Night Owl Cards

  I got a card envelope from Japan last week.   I've received card envelopes from all over the world -- England, Australia, France, the Netherlands, probably places I'm forgetting -- but it hasn't happened for a good while. So it's very cool when the return address says "Tokyo".   It was sent by Zippy Zappy, of Torren' Up Cards . As you might know, he now lives in Japan. He used to live in the same state I did, now he's real far away. But the cards are still coming.   He sent me my first Roki Sasaki card, the card you see here. It's from the 2021 BBM set, I'm assuming "Cross Torrent" is some sort of insert? Sasaki's Japanese rookie cards appear to be from 2020, this card came out in his first year in the Japan Pacific League. He pitched for the Chiba Lotte Marines for five years before coming to the Dodgers. He's been a regular starter for really just the last three years, and his thing is he strikes batters out a lot . This c...

  I probably don't need to tell anyone that "World Series" is a ridiculous name, and has been since people started playing baseball in other lands. The Series is starting tonight, but meanwhile another championship baseball series to declare the best in the land is going on right now across the ocean, under the much more reasonable name of the "Japan Series". I don't suppose anyone's going to rush to rename the World Series the "North America Series," we're too far into this now, but for those who read my blog and nothing else, whoever wins Game 5 of the Japan Series tomorrow -- the Orix Buffaloes or the Tokyo Yakult Swallows -- takes a 3-2 lead in the seven-game series.   As if to recognize that there are other championships currently, I recently received some Japanese cards from Dave, aka, the NPB Card Guy from the Japanese Baseball Cards blog .   He nicely sent some cards that have connections to the Dodgers -- either they were Dodgers a...

I lead a somewhat sheltered life way up here in the north country. Nobody wants to live here except for us white folk. The military base has provided us with a bit of "color," but basically the population base is as milky white as the sizable snowbanks still dominating every street in the area. If you want to go snowmobiling and talk English, well have I got a place for you. My collecting is basically the same though. My collection is overwhelmingly baseball. And that means my collection overwhelmingly speaks English. Thanks to O-Pee-Chee and Pacific I've been able to add some French- and Spanish-speaking cards to my collection. But that was about it until Zippy Zappy came along from Torren' Up Cards . He's added a number of Japanese-speaking cards to my collection, which are always cool. The most recent one arrived in a PWE. It's the Shawn Green card above. Perhaps you looked at that card askance. It doesn't seem quite right does it. Isn't ...

(Hey, kids, we've arrived at my least favorite day of the whole year! Daylight Savings Time kicks in, we lose an hour, during one of the busiest sports weekends of the year! Where is the petition for me to sign? It's time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 252nd in a series): I couldn't tell you off the top of my head how many rookie cards Hideo Nomo owns from U.S.-made card brands. Fourteen? Fifteen? Twenty? It's pretty ridiculous to me that a player would have a double-digit number of rookie cards. I grew up during the time when a player was given one rookie card and that was it. But beyond Nomo's U.S. rookie cards, he has even more rookie cards than that! Nomo pitched professionally in Japan for five years, from 1990-94 in the Nippon Professional Baseball league. And there are cards issued of him from that time period. In general, Nomo's Japanese rookie cards are considered to be 1991 BBM and Calbee cards. The card above is Nomo's 1991 B...

I'm not the most positive person. I suppose a slight negative bent is a common character trait for a writer. Inward thinking tends to highlight the pitfalls and road blocks along the way. That's why you hear a lot more about writers drinking themselves to death rather than meeting their demise when the rip cord fails on their parachute. This mind-set trickles into the hobby a lot and you've heard me whining in the past about how I don't have a decent card shop, how card shows are few and far between, how new product doesn't hit here first the way it seems to in certain other spots. I can't help but feel a tinge of jealousy when someone misses a card show because, hell, there's another one next month. But although I'll never be what you would call "perky," I'm not morose either. And I work very hard on seeing the positive side of things. Infrequent card shows create greater appreciation. Lack of a card shop helps me find better deals ...

You can take the title of this post anyway you want it. I'm a big boy. I can handle it. This may or may not be a regular feature. It's just that I'm noticing that there is a lot about cards that I haven't figured out, and that there are a number of other people out there that know a lot more about a variety of card topics than I do. So, why not put that knowledge to my own, personal, selfish use and get a few nagging questions answered? Sound good? OK, let's go. Here's the question: what kind of card is the one up top? I know it's a card of Cecil Fielder from when he was playing in Japan. I'm assuming it was issued in 1989. That's where my knowledge ends. I won this card as a door prize at a card show a year or two ago. I had my choice of cards and selected this one basically because it was the only baseball card in the bunch. The sleeve it was in bore a $20 price tag, not that that means anything. This is the back: Hmmmm. "Fieldar"? I know...