Night Owl Cards

  Last Friday, the baseball socials and various "topical" sports websites were abuzz about MLB's shrinking ballplayers.   Since MLB is implementing the ABS (Automated Balls/Strikes System) this season, the league remeasured players to get more exact figures to feed into the computer. That resulted in a lot of players' official heights changing.   Gavin Lux sort of became the unofficial representative of the change in ballplayers' heights. Lux went from 6-foot-2 to 5-foot-11. I admit, I don't notice players' heights much but if someone told me when Lux was on the Dodgers that he was 6-2, I would have laughed. Not what my eyes were telling me when watching him in a game.   This info is all well and good but naturally I wanted to know how this played out on baseball cards. Did the vital stats on the backs change from 2025 to 2026? Immediately, the answer was "yes." Lux does not have a 2026 Topps flagship card yet, but he does have a Heritage card (o...

  It's another "long weekend" with just two days off for me. But it was enough time for my hobby to travel north for a brief visit.   Yesterday I finally paged the 1983 O-Pee-Chee set that I received from Angus of Dawg Day Cards months ago and put them in a binder. It kind of violated my new rule of "no incomplete sets in a binder" as I still need 67 cards to finish it. But I consider it a priority set -- anything from 1983 is -- even if I don't spend much time on it for awhile. It's just a relief to stop staring at that stack.   Then today I was sitting in a hospital lab waiting room -- I'm telling you, it's just another Monday around here -- and thought enough to bring some reading material. It was the latest copy of Beckett Vintage Collector with David Clyde on the cover.   I've read that story already, and the one after it. But the one up next, that I read fully during my 45-minute wait, was also related to O-Pee-Chee.   This was written...

  I haven't done much with my 1987 Fleer set build. It's the only '80s Fleer set that I haven't completed, yet I've been stuck on 68% finished for awhile.   I haven't bothered to make a want list, either here or on TCDB. I sure don't feel like trading for it, and buying the whole set online would give me 450-plus doubles and there's just no time in my life for a 1987 Fleer art project.   So what I do have of the set is just kind of sitting there waiting. I thought I'd throw it a bone and point out one of the plus-aspects of the set, other than its cool look and wonderfully descriptive "blue freeze pop" Define the Design set name.   This means we're going to have to turn the cards over to the back, so I hope you can handle that.   1987 Fleer was the beginning of Fleer's comic era. I know it's just a little cartoon batter or pitcher squeezed at the bottom of the card and repeated over and over on card after card, but as someone wh...

  This is the wallpaper for our desktop computer at home. I still use this computer a lot for blogging, even though it's ancient and could die any day. But my wife chooses the wallpaper. It's usually a holiday theme that goes with the decor in the room where the computer resides. But ever since the Bills' season, it's been the Bills logo superimposed on Bills Stadium with a red filter. My computer at work also features sports wallpaper. It's an overhead shot of Mookie Betts connecting on a pitch during the Dodgers' wild card series with the Brewers last fall. My laptop doesn't feature a sports backdrop. Instead, the wallpaper is of sweat-soaked Swedish singer Maria Andersson during an Australian concert by the late pop-punk band Sahara Hotnights, circa 2003. My phone displays music wallpaper as well. Right now it's the cover for the Queensryche album "Empire," which just celebrated its 30th anniversary. Now, while all of the above is appropriat...

I sent out the first four giveaway packages earlier this week. That means, yup, I'm back at the post office! It wasn't nearly as traumatic as the last time . First of all, the place was empty. Second, one of the workers behind the counter wasn't wearing a mask. I don't know what that's about, but I prefer to consider it a positive sign. So I've made progress in that area. I haven't worked up the effort to check out a big box card aisle yet. But there's no incentive to do that either. Bowman? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Besides, the guy at work, who has to grab all the very latest, informed me yesterday that he cleared out most of the freshly stocked Bowman at the nearby Target. The appeal of modern cards shrinks and shrinks by the month. As much as I enjoy opening packs, the items inside -- quite honestly -- I wish could be more like what I was opening as a kid. You know, cards that are interesting. There are lots of reasons I'm finding modern cards m...