Night Owl Cards

  As you've probably heard/read by now, this year's World Series teams have a few things in common.   It is a matchup of two "small-market" teams. It's two teams that play "small ball," or at least "smaller ball" than most of MLB teams have been playing the last several years. Both teams are based on pitching, speed, fielding, smart base-running and each have a couple of phenomenal hitters.   Also, both play in domed stadiums.   But there's more than those things that make them similar for me. For the longest time, my brain has frequently considered them the same team. I've often thought of the two teams as mirror images, the Rays as the "American League Brewers" and the Brewers as "the National League Rays". Maybe it wouldn't be that way if they were in the same league (they probably should be, shouldn't they Mr. Selig?). I mean I do the same thing with the Brewers and the Mariners. The main reason I tend to...

  It seems like everyone's accepted the latest configuration of the postseason schedule, including me. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised that we began the playoffs in September as in ye olden times, though I know the reason for it is very modern.   But I think that this year's wild card round might show that we don't really need it. Yeah, yeah, I know, more games is good, but the Red Sox, Cubs, Astros and Phillies didn't look like playoff teams to me. We could've just skipped that round to what we've got right now.   Which is what I'm going to do. It's been tradition the last three years to feature the oldest, newest and a random card from my collection for each of the teams remaining in the postseason once the wild card has finished.     As in previous versions, several teams appear year after year, so I've already covered their oldest card in my collection. In those cases, I go to the second-oldest, third-oldest, etc.   RAYS VS. YANKEES   Tamp...

  For several years on this blog, I wrote an annual "if I was king of the postseason" post to kick off the baseball playoffs. It was fun -- just me riffing on who my favorites and least favorites were for that particular year -- but it was a lot of work. Then it started getting repetitive/monotonous and also a couple people got their undies in a bunch about what I wrote. I don't need to be dedicating a lot of time to something just to get a bunch of grief out of it, so I stopped. I don't miss it. But I do miss writing about the postseason a little. I thought it'd be fun to take a look at each of the wild card matchups in a lighthearted fashion -- no overt rooting here -- with the help of TCDB and my collection. I'm going to take a look at the oldest and newest cards in my collection for each team, plus a random card selected by the TCDB randomizer. There are some interesting connections between these teams. Here we go: RANGERS VS. RAYS Texas Rangers (cards in ...