Night Owl Cards

While I was filing my 1981 Donruss set away in a binder recently, I was struck by how ingenious -- and by "ingenious," I mean "awkwardly awful" -- the set is. Must I review? I must: 1. The wafer-thin card stock, of course. 2. The typos, of course. 3. The misspellings, of course. 4. The fact that the set established an all-time, never-to-be-broken record for the most cards in which a player is posed with a bat on his shoulder. (Yes, this is a future post. Do not steal this post idea). 5. The fact that just about every player in the set -- unless it is a Cub or a White Sox -- is pictured in their road uniform. And then there are the miscut cards, like this Terry Crowley card. Today we look at a card like this and laugh -- unless you're a Dodger fan, and then you see the Joe Torre name line at the top and you start fuming about managers and umpires and incompetent relievers and squirrely puke Giants pitchers who should have been stomped on by Matt ...

Little time today, so I'm getting right to it. Right here we have The Hammer. In all his 1971 glory. Forty-seven homers, 1.019 OPS that year. He was the man in 1971. He's still the man. This card is all mine. It is one of the cards that I thought I'd have the toughest time obtaining in my quest to finish off the '71 set. But after receiving the '71 Munson card, I've learned that just about anything is possible in the collecting game (Steve, the code cards are accumulating). Originally, I thought finishing the '71 set would be a lifetime project. I don't think that anymore. Granted, I still need the Clemente, the Mays and the Rose. Realistically, it could still take years. But also, I expect those cards to drop out of the sky in the next few months. Seriously, I expect to be walking down the street and they will float down from a cloud into my hands. That's how optimistic I am about this set now. I have reader Eggrocket to thank for the Aar...

Most collectors can pick out the "cameo" appearances of players on baseball cards. Cameos occur when a player appears on a card that's not his own. The early '70s was a great time for cameos, because the photographers shooting the action back then seemed to have no qualms about featuring multiple players in the frame. So what if the player is half obscured by a batter and an umpire? It was good enough for 1973 Topps! But I think the king of cameos during the 1970s had to be Thurman Munson. Given that he had a career tragically cut short, he appeared on his fair share of baseball cards that did not feature his name. Reggie Jackson may have never seen a camera he didn't like, but Munson appeared to like the limelight, too, if you go by the cards. ... Here is Munson flat out in the dirt, showing the ump the ball, apparently after tagging Vada Pinson. ... ... And here's Munson shaking his backstop for the camera as he waits for the throw to tag out a ducking Terr...