Night Owl Cards

To me, there is no greater change in a player's personality than when one switches from pitcher to hitter, or from hitter to pitcher. This is why there is so much amusement/discussion when a position player pitches in a game, and so much amusement/discussion/outrage when a pitcher steps to the plate. The player is actually changing his very baseball personality. Pitchers and hitters are so different, and they are adversaries. They're on opposite sides of the battlefield. They're also narrowly defined. Pitchers "throw smoke," while batters are "sluggers." Hitters are "scrappy," while pitchers are "crafty." Seeing a position change on a baseball card from "third baseman" to "second baseman" is no big deal. But seeing the position change from "pitcher" to "outfielder," that is quite a big deal. This is why I have held on to this particular card for so long. I'm not a fan of the Ca

The folks at Dinged Corners Inc. are probably zonked out in an exhausted heap after reading, compiling and summarizing all those blog bat-around posts . A fine job, by the way. So I'm not going to interrupt their well-deserved slumber to inform them that they ask the best questions. The blog bat-around question was just one example. They're forever coming up with questions that I'm just dying to answer. I don't know how they do it but they would make fantastic prosecutors. One question would make any hostile witness spill his guts. In fact, put Greg Anderson, Barry Bonds' best zipped-lip bud, in front of DC. I think we'd get the who, what, where, when, how and why pretty quickly. I bring this up because of a question they recently asked the other day. They wanted to know if they were any players that I didn't actively collect that I was happy to get anyway. I was surprised that more didn't answer this question. But I decided to repeat my answer here. Af