Night Owl Cards

  I don't know how many more times I'm going to visit my local monthly card show. I can feel my interest waning.   I skipped last month's show, mostly because there was a bigger, better show the next day. But another reason is the content of the local show is just not interesting to me. I've already mentioned how it's now dominated by RPG cards (Pokemon, etc.) and graded slabs of mostly modern football/basketball, but today it was particularly dire.   There was one table that I found dedicated to sports cards as I knew them as recently as 25 years ago. Just, plain, good, ol', unslabbed cards from the '50s, '60s, '70s and '80s. It was the usual table I visit. But often there are some other smaller tables with the same stuff, or dollar boxes I can sift through.   But not today. My dealer friend, of course, was not there, having passed last month . The other guy I know who used to work in my office hasn't been there for at least a couple shows....

   I have written about the year 1987 a lot on this blog. Veteran readers know that I wasn't collecting in 1987. I was in college and no longer interested. In '86 I didn't buy a single pack. I'm not as clear on '87, but I think the same was true that year.   So, knowing where I am now with cards, why would I consider 1987 "great"?   Well, I've written about that, too. My social life was never better. I had found my people, I was settling on a new direction as far as my career, and getting comfortable in it, and I also found my life partner, though I probably didn't know it at the time.   I think about that year a lot, particularly in October, which was the month that year that me and several members of the school newspaper went halfway across the country to a 4-day journalism seminar for college students in St. Louis and tore up the town.   It's insane that it's getting close to 40 years since that year. Forty years since Crowded House'...

   Six years ago -- geez, almost seven now -- I wrote a post about the first player I think of when I think of a specific team.   I said in that post that maybe in five years I'd try it again and see if any of my choices changed. Well, it's more than five years since and, of course they've changed. This is a totally random exercise!   So I'm doing it again. I tried not to look at my choices from the first time. And, like last time, though I didn't plan to repeat the pattern, I conducted this thinking exercise shortly after waking up, so my brain wouldn't be influenced by anything that's going on currently.   However, my timing isn't great. The last time I did this was in January, the offseason. This time I'm doing it in the middle of the postseason, so I'm naturally going to pick people playing in that. Anyway, let's see what the brain said this time.   National League West   Dodgers: Mookie Betts. He's kind of been on my mind lately.  ...

  One of the big reasons that I'm still in this hobby -- and still blogging about it -- is that my life is fairly boring actually.   I do the same things day after day. Even the things I don't do day after day I've done before. It's a whole lot of mundane. Much like baseball, not a lot happens until some explosion of everything all at once. Only, unlike baseball, that chances of that "everything explosion" being good things is highly unlikely.   Trading cards are the excitement in my life. They are the guarantee that each day of my life will produce a little spark. If all those other daily things can't do it, cards will be there for me. Often that spark is a card that's new to my collection. Now, there's something that will make my eyes light up.   For example, this Freddie Freeman All-Star card that arrived recently. I received it with some other items from reader Grant, who is one of those folks nice enough to comment here (try it, it's fun!...

(I got to view four MLB playoff games yesterday -- college football, what's that? -- and I have to say I was pretty pleased with the results across the board. No chance of that continuing I guess, right? -- OK, well, the Blue Jays are doing their part. Let's move on to Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 357th in a series):   Last weekend I went to the flea market in town. I finally had some time to kill and I don't get over there nearly as much as I should.   This is the place where I found my 1970 Topps Roberto Clemente a few years ago , and that particular card spot in the flea market is still there. While I find cards here and there at other parts of the market -- it's a fairly large place and seems to get bigger all the time -- it's not a cardboard mecca. But that one spot is remarkably consistent.   It always features four rows of cards, what I guess you would call a dollar box. Most of the cards are a dollar, though you'll find some that are more and some...

  You know, I forgot all about how I hated the current wild-card set-up last year. I complained last year that division winners shouldn't be involved in such chaos. I guess I still agree with that, but I didn't think of it once during this past week and that's even with my team involved in it.   I'm never going to get to Grandpa Simpson status at this rate.   But I like my postseason attitude this year. I don't feel like hiding behind the couch like I've felt for decades when the Dodgers are in the playoffs. We'll see how it goes when they're playing the Phillies in Philadelphia this weekend (most likely I'll just be pressing "mute" a lot).   Meanwhile, with four games on the docket tomorrow, I've got my current postseason tradition cued up and ready to go. This is where I pull out the oldest, newest and random-est card in my collection from the remaining playoff teams. This is the third time I've done this (well, fourth as I did ...