Night Owl Cards

The Dodgers have been flexing their farm system prowess the last couple of years and seem to be ramping it up most recently, calling up instant successes like Alex Verdugo, Matt Beaty, Will Smith and Gavin Lux, which followed other very recent rookie success stories like Walker Buehler, Cody Bellinger, Corey Seager and Joc Pederson. There is nothing I like more about my favorite sports team than their ability to churn out talent. Not only does it help lead to a consistent winner, but it's my go-to argument against fans of other teams who whine about the Dodgers' big-market ways. Granted, you need money to sign and scout players and develop them, but that's just part of being a fully functioning franchise. If you can't create your own quality farm system, then, well, you deserve to be the Tigers or Padres or whatever incompetent, every year. Don't accuse my team of doing something wrong or unfair. To me, the ability to produce your own superstars indicates the...

Every year for the last four years, Bubba's Bangin' Batch of Baseball Bits emerges in July from a semi-slumber for the holiday that is Allen & Ginter Release Month. I participate in the festivities every year because Matt makes it fun, and, of course, there is the chance to win Allen & Ginter cards. I haven't entered all the various mini-contests, but I do enter many of them and I plain struck out the first three years. This year I lucked into a victory. Fourth time's the charm. I didn't have to do much to win. I think the randomizer picked my name from the comment I made. But I DID predict my victory. My comment: I need to do that more often. Matt generously offered up several prize options to the winners. I believe one of the options was close to a full 2018 A&G set. I considered that briefly, then wondered where the heck the binder for that would go and went with a smaller selection of interests. Such as: MINNNIIIIISSSS!!!!!!...

It wasn't until I received a package from Matt at Bubba's Bangin' Batch of Baseball Bits that I realized that baseball cards should be used in preschool classrooms. You want to illustrate "big" and "little" to the tiny tots? Let baseball cards do the job. This is now the BIGGEST Clayton Kershaw card that I own. It is a box-topper from this year's Heritage. Some would say the reverse is the side that I should show first. But even the preschool kids know that's not right. A checklist, a Mariner and a Rockie? Over the best baseball pitcher in the game on a newspaper background? This is a class for learning. Tell me which is more educational? It says "educational" right at the bottom of the Kershaw card! Kershaw will be displayed front-side up in my newly obtained three-pocket pages. This is now the LITTLEST autograph card that I own. How funny that back in 2003 Topps requested players to scribble their names i...

Awwww, isn't little Corey cwute? I'm still in decompression mode. I'm also in need of clearing a few cards out of the way so I can make room for the growing backlog of cards that I need to send people (the approaching drumbeat of September is just the best). So I've got a few small packages from people here that go nicely together because I say they do. For starters there was a Seager-centric envelope from Not Another Baseball Card Blog . Two of the three cards in it were cards of the Dreamy Corey. (Dodger Twitter folks, almost all of whom are vastly younger than me, are fond of saying "Damn, Corey" when Seager does something well. I will never understand people vastly younger than me -- or at least people vastly younger than me who write Dodger things on Twitter). The main card -- the card that intrigued me -- was something Mike pulled from a repack box, I believe. It is a card with a Beckett Baseball magazine theme. This image was the cover o...