Night Owl Cards

I wrote an awkward, uninformed post more than seven years ago here about 10 players at the time who I wished were Dodgers. Out of those 10 players, four of the top five listed did eventually play for the Dodgers. The results weren't great for most of those guys who were once so desirous, namely Jim Thome, Josh Beckett and Jimmy Rollins. As a result, I'm a little less of a fan (although Thome can't be blamed). There is one of player on that list, though, who I still like quite a bit. Perhaps more now than ever. And that player is the "annoying" Chase Utley. Utley is "annoying" or perhaps even "evil" in the eyes of Mets fans, who were tormented by that player long before his slide into Ruben Tejada last postseason. He's made things miserable for Mets followers and done it with barely the hint of recognition, which I absolutely love. Those two home runs and the grand slam after Noah Syndergaard threw behind him (you can pretend that ...

Here is a card featuring a couple of players celebrating (actually there are three, but for our purposes it's just two). Little did we know at the time that this card was created that one player would go on to be used for good and one be used for evil. Justin Turner is now manning the hot corner for Dodger Blue, while Pagan has been his annoying, unsmiling self for the Giants for seemingly forever. Neither of these players purposely chose to go directly to my favorite team and least favorite team, respectively. But it brings up something in sports that I often think about: the separation between the players playing the game and the fans watching the game. We fans have all kinds of ideas, beliefs and perceptions about the teams we see play everyday. Each team has a personality, and that personality continues year after year for fans. Depending on your perception, the Cardinals are adorable and the best manifestation of "baseball done right" that's ever existe...

Yes, the Awesome Night Card series has been hijacked by the Stadium Lights insert series. That series is the reason why I skipped the Awesome Night Card post last week. It's the reason why I'm showing two awesome night cards again this time. I just can't think of any other night cards until I get this set out of the way. These two cards came from Adam, who runs a fledgling blog called Big Sexy Cards . I believe the blog title is a tribute to the Bulls' Kurt Thomas. Don't ask me to explain more. I don't follow basketball. The arrival of Tulowitzki and Utley means I need just two more cards to finish off the set. The Robinson Cano card is on its way to me. After that, all I will need is the Adrian Gonzalez card. You know what that means. If you ever want to see any other night cards on this blog again, photoshopped Gonzalez needs to arrive in my clutches. Give up A-Gone, and none of my night cards get hurt. And then we can all turn out the lights and ...

... You have a contest. More on that later. First, I want to say that Chase Utley is my favorite non-Dodger since the beginning of TIME after his performance Sunday night. It's not just because he's an awesome player, or that he sparked the Phillies ' beating of the Yankees in Game 5. It's because his hitting allowed me to avoid writing a giant, clever headline about the Yankees winning the World Series. That makes me so happy. First of all, having to write something like that is pure torture for me. I did it in 1998, 1999 and 2000, and I was hating life then, but now the Yankees bother me even more. Secondly, I can't be clever when I am angry. When I'm angry, any creative side of me -- except exceeding sarcasm -- disappears. If my newspaper would accept a headline that said, "YANKEES BLOW," then I'd be golden. But they ain't gonna do that. But the biggest reason I appreciate Utley's performance is now if the Yankees win, I won...

I had a heck of a time picking the "Dodger of the Game" for yesterday's NLCS game. It was probably the most difficult decision of the entire year. Who do you pick for a game like that? I could have named Jim Thome , who had the big pinch-hit single in the middle of the two-run eighth inning to get the eventual winning run to third base. Or I could have picked Casey Blake, who started the inning by hitting a single after going 0-for-5 the night before. Or I could have picked Ronnie Belliard , whose bunt past a sliding Chan Ho Park, put runners on first and second. Or I could have picked Andre Ethier , who worked the bases loaded walk from J.A. Happ to score the winning run. Or maybe it was Vicente Padilla, who matched Pedro Martinez inning for inning. In situations like this, I usually end up going with the closer, which I did, picking Jonathan Broxton . The lead was a very tenuous one run when he came in in the ninth, and the Phillies had the top of the order up. But ...

This is another first, so you'll have to bear with me. I'm a bit giddy. I received an email from UPS yesterday afternoon, at the request of Atlanta Sportscards . UPS was informing me that my hobby box of 2009 Allen & Ginter has been SHIPPED!!!!!!! Oh, sweet, wonderful, happy day. I have never bought an entire hobby box of anything before, let alone received a box of Allen & Ginter in the mail. But by the time the week is out, the box will be in my possession, and I will be on vacation. Twenty-four wonderful packs and nowhere to go, at least for the first few days. And a rootin'-tootin' Gint-a-Cuffs contest to participate in to boot. I don't think I can express how deliriously happy I will be at that moment. So, I'll let Chase Utley say it for me. Chase? You have the floor ... (*Chase steps up to the microphone*): "ALLEN & GINTER ! ... ALLEN & F---IN G GINTER !!!!!" OK, Chase. Thanks. I think you've spoken for everyone. (Some...

Like I mentioned yesterday, we held a garage sale this weekend. We did quite well. I wasn't expecting that. I'm never expecting that. I look at our puny display of junk and, every single time, say "nobody is going to buy any of this." And every time I'm proven wrong by the insanity of others. So stuff I expected to take to the landfill ended up producing some much-needed cash. Books sold. Can you believe that? I thought no one read anymore. Books sold like crazy. Clothes sold. Kiddie toys sold (I expected that one). But one of the items that sat forlornly on the lawn for the entire sale was a shoebox of baseball cards. Nobody wanted them. These weren't special cards at all. I saw a few guys look over at them like they thought they might score a 1958 Willie Mays, only to realize they were cards from the last 25-30 years. But that's why they were in the garage sale. These weren't cards I could sell online, and I'm not a Craiglist idiot. I knew...

The folks at Dinged Corners Inc. are probably zonked out in an exhausted heap after reading, compiling and summarizing all those blog bat-around posts . A fine job, by the way. So I'm not going to interrupt their well-deserved slumber to inform them that they ask the best questions. The blog bat-around question was just one example. They're forever coming up with questions that I'm just dying to answer. I don't know how they do it but they would make fantastic prosecutors. One question would make any hostile witness spill his guts. In fact, put Greg Anderson, Barry Bonds' best zipped-lip bud, in front of DC. I think we'd get the who, what, where, when, how and why pretty quickly. I bring this up because of a question they recently asked the other day. They wanted to know if they were any players that I didn't actively collect that I was happy to get anyway. I was surprised that more didn't answer this question. But I decided to repeat my answer here. Af...

I have to say Friday was the highlight of the week for me. I received two autographed cards in the mail from my favorite player as a child, and I finally tracked down some 2009 Topps. A week after I first saw these things on other blogs, I knew exactly what to look for when I stepped into Target this evening. From 60 feet away I could spot that baby blue background behind you-know-who's head (apparently the qualification for being featured on a pack of 2009 cards this year was not getting into the playoffs). I reached into the double-wide feeders and came up with air. But fortunately, there were '09 packs scattered all around the '08 boxes still there. All of them were probably manhandled, but I didn't mind. I grabbed six and brought them home to daddy. And after opening them, I have to say what I suspected: Topps is a clear winner over Upper Deck this year. I have a natural preference for Topps, so I am a little bit biased, but when I compare everything as obje...