Night Owl Cards

(Not a lot sports-wise can take me away from baseball during the summertime, but there is one exception. No, sorry World Cup fans, it's Wimbledon, and it starts tomorrow. Summer is here! Time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 371st in a series):   Those of you with favorite teams, do you ever play this game? Do you think about what era that you were not part of -- either because you weren't born yet or were not aware of baseball -- that you wish you could have experienced for your team?   I am fortunate that I have lived long enough to have experienced most of the 1970s Dodgers glory days and their 1980s standout seasons. Thank goodness I'm not in my late 30s and can recall only as far back as the '90s or '00s -- those were not fun Dodger times.   But I do wish I was around to witness two particular moments. The first is Sandy Koufax in his heyday, say, 1963-66. That would have been fun. The second is 1955 -- "next year" for Dodgers fans. I would hav...

I know that's a heavy post title. I don't want to bring anyone down to my current miserable state, so I'll try to keep it in a baseball frame of mind, but just to give you an idea of what I am presently dealing with: Death and dying is everywhere. My mother's health continues to decline. We all know what her illness is, we're just waiting for confirmation. The news is not good and some of us are not taking it well. Meanwhile, around the block from me last week, a father and his four daughters died in a fire on Valentine's Day. The city is devastated. There have been memorials in the street near my house all week. So with those happy themes dominating my life right now, I came home from yet another trip to my parents to hear that Don Newcombe had died. I loved Don Newcombe. I thought he never received as much appreciation as other Brooklyn Dodgers. Of the great African-American Dodgers trifecta of the 1940s and 1950s, I suppose Newk couldn't compare ...

The 10th anniversary giveaway has come to a close. But first I need to get rid of this 2010 Topps short-print of Cy Young. It's the last prize left and an interesting if I can say so myself. I mean look at those stats! And those teams ? The Spiders? The Perfectos? The AmeriCAINS?? (What the hell, Topps, it's supposed to be the Boston Americans ). This card is destined for Sport Card Collectors, if he wants it. He just has to let me know by 8 p.m. EST Monday. Otherwise it goes to Bru. Or Fuji after that. I will be sending out prize packages hopefully starting the end of this week. I can't send them all out at once. I don't have the time nor the money. Fortunately, Commish Bob of the Five-Tool Collector helped in the money department by donated nearly two-dozen stamps to the cause! Thank you very much! That is a big assist. Especially for someone who is paying for a kid in college. So I'll start sending out prize envelopes, starting with the first p...

Since I've just finished proclaiming 1956 Topps as the greatest baseball set ever made, I figured I'd extend the '56 Topps love for at least one more post. Yesterday on Twitter there was a commotion. Yeah, I know, how uncharacteristic of Twitter, right? The Twitter folks were in a bunch because Padres pitcher Bud Norris said some things that were along the lines of: "foreigners, learn how to play the game right." You can see how some people might take that the wrong way. Although I don't find Twitter's habit of unearthing something it disagrees with and then nailing the person who said it to the wall repeatedly for the next 8 hours charming, I do agree that the "play the game the right way" mantra is stodgy at best and xenophobic at worst. Most of the complaints are lodged by white players against players of color or players from another country. Yeah, I don't like demonstrative displays on the baseball field all the time, but I...

Tell me, veteran card bloggers, do you ever think back to the days when you had no blog, when you collected in a vacuum, when no one heard your plaintive cries of "look Aaron Rowand is wearing a glove on his HEAD!" In those days, if someone told you all you had to do was write about cards in a public forum in order to find other collectors and build your collection, you would treat it like the joke that knew it was. In fact, if you received that information, this very day, you'd be certain that you were being pranked. Well, I don't do pranks. It's mean and a waste of time. So when I say I get cards because I write about cards on a blog, there is no joke, no catch, no under-the-table dealing, no kickbacks, no shady stuff, no auto dealership fine print, no snickering, no nothing. It's simple: write about cards publicly, get cards. Pretty cool, huh? I'll show you how cool. I received a bunch of cards from Dave a week or two ago. It's filled...