Night Owl Cards

(I went to an antique show today. It used to be a collectibles show with lots of baseball cards but has morphed into showcasing expensive jewelry and paintings. I did get to see a couple of $400 Play Ball cards though. No, I didn't buy them. Time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 260th in a series): I've been having some problems with my left shoulder. It's just some muscle/alignment issue that will probably be alleviated by a trip to the chiropractor (mine does great things, don't get all weird on me). But it's particularly annoying because I am left-handed. I identify myself by just a few things. They are not my job, any political affiliation or ideology, nor even where I live. But one of them is the fact that I am left-handed. I am a left-handed in a right-handed world. (In fact, I have two strikes against me: I am also a night owl in a daylight world). Today is National Left-Handers' Day, a day for myself and fellow lefties to beam with pr...

Today is National Left Handers Day. As a proud lefty, I feel it's my duty to post something leftyish on this day. Two of the last three years, I have. One was well-received. Another , which I might add involved a fair amount of time-consuming research, was not. Today there is no time for research. But there is time for something that I noticed that was interesting -- to me, anyway. Pat from Hot Corner Cards sent me some Dodgers in an effort to coerce a card out of me. This is always an acceptable procedure. As I often do, I separate the cards out of the envelope into ones I need and ones I don't. ("Need" is a subjective word in the hobby and sometimes I "need" cards I have already). The cards I needed were 1974 Topps Billy Buck up there -- a lefty through and through ... ... and this 2015 Archives card of Adrian Gonzalez, also a full-time lefty ... ... and this 2015 Allen and Ginter card of Hyun-Jin Ryu, who is actually showing you tha...

(In all the time I've written this blog, I've never written a post more than two days ahead of time, with the exception of one vacation period. You'd think I would have made this easier on myself by now. I guess I always need that deadline. Anyway, it's Cardboard Appreciation time. This is the 211th in a series): Today is National Left-Handers Day. I addressed this day with a post a couple of years ago, so I won't rehash ... much. After all, it's well-established that baseball needs left-handers, possibly more than any other team sport. I would hope that every fan knows that the sport wouldn't be the same without them. And I'm not just talking about nicknames, like Lefty Grove here. To illustrate how dependent baseball and baseball history is on lefties, I thought I'd take a Frank Capra-esque "It's a Wonderful Life" tour through the 1976 Topps set. (It just seemed to be handy as I pulled out the Lefty Grove card). What would h...

About 2 1/2 years ago, I decided to figure out how many Dodgers cards I had in my collection. I didn't have the time or the patience to do a thorough job on this, so I calculated the total the quick-and-dirty way -- multiplying pages in a binder, not worrying too much whether the item was a card or a sticker, that type of thing. Well, I have even less time and patience now, but I wanted to know how far I've come in 30 months' time. I also want to know how far I've come while actively discouraging Dodger cards from coming my way. What's that you say? Yes. Mr. "I Want Every Dodger You Or I Find" frequently rejects ways to acquire more Dodgers. I thought I'd explore that, and then also arrive at my total official, you're never going to REALLY know tally, at the same time. And I'll do it with some Dodger cards I received from Kyle, who runs Nolan's Dugout . He also sent me some other cards, but these ones are Dodgers and fit ...

Today is National Left-Handers' Day . As a left-hander all of my life, I'm ashamed to admit that I didn't know there was a day reserved for me. And that they've been doing it since 1976. I thought of a way that I could make it up to myself, and of course those thoughts involve the blog and baseball cards. But before I get to that, a little perspective on life as a lefty. As you might have heard, it's not easy -- obnoxious right-handed desks in school, getting pen marks on your hand every time you write, operating a mouse on the right-handed side because we wouldn't dare subject a right-hander to using their left hand when operating the computer. In school the teacher would pull a container filled with scissors and distribute them to the kids during whatever scissor-cutting exercise was taking place. If I was very lucky -- and by "lucky" I mean maybe once every other year -- I'd find a pair of left-handed scissors. And then I remember one t...