Night Owl Cards

  Here I am at another A-Z challenge that I wasn't going to do. This time, the opportunity was offered up by The Diamond King . Who are your favorite players for each letter of the alphabet? Hmm. This doesn't really sound like a challenge for me. I'm not a player collector. I don't consider myself having a "favorite" for anyone who didn't wear Dodger blue. This is just going to be a bunch of Dodgers that I've already written about way too many times. Ah, but the things you find out when you try, right? This isn't eating bugs. Or listening to death metal. Or opening a box of Bowman. I know I'm not going to like those things. But everything else is worth a try. I found out that not only can I name a favorite for every letter (well, almost), but they're not all Dodgers players! How about that it? I discovered that the personal connections I've made with some players automatically overrules my fanhood. Wild. So, here we go. You might be sur...

(Greetings. I am lucky enough that no one in my family must be memorialized during this holiday weekend. But, my dad, who served in the Air Force, once parachuted out of a flaming KB-50 tanker plane just before it crashed and exploded in Louisiana. So that's how close I came to never being born. Thanks to all who served and didn't make it back alive. It's time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 303rd in a series): Fifty years ago, Curt Flood walked away from his job with the Washington Senators and never came back. He was done fighting, done with the abuse. Baseball had broken him and at age 33, he was, according to a former teammate in this article , "the saddest person he had ever met or seen." There are so many Black men from the '40s, '50s, 60s and '70s that carried the weight of the world around with them, enduring every righteous accusation, every racist rationalization that their vast population of opponents could hurl at them, all in the a...

  I don't have a lot of regrets about leaving the hobby between 1995-2005. Most of the cards issued at that time, I don't consider favorites and in many cases I can't even imagine wanting to buy a pack. About the only sets issued during my hobby hiatus that I could say I would have definitely collected, are the legends sets from that time period. The retro craze was all the rage about 20 years ago, and it's been a long time since we've seen sets like Topps Super Teams or Fleer Greats of the Game. Stupid lawyers. Between a glorious 10-year period that ranged approximately from 1999-2007, some of the greatest legends sets were issued. They continued the tradition of sets such as early '60s Fleer Greats, TCMA sets of the '70s and '80s, and the Ted Williams Company sets from '93 and '94.     Those sets were born out of the respective companies' inability to show photos of current players on cards, but the byproducts were what I consider masterpie...

  I'm one of those "don't get your hopes up" people.   I assume this is a defense mechanism to avoid crushing disappointment. It manifests itself in many ways, and yes, it shows up in the hobby.   Even from the beginning of collecting as a kid, I set my standards low. The only thing I knew to collect were the packs at the store down the street. But I didn't have any money or transportation so I knew any thoughts about completing the entire set were unrealistic.   When I became aware of vintage -- what we called "old cards" then -- I was grateful for whatever came my way, which wasn't much. I had to pick and choose what I wanted, a particular favorite card or cards from a set I liked.   This is how my attachment to certain sets grew. I gravitated to sets like '71 Topps and '56 Topps because I liked them and I knew if I focused on just those, I could accomplish something. Why try to chase down everything? You'll never get those. You deliver...