Night Owl Cards

  The World Baseball Classic final is tonight. Folks on social media have been picking sides, because that's what they like to do. To them, the WBC is either a worthless exhibition fraught with danger or what baseball must be like in heaven.   I'm somewhere in between as usual. I haven't watched a lot of it, but what I have watched was interesting. The U.S.-Venezuela game was very engaging. I was surprised by that. I'm not somebody who thinks they should play this every year, but it's a fun outlet and makes spring training a little more interesting than it is. Also it helps that Mookie Betts is playing for the U.S.   It's also helped get me involved in current baseball this year, which I had been slow about. I'm going to blame the fact that Heritage isn't out yet. Not only that, there is zero news on when it is going to be released. I have a gift card specifically marked for the arrival of 2023 Heritage and instead Big League is going to be released at t...

(Damn, it's busy around here. I guess I spoke to soon when I said it was the start of the easy season. Maybe in another week I'll be able to roust up some solid posts here. But for now, it's Cardboard Appreciation time. This is the 258th in a series): I'm a card collector, so I like to categorize things. And if I were to categorize the 1993 Upper Deck All-Time Heroes set, I would label it as "the classiest most difficult to store retro set of all-time." How's that for a category? The '93 All-Time Heroes set is a tribute to the famed 1912 T202 Hassan Triple Folders, one of the first sets to feature multiple big leaguers on one card. The 1993 UD set is 165 cards and features many players from the past, during a time when retro was just becoming popular with major card companies. It's also one of the few sets to trumpet a cause on the front of each card, promoting the Baseball Assistance Team, formed in 1986. Each card is 5 1/4 inches long,...

Not long into starting this blog I discovered that people have it together far more than I do. While I'm stumbling through life trying to figure out where I put my snowbrush, how I'm going to pay for any Christmas presents and why I forgot to get a haircut again, others already have the who, what, when, where, why and how marked, targeted and checked off. But I did do one thing right. I started a blog about baseball cards. Because of that, those very together people take time out at this time of year to send me Christmas card packages. I'm in awe of their planning. Christmas card packages mean I will get exactly what I want every Christmas. It balances out the socks and gloves. It adds fun to what can be a humdrum part of the holiday for an adult. It basically means better Christmas gifts than before I had a blog. How do I determine whether it's a Christmas package? Well, they wish me a Merry Christmas, duh. Some are especially together and send a holiday ...