Night Owl Cards

  I fall into this trap of unspoken moping about the length of time that it takes me to complete sets. Sometimes I whine publicly: Ebay shoppers are snapping up all my cards. The prices online are increasingly ridiculous. Waah! Waah!   But objectively, when emotion is taken out of the conversation, we've got it pretty good in a lot of ways. Do you ever think about how it used to be? Before the internet? If you wanted to collect a set 30 years ago, you relied on card shows, mail-order catalogs and magazines or trades with friends, relatives or acquaintances. You also bought lots and lots and lots of packs in hopes that 1 of the 12 cards inside would be one you needed. Twenty years ago, I was not online. I had just gotten back into the hobby a little. I discovered there was a person downstairs in my work office that collected 1970s cards like I did. And I knew another person in my office who had cards, but he was more interested in selling what he had. That was it. But I wasn't f

I have told the story numerous times of my father coming home from work one night with a large paper grocery bag filled with 1950s baseball cards to give to myself and my two brothers. Overcome with glee but knowing we would have to share and share alike, we set up all the cards on the dining room table, scattering them in a giant pile in the center and took turns selecting them. The few superstars that were available -- I nabbed the '57 Willie Mays with my first pick -- went first. But the majority of cards, around 300 of them, were players we didn't know at all. At this point we were collecting pictures, not names. But ever since I started collecting back in 1975, I have been drawn to certain cards of unknown players for unknown reasons. The 1977 Bob Tolan, the 1976 Steve Renko, the 1975 Jackie Brown. The names didn't matter. The pictures did. I wanted that '56 Elmer Valo card. I had no idea who Elmer Valo was. I barely knew what the Kansas City A's w

When I found the Willie Davis card for the anniversary post, it occurred to me that I hadn't featured a "Dodger Numbers" post for awhile. I thought a write-up on the players who have worn No. 3 in Dodger history would be a nice follow-up. Then I saw how many players that had worn No. 3 over the last 50-plus years. There was no way I was writing that up last night. I'm in a slightly more perky state today, so I'm willing to go through them all now. But I'll keep the words to a minimum, because there are lots and lots of names here. No. 3 is definitely not a Babe Ruth number for the Dodgers. During the Brooklyn Dodger days, the main wearers of the No. 3 were Jersey Joe Stripp, a third baseman in the 1930s, Pete Coscarart, starting second baseman in the early '40s, and, most famously, third baseman Billy Cox of the Boys of Summer. A couple of other players who went on to successful management positions also briefly wore the number during the 1940s.