Night Owl Cards

I've heard a little bit of preseason speculation that the Reds could be the team to beat in the NL Central this year. Given the Reds' perpetual fifth-place finishes the last several years, that seems like very optimistic speculating. But I can see it a little. The Reds have been active in the offseason and nobody knows exactly how good the Cardinals and Brewers will be. The Cubs seem to be declining and the Pirates determined to fight the Marlins, Tigers and Orioles for the worst, smelliest team of 2020. It would be the perfect time for the Reds to compete. If you haven't noticed, the Reds seem to do particularly well when a year ends in zero. This year is the 30th anniversary of the Reds' World Series championship against the A's in 1990. It's also the 50th anniversary of the first Big Red Machine trip to the World Series when the Reds fell to the Orioles in 1970. And it is the 80th anniversary of the Reds' World Series title in 1940. The Reds al...

I have found myself in possession of modest number of Reds cards, and it's totally my own doing. As a Dodger fan, there isn't a lot to like about the Reds. The first year I followed the Dodgers, they finished in second place, 20 games behind the Big Red Machine. The following year, the Dodgers finished 10 games behind the BRM. I did not enjoy them. The Reds have been in the World Series three times since I knew what baseball was. I rooted against them every time. And there was also that 1995 NLDS. Nasty stuff. That all seems like ancient history now because Cincinnati hasn't been relevant as a baseball team for a long time. The Reds and Dodgers no longer share the same division, and all that animosity that had been built up since the '70s is slowly trickling away. So, when Red Cardboard announced he was giving away surplus Reds cards, I had no problems entering and adding Reds to my collection! After all, I don't just collect Dodgers. I collect sets and ...

I think it's pretty well-known that the Yankees have a facial hair policy. No beards. No girly hair. But mustaches are OK (and, so, apparently are Nick Swisher mohawks. That's right, no beards, but that monstrosity is fine.  I'll never decipher the Yankees). I think it's also well-known that the Reds had a facial hair policy for three decades, beginning in the late 1960s. It was some knee jerk reaction to hippies running wild and infiltrating our baseball teams. And it's probably known that when players leave the Yankees, or left the Reds back in the day, some of them grow facial hair because they had been deprived of this manly pursuit for so many years. I am going to focus on the Reds, because there's already way too much attention paid to the Yankees, and because I first noticed this phenomenon with the Big Red Machine teams of the mid-1970s. When players left the BRM, many of them suddenly appeared on their new teams sprouting mustaches and othe...

Out of all the teams in major league baseball, it would be the most embarrassing for Topps if I evaluated all the colors that it used for Reds cards and determined that the majority color was NOT Red. What if it was green or brown or pink? Oh, the shame! The humiliation! The ignominy! They'd be disgraced! Mortified! Topps would issue their next set in black-and-white! Anyway, I think it's certain that after I look through all the years in which Topps used specific colors based on the team that was featured, that red is going to be the color that appears the most. That's because around the late '80s, Topps started paying attention to stuff like this. The 1974 set was the first time, but it wasn't a consistent thing until around 1985 or so. To illustrate, here is the color count for the Reds before the 1974 set: Light blue - 5 Yellow - 3 Light green - 2 Black - 1 Purple - 1 Orange - 1 Red - 1 The only red representative was in the 1965 set when th...