Night Owl Cards

 (Happy President's Day. No, I don't have this day off or the week off. I do have an extra day off thanks to the post office not delivering today. But that'll be Wednesday, not today. Wish me luck as I will have ventured out into 13-degree weather with the wind howling at 30 mph tonight. Time for Cardboard Appreciation! This is the 348th in a series):   I received this 1979 Hostess panel from Max of Starting Nine . Every time I land a Hostess panel the debate begins -- cut or leave intact!   Each item is a special case. I am collecting both panels and individual cards for all the '70s Hostess sets and sometimes the decisions are tough. So let's go through what we know:   1. You can see that the panel is scuffed and creased. This means almost nothing to me when it comes to Hostess cards. They practically came out of the package beat up (or more accurately "stained up"). This was long before every card had to be pristine and imprisoned. But it sometimes affe...

  Sometimes I think to myself "what's a little guy like you doing big things like that?" I've always been a little guy. I'm sure I've mentioned this before but when teachers used to line up kids by height in the 1970s, when we were traveling to the cafeteria or gym or wherever, the small guys went in the back. I don't know why they put us in the back. Were there dragons in the hallways and they thought the tall kids could fight them better? I kind of liked being in the back. I didn't grow a whole lot after that. And sometimes I'd fall into that trap of thinking that short guys can't do what tall guys do. There's always that reminder that some women automatically rule out dating any guy who is less than 5-10. And you're automatically disregarded in some sports if you're short. Or at least you have to prove yourself a lot more. But I've done fairly well for a short guy. Got the family, the house, the position of responsibility and...

  I'm not sure where I got this post idea, it's possible it came from Nick's blog , but the spark from wherever made me wonder about switch-hitters and cards. How easy was it to find separate cards of a switch-hitter hitting from both sides of the plate, or at least posing as both a left-handed batter and right-handed batter? My guess was it's probably pretty easy. And in researching, I found that it's very easy. Just to have a frame of reference, I found this article from three years ago, presenting a lineup of the best switch-hitters in MLB history. Then I went to work going through my collection. Even in this era of being able to find almost any card image on TCDB, etc., I still would rather pull cards from my collection when I can. Yeah, it takes longer and, oh, the putting back , but I'm a slave to tradition.   Here is a look at the team (remember, I didn't pick this team) and a card of each player as a lefty and righty swinger:     Left field: Tim Ra...

  I can't think of anyone who runs an online trading card store who is as generous as Steven and Nancy at the baseballcardstore.ca I've taken advantage of their cheap prices on cards, especially during the pandemic. Most of the inventory won't bowl anyone over -- these are cards for the set or team collector, mostly. But I've always found stuff I like/want and you can't beat it when you add up what's in your cart and think, "is that all it costs?" The baseballcardstore has adjusted its pricing format a couple of times, mostly due to rising shipping costs, I believe. But it remains a good deal, which I haven't taken advantage of in too long. That is about to change, though, because of what Steven just sent my way last weekend. He's been storing up Dodgers for me again. And I just received 40 Dodgers cards, simply as a gift, a damn-good RAK. Out of those 40, all but two were needs and some of them were rather needy needs -- I mean like needs goin...

We are in the midst of the strangest presidential election year that I have experienced in my time on earth, and I've been through a fair number of them. I promise this won't get political, but I don't know how anyone can expect to hear truth from a politician anymore. I gave up a long time ago, and really the more politics is out of my life, the better life is. My philosophy is: stop worrying about what they're going to do and just go do .  Got it, you political weirdos on Facebook? OK, enough of that. One thing that I try to do on this blog is be the opposite of a politician. I want the truth to reign free here -- or as much as it can and still preserve my well-being. Take some cards that I received recently from both Jim of Frankendodger and Mark Hoyle. I promise you, there is nothing but truth here. For instance, it's the God's honest truth that Dodger card bloggers look out for each other. It's also true that the Frankendodger blog ...

Today is the 70th birthday for two of the greatest Dodgers players of the 1970s, Reggie Smith and Don Sutton. Because they share the exact same birthday and they both starred for the Dodgers at the same time, Smith and Sutton have been linked in my mind since I was a kid. April 2, 1945. I've known the date by heart. Smith and Sutton don't resemble each other much except in their ability to excel at baseball. Smith, of course, competed at the plate and Sutton at the mound. Sutton was raised a Dodger, while Smith came to L.A. in the prime of his career. But my brain always pairs them up together. When collecting cards in the late '70s, and alphabetizing my Dodgers, Smith and Sutton were very close together. Only Elias Sosa separated them. Then, for one glorious year -- in 1979 -- Smith and Sutton were back-to-back, as they should be (then in 1980, Rick Sutcliffe stepped between them). Page 38 of the 1979 Dodgers yearbook is Reggie Smith's page. On the fa...