Night Owl Cards

Today starts a week in which my workplace has decided that days off are highly overrated. Why do we need days off when it's such a blessing to work where we do? Their solution for anyone who is ill-mannered enough to whine about this arrangement is to "take a day off some other time." Well, March is habitually and wonderfully stuffed with crap, so "some other time" will end up being in April. Let's hope I make it that far. That means posts on this blog will be remarkably devoid of content. I'm not organized enough to plan posts days ahead of time, so keep your expectations low. For example, what you're getting here is a listing of a few one-card trades. Think of it this way: how many times have you cursed me for too many images on one post? This is the opposite of that. First, here's a card from Chris at Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz : Very simple. It's a Finest card from 2009 of Andre Ethier. I have a parallel or two of this item,

Most card collectors I know are "good eggs." Sure, there are rotten people in every line of work, but somehow collecting pictures of ballplayers -- especially baseball players -- draws folks that I consider "likable." They're my kind of people. This presents an interesting situation, because if you haven't noticed, there are a great deal of athletes who are definitely not good eggs. They are horrid, putrid eggs that emit a foul odor in every direction. Why we are collecting cards of these people I haven't a clue. Whenever I think about that, it gets disheartening. If there ever occurs a time when I stop collecting cards, it won't be because of card company shenanigans. It will be because I believe that there is not one professional player worth admiring, and consequently not worth collecting. Fortunately, that hasn't happened yet. The example that I'm getting at is Clayton Kershaw. There have been a few articles written lately about

Duke Snider died today from natural causes at age 84. I was not old enough to see Snider play. To me, Snider was a picture on a baseball card and photos in Roger Kahn's "The Boys of Summer." I first got to know of Snider the person when he was a broadcaster for the Montreal Expos. I'd watch him on television when I was a kid summering in Buffalo, N.Y. That's what I see when I think of Snider, a guy with a microphone, long sideburns and a garish '70s television broadcasting jacket. As I got older, Snider became something else. He was the picture on the oldest card I had, a 1951 Topps. It didn't come into my collection without some pain , but to this date, it is one of the key parts of my collection. A couple of years after that, I landed the 1957 Duke Snider card and that also became one of the centerpieces of my collection. In college, I read "The Boys of Summer" for the first time. Snider was never my favorite player from those

When I was in elementary school, teachers would line the kids up by height when we were headed somewhere as a class. Before arriving at the lunch room or the library, it was imperative that we positioned ourselves in order by declining height. I can remember teachers getting very worked up over this. I could never figure out why it was necessary -- maybe to keep an eye on the tall troublemakers? But I know I didn't like the practice because I was a short kid (a perk of Italian ancestry) and found myself in the back of the line every time. While the home room teacher waved her hand over our heads, sizing up our stature, and helping to brand the stereotype in our heads for life that tall was "good" and short was " bad ," I pouted over never being able to be the first to walk into the cafeteria or the gym locker room. This is why I was drawn to players like Pete Runnels. Runnels actually wasn't a short man. He was just shy of 6 feet tall. But he played

Did you know Bugs Bunny has a connection to the Brooklyn Dodgers? I didn't until I was looking up the origination of the nickname "Duke of Flatbush." Flatbush is a neighborhood in Brooklyn, mostly populated by African-Americans and West-Indians now, but during the times of the Brooklyn Dodgers was the residence of Italian, Irish and Jewish Americans. People who lived in Flatbush rooted for the Dodgers, naturally. Bugs Bunny featured a Flatbush accent, according to the original voice of Bugs, Mel Blanc. Also, according to Bugs' biography, he was born under Ebbets Field. So, this card ... ... makes perfect sense. Bugs is a Dodger, and ain't he a stinker? But the reason I went off on this cartoon tangent is because Shane of Off the Wall sent me the Snider card from the 1984 Donruss set. It's a former Nebulous 9 need, and I was beginning to wonder if it was rare, since it sat there on the list for so long. It turns out it's not so rare, beca

It feels great to return to the Awesome Night Card segment. The polls were fun, but we need to look at something fresh! Roll out the new night cards! This is a great one of Marty Cordova from 1996 Fleer Ultra. It was sent to me by Michael, who is an avid Dodger collector and a great trader. This card was supposed to kick off a post about rookie sensations who after one or two big seasons slowly fade away. It was supposed to address how I knew all about the sad stories of Mark Fidrych and Joe Charbonneau, but when it came to the 1990s, those rookie stories became more elusive. It was supposed to be how I heard about Marty Cordova winning the A.L. Rookie of the Year award in 1995 and enjoying an even better 1996, and then, as far as I was concerned, dropping off the face of the earth. I didn't pay a lot of attention to baseball in the late 1990s and I had no idea that Cordova suffered through back injuries that cut into his playing time, eventually ended up with the Blue Jay

I can't hold back this post any longer. I might burst, and you don't want that. It's ugly. Feathers everywhere. So, even though there are many trade packages that arrived at the owl's nest before this one, I've got to get this out of my system. It's a crazy one. On Tuesday, I was upstairs when I heard my wife open the door and what sounded like a postal vehicle driving away. She pulled in a package shaped like nothing that would be for me. I'm terrible at measurements, but I'd say it was about 20-by-30 in dimensions. I immediately dismissed it as some decorating item until I heard someone say, "It's for you." To which I immediately responded with, "holy, crap ... what is THAT?" I do not order large, wide, flat packages. There is a reason why I collect items that are 2 1/2-by-3 1/2. They're manageable. I can keep them under my thumb without fear of an uprising. That was my thought process as I was opening the packa