Night Owl Cards

  Regular readers may have been wondering where my "If I Was King Of The Postseason" post was this year. I decided I'm not continuing that tradition after the little bit of crankiness that arose after my post in the series last year. Normally I don't let something like that affect content, but I was tiring of the series anyway. It takes a long time to do for what's essentially the same thing every year. I don't know, if anyone misses it, I can pick it up next year. Instead, this year I'm calling back to a post I did long ago , and also updated long ago . It was my research on which player made the final out of the World Series, something my brother and I called "The Blob" when we were kids. I had listed every "Blob" for every series to that point and then I added to the updated post through the 2016 World Series. That's where it stopped. In looking back on those posts, I found a couple of errors. Also, the formatting is off, as happ...

(Around about now, I start hating rain and hoping for snow. It makes perfect sense to me, but it won't in March. Time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 308th in a series): I have written a lot about the cards that came out in 1981. Not only has it been 40 years since those cards were new, but it was the start of new era, of more than just Topps cards to buy, and it was a mind-blowing development for this collector. I was looking at this Bruce Sutter card earlier today, thinking that I have written everything I could about those 40-year-old cards. There is nothing left. But Bruce Sutter reminded me that there is. For example, 1981 was the first time since I had started collecting that I could look at each of the brands out that year and determine which player received the best treatment from the three companies. Which player had the best three-card display? This is something we've taken for granted since the 1980s -- heck in 2021 it would have to be which player has the be...

  The other day I was talking to a co-worker who is approximately my age and we were discussing the commercials we'd see on sports broadcasts when we were kids. Naturally, we talked about the "Less Filling/Tastes Great" Miller Lite beer commercials because those goofy ads appealed to young viewers, unlike the boooring Miller Beer or Lowenbrau commercials that usually showed "old" guys in a fishing boat or adults toasting at a family gathering. I couldn't wait until those ads were off the TV. Talk moved to the commercials that I remember showing up during the seventh inning stretch on NBC's airing of the Game of the Week on Saturdays. I recall the Rolaids Relief Man Award commercials airing at that time, along with Johnny Bench hawking Krylon spray paint ("no runs, no drips, no errors'). I tried to find a Rolaids Relief Man video from that time, but apparently '70s videos simply are not all that available. Most of what I found were the Old Sp...

Guess what? I got another package from Cards On Cards . By my count, this is package No. 36. That's an all-time record for anywhere. No one has ever sent more packages with baseball cards in them from one blogger to another. Go through the records if you must. Come up with the most irrefutable, iron-clad argument that you can, but it's still wrong. This is the record, so off with you. As usual, Kerry's gift of cards produced the usual variety, including this night card here. I'm not 100 percent positive it's a genuine night scene on that card, but there's a good chance with the camera light shining on Brucey and the darkened background. Awards cards are fun and Fleer was the king of awards cards in the '80s. But this card is extra-interesting to me because: 1) There are three hands holding up that trophy -- two from Sutter and one phantom hand. Eerie. 2) The guy with the glasses in the background may or may not be George Kissell, the late legend...