Night Owl Cards

  I read a story on the wire at work last week about Red Sox pitcher Zack Kelly , perhaps you saw it, too. It ended up on youtube and social media as well.   For Photo Day at Red Sox camp, Kelly wrote a message on the paper that featured his name and number for ID purposes. It said: "5th year in MLB. Can I please have a card?"   Kelly is 30 years old. He has pitched in the majors since 2022. He appeared in 49 games for the Red Sox in 2024. He appeared in 28 for them last year. He has 98 total MLB games. His only cards are from minor-league team-issued sets.     Dan Altavilla has pitched in the major leagues for eight years -- 152 games total. He started with the Mariners in 2016, throwing in as many as 41 games in 2017. He moved on to the Padres in 2020, then played for the Royals and last year was in 28 games for the White Sox with two saves.   He has no Topps cards. His last non-minor league cards were in 2014 with Panini's Prizm Draft Picks Series and El...

    A Pirates account on Bluesky recently featured the Pirates player for which he had the most cards and then put out the question (I'm paraphrasing), "which Pirates player has the most cards in your collection?"   My favorite team isn't the Pirates, so I could only guess. My first thought was Dave Parker, but I knew that wasn't right because he also appeared with the Reds on many junk wax sets that at least equaled the number of Pirates cards I owned of Parker.   This got me curious about the player with the most cards for every MLB team in my collection. So I went to TCDB to crunch the numbers -- which took a few days because TCDB has been crashing like mad lately.   It turns out I was correct about Parker. He's not my collection's most frequent Pirate. But I was in the right era. My most for each team is the product of several factors: the era when I started collecting ('70s), my favorite cards (also the '70s and early '80s), the overproduc...

  You fellow '70s kids know already that M is for Martha , but fortunately there are collectors in our corner of the ridiculous internet that know that M is also for More Cards.   Johnny has been sending sequels to his recent card distributions and I received my second share about a week ago. He's still ridding himself of players who start with M that no longer live up to his standards. My last package was filled with Max Muncys.   This package was filled with ... no, not Willie Mays ...   Dustin May.   Lots of needed parallel action there. Now that May is with his third team in three years, it's safe to say he's not going to be the future star promised by his prospect cards. I could've told Johnny that quite awhile ago (and gotten my cards earlier!). May just couldn't put it all together -- or stay away from killer salads.           Mmmmmmmmm. Those hit the spot. Mighty nice of John to send them.     There was also one Max Mu...