Cut for time

I think I've figured out a temporary work-around with my temperamental scanner that will allow me to scan items until I can get a new one, or at least fix the current one.

So you should be seeing freshly-scanned cards in the posts to come. But meanwhile, I'm taking advantage of a post by Shoebox Legends a week or so ago in which he cleared out his scan folder of images and magically created new content!

I can't think of any more perfect time to create such a post than when your scanner is on the blink!

Normally, I don't have a lot of leftover scans (I certainly don't have all the spare autographs and fancy stuff I saw in Fuji's "I Just Had These Lying Here" post). Pretty much everything that I scan winds up showing up on Night Owl Cards.

But I managed to scare up a few images that will generate some words from me. Some of these pictures were dedicated to posts that never were, some never made a post I wrote. I guess they were cut for time.

Let's take a look:

I'm starting with a newspaper clipping, which shows the very dapper Burt Shotton managing the Brooklyn Dodgers from the dugout. This photo must have been right when Shotton took over for the suspended Leo Durocher at the start of the 1947 season. As you can see the caption reads: "Interim leader of Dodgers says he doesn't even know the players."

Psst. Burt. One of your players is Jackie Robinson.

That newspaper photo was sent to me by Alan last year. He's the one that gifted me with all those Dodgers photos. You'll see some more in a minute.

Here is a card of former Pirates catcher Ed Ott managing where I live back in 1983. Ott was barely done with his playing career when he received this job.

I'm showing Ott because I saw him in that Dave Parker documentary on the MLB Network last week. The 1979 Pirates are getting pretty damn unhealthy. I know that several -- Willie Stargell, Jim Bibby, Dock Ellis, Bruce Kison, John Milner, Dave Roberts -- have died. Parker is dealing with Parkinson's and Ott was shown during a reunion of the players describing his hospital stays.

Heck, even one member of Sister Sledge is no longer with us.

This card has sat in my scan folder too long waiting for me to fawn over it in a Cardboard Appreciation post.

Like many Johnny Bench cards of this period it seemed like it was made out of gold. Pulling his card in the '70s was more significant than pulling a Mike Trout card today (remember, there was just one Bench card).

But I'm showing it here because after the Dave Parker documentary I hung around for the Johnny Bench documentary, which apparently debuted more than a year ago. I never saw it.

I sat there transfixed. What? Bench is raising two young boys as a 71-year-old dad? What? Bench's team bus when he was in high school rolled down a hill and killed two kids? I thought I knew a lot about Johnny Bench -- I grew up in the '70s you know -- but that was eye-opening. Also, as usual, the Hee Haw highlights were a hoot.

I've always intended to write a post around the outdated technology shown on baseball cards, but it's a well-worn topic that I decided to avoid. I love this video camera sighting though because I remember when it was the height of technology.

One of the many, many Dodgers photos from Alan that I haven't shown yet (they make up like half of the scan folder). This image is beautiful as you can see Frank Howard's monstrous height demonstrated in a way that very few baseball cards could convey.

Going back to the 1950s and the always interesting-looking Clyde King. Check out the height of that cap. That will never stay on.

Hal Gregg won 18 games for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1945 and was the pitcher who went up against Bill Bevens in that famous game in the 1947 World Series in which Cookie Lavagetto ended Bevens' no-hit quest and won the game with a single swing of the bat.

I kept these 1969 Topps cards in my scan folder because I've always wanted to see which set featured the most cards with batting cages in the photos.

It would be a taxing exercise and mean a lot of online researching of cards that aren't in my collection. Maybe I'll get to it someday, but right now I can only tell you the number of batting cages in the 1973 Topps set.

Why did I scan this card?

No idea.

But it's here now so I can talk about how fast the major leagues moves these days. J.D. Davis was on a rookie card in 2018 Stadium Club. Then, without my knowledge, he suddenly appeared in a Mets uniform the very next year and started knocking the crap out of the ball. And I'm just sitting there trying to figure out how this guy I knew as an Astro -- it's RIGHT THERE on a card from 2018! -- was now on the Mets.

I scanned this card after receiving it in the big box of 1969 and 1970 Topps cards at this time last year. I had meant to show it to follow up on the 1967 Mel Queen card that lists him on the front as both a pitcher and an outfielder.

Mostly, I wanted to show the back of the '69 card.

What a wonderful and weird presentation of career stats. His pitching stats are placed on top of his hitting stats. I don't think I've ever seen that orientation on a card back ever.

More 1969 Topps -- or at least a reasonable facsimile. This image comes from John Wockenfuss' personal collection of photos. I was drawn to it immediately because of the familiar 1969 circle. It's such a great presentation and would make a fantastic card. In fact, I might print it off and make it into a card to remember my conversations with him.

Another reader pointed out this card back, specifically the cartoon.

Several cards from earlier Topps sets in past decades sometimes created cartoons that weren't the most complimentary of the player. This is the rare case of a modern Topps cartoon roasting a player for lumbering around the bases.

The team cards from the 1960s are a whole other breed. I love the 1967 Topps team cards the most because of the color overload from the background.

I have wanted to do a post on the '67 team cards but wanted to wait until I accumulated a large selection of them. I don't know when that time will ever come, so I just wanted to show this one before I forgot about writing the post at all.

That is the most blood-red crimson you're ever going to find on a baseball card.

We're pretty much at the end of this post with absolutely no theme, but one last thing:

Mudcat Grant as a Dodger!!!!