Night Owl Cards

On Thursday, I completed the 1972 Topps baseball set. This is tremendous news. It is tremendous news in particular for a 9-year-old kid from Upstate New York who had just wandered into a world of baseball and the picture cards that display that sport. He is awe-struck, astonished and, frankly, a blithering idiot. His mind has been blown. The '72 set -- I've said it before -- is the one set that I think of when someone says "baseball cards". To someone younger, the cards may look rooted in the past, wild and crazy, and almost primitive. But that's only because they did not stumble into this hobby during one golden, sun-splashed day in the early 1970s. I saw 1972 Topps cards only in the hands of older kids. And I probably first saw them before I even started collecting. To me, those cards -- that design -- said Baseball Cards. That's what trading cards were supposed to be. That has stayed with me for so long that now when I look at my binder of 1972 Top