Night Owl Cards

As you all know, Opening Day came and went without a single baseball game being played.

A number of Opening Day traditions, happily anticipated by many a baseball fan, didn't happen including my own.

Some bloggers acknowledged the baseball-less Opening Day, but truthfully, I wasn't in much of an Opening Day mood even before the pandemic shutdown. March 26? March? That's not Opening Day.

The last couple of years, MLB has inched Opening Day farther and farther into this month. The first March Opening Day -- that involved more than one game and that I know of -- was in 1998 and that was on March 31, the last day of March.

Any other multi-game Opening Days in March since then have been on March 31, until two years ago, when it was on March 29. And then last year it was on March 28. And now we're supposed to be playing ball, games that count, on March 26. Yeah, that didn't make sense to me.

April has always meant Opening Day to me and anything else before that, accordi…

(Greetings on "Live Long and Prosper Day," a day dedicated to Leonard Nimoy, whose birthday is today, but also dedicated to all of us: Live long and prosper and STAY IN YO HOUSE. It's time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 290th in a series):


There are many moments that started me on the road to being the dedicated baseball fan that I am today and have been for the last 40-plus years.

I can point to the first baseball card I ever saw, the first baseball card pack I ever bought, the first baseball game I ever watched on TV, the first baseball game I ever viewed in person, the first baseball cap I ever wore, the first baseball glove with an MLB player's signature I ever owned, all of it makes up who I am today as a baseball fan and card collector.

It's not quite as easy to pinpoint why I've always liked certain baseball players. Ron Cey, sure, I can give you dates and happenings. But there aren't many more players where I can say: "Yes, THAT TIME…

Hi, there!

Are you too freaked out to go to the post office?

Do you view footage from football games from last November and recoil in horror at people sitting close together with *bodies touching*?

Are you purposely avoiding the grocery store because:

A) You don't want to be disturbed by the amount of people there
B) You don't want to be disturbed by the number of people wearing medical masks there
C) You don't want to be disturbed by shelves depleted of products that nobody could possibly need in the quantities that they're buying
D) You don't want to be disturbed by how much farther your faith in humanity can plunge.

All of the above pretty much sums it up for me.

I WANT to go to the post office. I want to send people card packages. But it just doesn't seem like a good idea right now. So my stacks of cards for people just sit there waiting, waiting, like we all are, waiting, waiting.

Today, I finally sent out a couple PWEs. I touched the mailbox by myself th…

Yesterday, Ryan from Beckett Media announced the old-school Topps designs chosen for this year's Archives set, which will be released in the summer.

The three designs selected for 2020 Archives are:

1955
1974
2002

Yes ... 2002. More on that in a moment.

I don't think I'm saying anything controversial when I state that these are not three of the more popular Topps designs. In fact, with many collectors, these are three stinkers.

But I'm not one of those collectors. Two stinkers? Sure. But three, well that would mean you're underestimating 1974 Topps for about the bamillionth time.

I love the 1974 set. If you've been paying attention to this blog at all, you know that. I've written several odes, including this most recent one that I'm going to tell myself caused Topps to run back into its work office and exclaim "WE HAVE GOT TO PUT THE '74 DESIGN IN ARCHIVES NEXT YEAR!!!"

This is the first baseball card design I ever saw, on the first baseba…