Night Owl Cards

(For a brief moment, I thought of starting a non-card blog to document the music I've been listening to, sometimes while writing this blog, but mostly while driving or working late at night. In the last 2-3 years I've really gotten into current music -- not the stuff on the radio/charts -- and it's kind of more fascinating than cards right now. But I'm not great at expressing my musical appreciation or criticism and I already run a blog that nobody reads so that thought disappeared until it popped back into my mind right now. Anyway, time for Cardboard Appreciation, this is the 332nd in a series): One of the best ways for me to discover cards that amuse me is when doing research for posts. That's how I stumbled upon this card, while going through cards for the First Manager Card Invasion post a couple weeks ago. I had never seen it before. It's a high number in the 1962 Topps series, one of the highest. I immediately wondered whether that is the most tobacco s...

I wasn't going to do this post because I've basically done it already (the perils of being in your eighth year of blogging). But on that very post, I rediscovered a comment requesting more cards of players chewing their cud. So, three-plus years later, departed blogger, your wish has been granted. Going through my brand new complete 1976 SSPC set, I discovered card after card of a player enjoying a fat wad of tobacco. This pleased me quite a bit because it confirmed what I knew about ballplayers when I was growing up. Part of what made the game of baseball baseball back then is that players (and managers and coaches) chewed tobacco. I admit I didn't know much about tobacco, other than that my mother hated it and players seemed to really, really like it. And that spitting was COOL! In the '70s, tobacco-chewing was the background of baseball, like vendors calling out their wares, or jets flying over Shea Stadium. It was part of the experience. And, then -- under...

I pulled this card last weekend out of a Fairfield rack pack. I twittered the entire pack of 100 cards, much to my audience's chagrin, I'm sure. But I had a lot of fun. This card was my favorite out of the entire pack, and only a small part of it is because it's a 1981 Fleer card that I needed. The photo represents a bygone era. And that era is "The Era Of A Disgusting Habit." It was an era when baseball-playing men were unashamed to appear on little rectangles of cardboard with a great wad of tobacco in their cheek. As a kid, I would seek out cards in which I could tell players were packing away a chaw. And I would get excited when I pulled a card of someone who looked like he could spit for days. I'm not sure why this intrigued me so. I blame part of it on this Sports Illustrated article that I read at a young age. Thanks to that article, I knew at age 11 that former pitcher Steve Hamilton threw up on the mound on national TV after swallowin...