Night Owl Cards

I grew up during the Topps monopoly. I was conditioned to wait for one set -- and one set only -- each year. I didn't mind. I didn't know any better, and I liked Topps' sets a lot. I was obsessed with them. And when other companies came along to challenge Topps, I considered them infiltrators. Topps was the one company truly qualified to produce baseball cards. But it's clear, even back then as a young adolescent, that subconsciously I wanted something more. This card of Mickey Mantle is the other item I received from Scott Crawford On Cards that I mentioned in the last post. Scott is the one who gifted me with the complete 1976 SSPC set that I will treasure forever (and I'm still attempting to catalog). A little while ago, he mentioned that there were some promo cards for this set, which I never knew. He said he had a Mantle that he could send me (the other promo cards are Hank Aaron, Catfish Hunter, Dave Kingman, Willie Mays and Tom Seaver). The pr...

Tonight, MLB Network will air a documentary on Mike Piazza called "Against All Odds." The title refers to Piazza's lack of status as a prospect, his selection in the 62nd round of the 1988 amateur draft, and the fact that he is the lowest draft choice -- by far -- to make the Baseball Hall of Fame. That, to me, is the story of Mike Piazza: how he somehow turned complete disregard for his talents into one of the greatest catching careers of all-time. He will be inducted July 24th in Cooperstown. He will be inducted as a Met, not a Dodger, and I've already made my feelings known on this issue. It's clear he considers himself more emotionally aligned with the Mets, and I can't argue that point for obvious reasons. And although he has made the minimum amount effort to acknowledge the Dodger aspect of his career, it's also clear that he holds a grudge against the Dodgers. Yep, the Dodgers traded him away. They didn't give him the contract he wante...

I've increasingly made the weekend a rest period from blogging. I started the practice during the NFL season. People don't read blogs much on the weekend, and on Sundays during football, it's almost pointless to put something up, unless you blog purely for your own entertainment (which actually I do). So, I figured I'd give all of us a break one day on the weekend. You're stuck fighting crowds in Walmart, or the hardware store, or the park, or whatever nightmare scenarios you people with Monday-through-Friday jobs endure. You don't have the time. Today was going to be one of those days that I wouldn't blog. To pass the time before going to work, I cataloged some cards instead, because the hobby is a constant. That's when I came across this card: It's a 1950 Bowman card of Dodgers infielder Bobby Morgan. I received it from Scott Crawford On Cards . He had planned to send it to me quite some time ago. But during that time, I got another '5...

Today is Ron Cey's 68th birthday. I must acknowledge my favorite player of all-time's birthday each year and this year I'm doing it with a card I've shown before -- it's one of a dozen signed cards that I own of The Penguin. But it is special because it's Cey's signed 1976 SSPC card. It is special because I now own the 1976 SSPC set (which some call the 1975 SSPC set, but we all know you couldn't buy it until 1976). I recently completed a mammoth trade with Scott Crawford On Cards . More than 1,000 cards exchanged hands in the deal. And most of the cards I received were the 630 cards that make up the '76 SSPC set. I have long wanted this set for a number of reasons. It's a great-looking set that I have admired since I was a teenager, viewing it in the TCMA or Larry Fritsch mail-order catalogs. It features the players from my introduction to baseball, all of the greats from the mid-1970s. And, most important of all, it is a companion set ...