Night Owl Cards

  I wrote a month or so ago that I've been working on a post on the 1991 Studio set. Based on the information provided by players on the back of that set's cards, could a personality profile be developed for the average Major League Baseball player in 1991?   I went through all 264 cards. For most of the cards, there are four categories listed on the back that allows you to know the player a bit more than the photo on the front: personal (birth date, family, place of residence), career, hobbies & interests and heroes.   I focused on the last two categories because they are the best window into a ballplayer's world in 1991.   I separated those two categories into six separate sub-categories: Hobbies & Interests, Music Interests, Collecting Interests;  Favorite Sports Teams; Heroes and Favorite TV Shows. Then I started tallying. When I was done, I came up with the Average Major League Player in 1991. Based on the most popular answers, this is what that pl...

I can't go a week without reading something about the opioid crisis in this country. The U.S. has a drug problem, perhaps a bigger problem than ever, and I fear that even if this particular issue goes away, there always will be a problem with drugs. I've held a healthy mistrust of drugs for most of my life, even legal ones. I believe that in many cases you can get what you need without the use of pharmaceuticals. But I realize that everyone is made differently. I also grew up during a different time. At my high school, known drug users were outcasts, a select band of misfits that congregated after classes near the overhang where the buses parked to pick up kids. They looked different, they smelled different. I didn't need Nancy Reagan to tell me not to go over there. But, obviously, even in the 1980s, drug use ran rampant elsewhere. Cocaine was huge, I remember reading about it in Time magazine. And ballplayers were getting busted. I'd read that in Sports Ill...