Night Owl Cards

Happy Canada Day to all of my Canadian readers, of which I have many, I've discovered over the years. Last year on Canada Day I compiled an all-Canadian all-star team to recognize the holiday. It wasn't terribly difficult as there are few enough Canadian major leaguers that every time someone sneaks over the border and into a major league uniform, the U.S. media is all over it -- "hey, HEY! Canadian over HERE! IN THE BIG LEAGUES! HEY! HE'S NOT ONE OF US!" Also, as I've mentioned many times, I live near and have been to Canada often. It's almost common knowledge that Larry Walker, Terry Puhl, Fergie Jenkins, Eric Gagne, Joey Votto, Justin Morneau, Rich Harden, Matt Stairs, Rheal Cormier, Claude Raymond, Dave Pagan, Dave McKay, Russell Martin, Corey Koskie, John Hiller, Doug Frobel, Vince Horseman, Ryan Dempster, Jeff Francis, Erik Bedard, Jason Bay, Reggie Cleveland, Stubby Clapp, Dalton Pompey, Jim Adduci, Paul Spoljaric, Nigel Wilson, Kirk McCaski...

The year 2007 was not a shining example of the greatness of baseball cards. Out of all of the sets that were released that year, I think the only one that stood out as memorable was Upper Deck Masterpieces. The year also marked the real start of the variation plague that we're still dealing with today. The most famous incident is the Topps Derek Jeter card featuring a photoshopped George Bush in the stands and Mickey Mantle in the dugout. It turns out it wasn't a variation at all as Topps didn't issue a later "correction." This means that Topps had tricked collectors into spending crazy amounts of money on what was, and still is, a base card. Because of that, and other trickery foisted on the 2007 Topps set, I don't have a great opinion of it. It doesn't help that the inserts in the set (excluding the "Distinguished Service" series) are among the worst ever. Alex Rodriguez Road to 500 and Generation Now can die in a fire. I will supply the...