Night Owl Cards

    I don't have a lot of mini collections. I can't focus on that many hobby things these days anyway, but I've never been the mini-collection type. If I did venture outside of my set/team/player-sphere, one of the collections I would set up is cards of players who later became broadcasters when I was starting to learn baseball. They were my first baseball teachers. Yeah, sure there were youth league coaches and my dad and all that, but I wanted to know about Major Leaguers, not that "keep your eye on the ball" stuff. Fortunately there were guys on TV who told me all about major leaguers. Sure, there were people like Vin Scully and Keith Jackson and Lindsey Nelson and Frank Messer. But the ones who knew all the inside stuff were usually called "the color commentators" and they were usually former ballplayers. Ex-ballplayers like Joe Garagiola, Tony Kubek, Ralph Kiner and Don Drysdale were invaluable to me learning about professional ballplayers and what ...

Just a short post today. That whole contest thing -- especially the last post -- wore me out thoroughly. A few days ago, I was placing the 1977 Topps cards that I received from Max in my brand new 1977 Topps binder (it makes me giddy just typing that) when I came to this Fran Healy card. It was the last one I was putting in the binder. Since I put my binder sets in order by the number on the back, I turned Healy over to look at its number. You know, like a newly acquired kitty from the animal shelter. "No. 3?" My brain said, trying to compute. But I didn't question it any more. I merely paged to the front of the binder to position my Healy card. Of course, I should have known, and when I reached the front I realized, that the first few cards of a set in the mid-to-late '70s were reserved for highlight and league leader cards. There were no player cards for the first 6 or 7 cards. And there the league leaders cards were at the front of my '77 binder, ...

Most collectors can pick out the "cameo" appearances of players on baseball cards. Cameos occur when a player appears on a card that's not his own. The early '70s was a great time for cameos, because the photographers shooting the action back then seemed to have no qualms about featuring multiple players in the frame. So what if the player is half obscured by a batter and an umpire? It was good enough for 1973 Topps! But I think the king of cameos during the 1970s had to be Thurman Munson. Given that he had a career tragically cut short, he appeared on his fair share of baseball cards that did not feature his name. Reggie Jackson may have never seen a camera he didn't like, but Munson appeared to like the limelight, too, if you go by the cards. ... Here is Munson flat out in the dirt, showing the ump the ball, apparently after tagging Vada Pinson. ... ... And here's Munson shaking his backstop for the camera as he waits for the throw to tag out a ducking Terr...