Night Owl Cards

Last week, while navigating in the haze brought on by my work shift change, I happened to check my email and came across a note from the son of a major league baseball player. It took me awhile to figure out exactly what it was or who it was. I barely know the time most days of the week, but the man sending the email said he had worked the night shift, too, and, oh by the way, what a great write-up you did on my dad! The son of former Red Sox and Giants catcher Russ Gibson had dropped a line to let me know how much he appreciated my 1971 Topps post on his father. "Funny and factual," he said, which I'm happy to say are two key goals of my writing. He said he loved it, in capital letters. Then he told a story. The email was sent shortly after the Yankees-Red Sox brawl. A friend of Gibson's son on Facebook had asked why the Red Sox catcher had not tried to stop Tyler Austin from charging the mound (I often wonder this as I watch the catcher just stand there). ...

I know what you're saying: "What? A full set of 1987 Topps and 868 1992 Upper Deck Eric Karros cards isn't the good stuff?" And while the above two things make for excellent blog posting, it is not what excited me about the second box that Rob sent me. It was all of the other things in the box. Among those things were a game program from an August 2015 Dodgers game, a Dodger pennant and Cooperstown pennant, another stack of penny sleeves and more library books. Here are some books that will keep me reading for the next 10 years (that's how often I pick up a book these days): The Dodgers media guide from their last championship season. I love media guides. I'm partly convinced that I became a sports journalist just because you get free media guides. Of course, now teams don't make media guides, or they make an online media guide, which isn't really a media guide at all but go ahead and pretend its real, and all of the perks of being a spor...