Night Owl Cards

Even though I don't kill my own dinner, drive a pickup with the tailpipe cut off to wake up every last person, or punctuate each sentence with "what-not," I'm your basic red-blooded American male. I like meat. I like girls. I like baseball. Most of my tastes are fairly basic and mainstream, especially when it comes to baseball. I follow the major leagues. And I'll go to a minor league game. Everything else, well, it just muddies the situation. I don't have time for it. I collect the same way -- in other words, baseball players I've heard of, please. But there are those who try to take me out of my comfort zone. Sometimes I go along for the ride, sometimes I hide under the covers until they go away. Recently, the operator of Torren' Up Cards , dropped another Zippy Zapping on me. As you know, ZZ likes cards that fly off my radar. Some I am aware of but generally ignore. Others I've heard of, but only because there are blogs like Torren...

I've lost the anxiety. "Anxiety" is a critical component of team collecting. Perhaps others would use another word or phrase: "excitement", "butterflies", "preparing for the chase". I call it "anxiety" because that's how I've felt the last few years when yet another set arrives, meaning somewhere between 8 and eleventy-six more Dodgers to collect. I think I finally got burnt out on all of that and now when a new set arrives, I barely remember to put up a want list for it. I'm still behind on several 2014 sets. I'm less anxious about modern cards these days, but I'm also less complete. For example, the Junior Junkie sent me a whole bunch of Dodgers recently. A good portion of them were from this year's sets. And, yes, almost all of them were cards that I'm seeing for the first time. Cue '70s arena rock band singing about "first times" but not singing about sex at all. I...

As you know, I'm not a Bowman guy. I don't buy a lot of Bowman. But each year, for the last few years, I've tried to sample a couple of packs at least, just to see what I am missing. After a few go rounds of that, I decided that I'm not missing anything. It's still a pack of cards in which I've never heard of half of the players, and on the other half, I don't care because Bowman's designs never do anything for me. Last year, I cut my ridiculous habit of buying cards that bore me to one pack . This year, I'm trying to cut it to none. I'm doing an excellent job at it. I haven't looked at Bowman even once when I've been in the card aisle. And I don't think I'll look at it again ... ever. Well, at least in years when the "it" rookie of the year isn't a Dodger. The stupid part of all of this is that I still want Dodger Bowman cards. Because I have a sickness. A disease. It really needs a name. Something like...

If you missed last night's post because of the problems with Blogger's reading list, you might want to wander down there for some quirkiness. I also added to the post at the end, by recording the total number of "balls in flight" for several sets. And I hope to add others. OK, now ... this card. I've received this particular card in well-meaning packages a few times now. I like it a lot. Who doesn't love a bank of illuminated lights? And the "thank you" on the jersey sleeve, well that could work for a variety of posts, and it just leaves a warm glow all over everything when you see it. But it's not a night card. You can see blue sky in the background. And clouds. This is a dusk card. I don't collect dusk cards. I've gotta draw the line somewhere. So are there other lines drawn in my random and arbitrary rules for night cards? I'm glad you asked because I've been getting my share of cards lately that hover on the ...