Night Owl Cards

Big day tomorrow. A full slate of football to watch as usual, plus Game 5 of the World Series and ... oh, yeah, we're supposed to hand out candy to kids for four hours.   Halloween on a Sunday means I can't hide behind my "I have to work" excuse for avoiding the parade of urchins scrambling up my porch. I like the little dudes (except the ones who yank the door open), there's just so many of them. I think that's how it will happen anyway. With last year's COVID Halloween, it's difficult to know what to expect. But I'm anticipating many candy addicts. As I've mentioned before, people come in from the country, park their tractors on the street and send the kids out to demand treats from suburbanites. So between sports and squirts -- and no daughter around to do our door-attendant bidding -- I'll be too busy to blog tomorrow. This is my Halloween post. I remember well being a kid on Halloween, carting an orange plastic pumpkin around. My main ...

  One thing I still haven't learned in all this time blogging is to step away from the blog when there isn't time to post.   I've gotten better since the days of two-posts-every-24-hours; I usually give myself two days off a week from the blog. But yesterday I thought it was necessary to post on the anniversary of the Dodgers' first World Series title since I was a fan. It's a big moment in my rooting history and it seemed important to recognize the day.   But I had zero time with Thursday's schedule. So I whipped up a post, showing off cards from that 1981 team and didn't have time to check my work. That's never good.   In an instant -- almost record time between me publishing and someone commenting -- somebody pointed out an error. I didn't have time to reassemble the cards, but I did. But those cards weren't quite right either (FYI: Ron Roenicke was in the display).   I don't like having errors in my posts. I also don't like it when pe...

  I was looking for a story in our online newspaper archives the other day when I randomly came across a feature I wrote on Marvin Harrison 26 years ago. I took that as a sign as I had just received this 2000 Pacific Royal Crowne Harrison card from Matt in one of his Time Travel trades a day or two earlier. I talked to Harrison during that period in the mid-1990s when I was covering the Syracuse football team. I couldn't have picked a better time for my brief era of coverage as both Harrison and Donovan McNabb were key figures on the team and each would go on to have notable careers in the NFL. Harrison in particular set records during his career with the Colts and is now in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Back in 1995 he was a senior at Syracuse, their leading receiver, one of the best in the Big East, probably among the best in the country. I interviewed him with a group of other reporters during the lead-up to the '95 season. No, that's not me. That's the article. I ...

  The World Series starts tonight and you couldn't pick a matchup that I care less about since probably the Giants-Cardinals ones a decade ago, or maybe even going back to the late 1990s. Saturday night was pretty poor with the Dodgers being eliminated. I would've liked to have seen them play the Braves with the team they had in September, instead of losing a key player every other day. But that's the postseason, the hot hand always wins. However, I found a way to deflect the misery (and the haters) by going to a card show the next day. And after that, I took a side trip to the book store, where I found this: Yeah, that's a Beckett article all about me -- written by me. If that doesn't wipe away the postseason blues, I don't know what does -- without the ensuing hangover, anyway. The November Beckett Baseball issue was delivered to subscribers earlier this month. I don't have a subscription to that one so it took an email from Bob of the best bubble for me ...

  From the time I started writing this blog, I was amazed, and envious, any time anyone mentioned their "monthly card show." Monthly card show. What on earth was that like? Heaven, that's what it's got to be like. Something to look forward to every damn month? Imagine the luck. I had never experienced a monthly card show. Not even back in the '80s. Granted, I wasn't looking for shows during the height of the junk wax era, in the late '80s and early '90s, so there may have been some monthly shows around me then. But the concept has been as foreign to me as beets on pizza (yes, this exists). Well, that 50-plus-year streak of not knowing what a monthly show was like ended Sunday, when I attended a card show after attending a show in the same place in September . Holy smokes, that's a monthly show! I've made it! I'm in heaven! Well, not quite (monthly show-goers are nodding their heads). Don't get me wrong, it's great. Any day that I ca...

    When I wrapped up my last set blog more than two years ago, I figured that would be the end for me and set blogs. I had completed three of them at that point: 1975, 1971 and 1985. All Topps blogs. The second two, 1971 and 1985, I basically wrote at the same time and it was a bit grueling doing those and Night Owl Cards. I was worn out by May of 2019. Also, at that point, it seemed like set blogs were long past their freshness date. Chronicling a set was the cool blog thing to do back in 2008. But as the cool kids moved on to other things, only the hard-core set-appreciators were left and there aren't many of them anymore. Still ... I left open the possibility of writing another one when I finished off the last two. And just a couple days ago a complimentary comment left at the end of my 1985 Topps made me wonder. "Your blogs are great," it said. "I'd love to see a '73 or '74 version." Now, I'm not going to do something every time someone says...

  Chris Taylor last night became the 11th player to hit three home runs in an MLB postseason game and I'm pretty sure he's one of the most under-represented in terms of baseball cards.   Other players in that bad-ass Three-HR Club include Babe Ruth, Albert Pujols, Adrian Beltre, Reggie Jackson, George Brett and Jose Altuve.   Taylor probably has more cards than Bob Robertson and maybe Adam Kennedy, who are also members of the club. But I bet Enrique Hernandez and Pablo Sandoval boast more cards than Taylor, whose cause I have supported for years now -- you can find posts of me whining (because that's what I do) about Topps' inability to create cards of Taylor during his breakout 2017 season. After missing Taylor's first home run, I was able to get away from work last night to see his last two live. It was something else. I didn't record this game (I was fairly certain the Dodgers would lose), but I still have Hernandez's three-HR game in the 2017 NLCS in Wri...