Night Owl Cards

(I got to view four MLB playoff games yesterday -- college football, what's that? -- and I have to say I was pretty pleased with the results across the board. No chance of that continuing I guess, right? -- OK, well, the Blue Jays are doing their part. Let's move on to Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 357th in a series):   Last weekend I went to the flea market in town. I finally had some time to kill and I don't get over there nearly as much as I should.   This is the place where I found my 1970 Topps Roberto Clemente a few years ago , and that particular card spot in the flea market is still there. While I find cards here and there at other parts of the market -- it's a fairly large place and seems to get bigger all the time -- it's not a cardboard mecca. But that one spot is remarkably consistent.   It always features four rows of cards, what I guess you would call a dollar box. Most of the cards are a dollar, though you'll find some that are more and some...

Twenty-five years ago this Saturday, a well-known stand-up comedian debuted a little-known sitcom during the 4th of July holiday week. It would be nearly a year before another episode appeared and probably a good two years before "Seinfeld" took hold with the American public. But I can safely say that I have never seen or probably ever will see a funnier television show. "Seinfeld" is the sitcom of my era. The generation before me had "All in the Family." The generation after me had god knows what -- do they make sitcoms anymore? I remember watching one of the earliest Seinfelds sometime during 1990 in my co-worker's apartment, thinking "what is this?" I believe it was the one where Kramer fills the washing machine with cement. Sometime after that, I was a faithful Thursday night watcher, like the rest of TV viewers. When the show hit syndication, I copied them on to videotape because I knew that a show this historically funny sh...

I had a day off the other day and to get the hell away from the Olympics I went out on the town. But I was with family, so instead of ending up at some bar on the sketchy side of town sitting next to a strumpet named Tina with vodka breath, I landed in the card aisle at Target. There were only three realistic options in that aisle. Some 2014 Topps, some 2013 A&G or some repack action. I'm not collecting 2014 Topps and all the Series 1 Dodgers are mine, so that's just a parallel exhibition and I didn't have the heart for it. I looked at A&G and that just seemed too expensive to me. But two repacks -- 200 cards -- for $10 bucks? That I can do. Even the guy who is always behind the checkout counter recognized the benefits of that kind of deal. "You get a lot of cards," he said. One of these days, I'm going to ask him if he's a collector. But right now he's annoying me because every time I go through his line with cards, he says "what...

Four years ago, I won this autographed Clayton Kershaw card by winning a bet with a certain Cardinals fan . That was the last time the Dodgers and Cardinals played each other in the postseason. Tonight, they're playing again, and although I'm less confident about the outcome than I was in 2009, I've renewed the bet with that same Cardinals fan and braced myself for purchasing an autographed card of Peter Kozma, or Joe Kelly, or some other St. Louis scrappy who will make me throw up in approximately 10 days. The Dodgers are trying to get to their first World Series in 25 years while the Cardinals are trying to win their first since -- oh, the tragedy -- 2011. And then there's the matter of 2006 and 2004, and unless you're one of The Best Fans In Baseball (throwing up again) or root for the Giants, Diamondbacks or Padres out of pity/self-loathing, you probably have no desire to see the Cardinals in the Series again. I hear ya. In the last five years, the Card...

I do not drink as much beer as I once did. I would never call myself a beer connoisseur -- talk of making your own beer, the breweries you've discovered, or other esoteric ruminations about hops and barley bore me completely -- but I enjoy a good brew. Today, though, I can mostly confine beer-imbibing to one of two categories. 1) It's summertime and I'm off. 2) I'm exhausted and the world has decided "night owl is the enemy." Today it's in the high 70s, rather humid, and I've got a busy workload tonight. None of this really falls into category 1) or 2), but for some reason -- perhaps the nine zillion beer commercials that I've watched during all of my baseball viewing has finally gotten to me -- I can't stop thinking about a beverage. In short, I need a beer. Here's the problem. There's no beer in the house. And with the budget cutbacks continuing for another week, I can't be buying any without there being ... um ... r...