesterday I kind of opened my heart and the clicks were, well ... weak. But I knew all this. That is why I had planned to start The Greatest 100 Cards of the '80s countdown in August, specifically the end of August. Maybe I could generate some interest among bored collectors. However, life has conspired all summer to prevent that from happening and with everyone apparently too busy ...

The lyrics for the Beatles classic, "She's Leaving Home" were drawn from a newspaper article about a 17-year-old girl, Melanie Coe, who seemingly received everything from her family but ran away from home. Although the song is about a teenage runaway amid the '60s counterculture, it has since become an anthem for parents whose daughters leave home for college. Guess what I just finished doing for the first time? Saying goodbye to your barely-adult daughter amid the whirlwind of moving her into a new place (amid many other adults doing the same thing) and then taking off for the four-hour trek back home may not be as gut-wrenching as wondering where your runaway child is, but it was a strange mix of proud moment and heartbreaker that no one can know until they experience it for themselves. I'm doing OK (my wife on the other hand ...). But I've found myself reflecting plenty over the last week or two. And it's taken a weird form when it comes to m...