Night Owl Cards

  It's been a fairly stressful week, between traveling, a delayed doctor's appointment, the loss of a beloved player from my youth, and now the most taxing World Series matchup I could possibly conjure up as a fan. The weekend will help a little (stupid sports teams still have to play on the weekend, tho) and so will the collection. I just happen to be wrapping up a super-simple sportlots order with the final cards trickling in. I like simple orders. Big-ticket and super-cool arrivals are always fun but they contain a certain amount of worry what with prices paid and condition concerns. Simple orders are just simple cards, they don't cost much but still they fill holes and are always wanted.   Some of those cards were upgrades and they've already been filed away with a smile. A 1983 Topps Ron LeFlore, a 1986 Fleer Bobby Castillo, items that should have always been pristine but weren't, and I was horrified. But now the monster is back in the closet.   Others were reg

  I know some readers have been expecting me to write about Fernando Valenzuela after news of his death. A few comments on the last post mentioned him even though I cited him just once in passing. I learned of the sad news as I ended work around midnight Tuesday. The work schedule is unrelenting midweek these days. This is why I almost never post on Wednesdays now, so there was no chance to get to it yesterday. But I was devastated. Valenzuela is probably among my top 10 favorite Dodgers, or at least should be. His arrival synced perfectly with my budding interest in young stars -- a common teenage fixation -- and the Dodgers were happily accommodating with not only Fernando but Sutcliffe, Steve Howe, Sax, Guerrero, Rudy Law and a bunch of others. I lived far away from Los Angeles, so I have no tales to tell of nearly running into Valenzuela in Dodger Stadium or him signing a ball for me. But I did witness his MLB career from the very beginning. I've written about him a bunch

  The Dodgers are retiring Fernando Valenzuela's uniform number "34" tonight. It seems like they just did the uniform-retiring thing and that's because it happened last year with Gil Hodges' "14" being retired. Valenzuela breaks tradition as he's just the second Dodger player not in the Hall of Fame to have his number retired. The other is Jim Gilliam. Last year I wrote a post about Hodges' number being retired and boasting about how the Dodgers don't retire numbers willy-nilly like some clubs, and now, I guess, the Dodgers are going to be every other team. But for Valenzuela it doesn't bother me much. Maybe I'm making excuses for my favorite team (you know, like every fan does) but retiring No. 34 seems right. Valenzuela's impact on the Dodgers is among the greatest of any player in team history. His legacy is felt throughout MLB and in two countries. He remained a part of the Dodgers long after his retirement. Also maybe the Do

  This is a team fanboy post so please excuse me for all the Dodger blue. Julio Urias is getting the Opening Day start for the Dodgers tonight against Arizona. He is the 63rd pitcher in franchise history to start Opening Day. I know this because I counted.   I got curious, so I went through retrosheet.org and figured out all of the Game 1 starters for the Dodgers since they began as the "Bridegrooms" in 1890.   Here is briefly what I found: Clayton Kershaw holds the franchise record for the most Opening Day starts with nine. He set the record with his eighth season-debut start in 2018.   Kershaw broke the record previously held by Don Drysdale and Don Sutton, who each started Opening Day seven times in their careers. Kershaw also broke Sutton's record of seven straight seasons of Opening Day starts with his eighth straight start in 2018.   After the top three, Fernando Valenzuela has the most Opening Day starts with six, along with Brickyard Kennedy, who also had six star

The ultimate reward for a miscut card is that I treat it as its own distinct card. This doesn't always happen. I'm not a collector of miscuts, so often the card will end up in the dupes pile or (*gasp* *how could you?*) in the trash. For a miscut card to avoid that fate, it needs to provide something interesting outside of it being a mere cutting mistake. Enter this 1982 Topps card of Fernando Valenzuela sent to me by Bru .    It looks nice and normal on the front, a familiar shot of the first solo base card of Valenzuela that Topps had produced. Perhaps that alone would disqualify the card from being a distinct miscut. There is nothing about the front that tells you that there's something different. Oh, but the back: That is two separate players on the back of that card, and neither one of them is Valenzuela! In fact, there's more about Hal McRae and Reggie Jackson on the back of this card than Fernando. Even better (or worse) is that Valenzuela is carting around on th