Night Owl Cards

    I had another post planned for today, had the cards pulled and ready to scan, but death had other plans. You know the old superstition that notable deaths come in threes? Well how about finding out three well-known baseball figures of my younger days died within a 24-hour period? That's an unsettling ramp-up. It started yesterday afternoon and it's still going. Ken Holtzman. Gone. Whitey Herzog. Gone. Carl Erskine. Gone. All three have meaning in my young rooting life, Erskine the most obvious, though I never saw him play. I'll start with him because that's where I have the most to say.    Carl Erskine was on one of the first five 1956 Topps cards I ever owned. I've mentioned before that when we received a bunch of '56s from my dad's co-worker, my brothers and I split them up and decided that all the cards of each person's favorite team would go to that person (my one Orioles-loving brother got screwed). Erskine arrived with Newcombe, Randy Jackson, ...

  Two things I've noticed since posting the first half of my hobby box of 2024 Heritage the other day. The first is that out of all the regular player and manager cards I've pulled so far, not one features a posed shot. Those were staple shots for Heritage all the way through last year. Just about all of the base Dodgers cards from last year's Heritage are posed shots. To go from that to absolutely none seems like a decision was made. We were still in posed territory in 1975 Topps, plenty of it, in fact. How I long for a hands-on-knees photo in 2024 Heritage like Robin Yount or Roger Metzger or Tommy Helms. But there's been none to be found. Every photo is either an action shot or a candid photo (both, obviously, were in '75 Topps). I don't know why posed shots have been scrapped. Perhaps Fanatics said "no more fake backgrounds"? If that's the case, applause, applause. But I think the non-posed pix is one of the reasons I can't find anything in...

  It's Opening Day and, as I suspected, MLB was a wee-bit ambitious. But that's OK.   I'm not here to write about this baseball holiday. I'm here to write about another baseball holiday ... well, what used to be a baseball holiday.   We don't care as much about the All-Star Game anymore. You can argue that point all you want, but if you were following baseball in the '70s or earlier -- heck even in the very early portions of the '80s -- then you know there's no disputing that statement. It's the truth. The ASG was bigger in every baseball fan's mind 40 years ago.   There are a few reasons for the ASG's decline -- the blending of the leagues, the bells-and-whistles installed around the main event, the influence of agents on when and how long a pitcher can perform -- but this is a post theorizing on when the ASG began losing its luster and when that attitude that the game was "nothing special, just an exhibition" started.   It began i...

 Several weeks ago, I found out that they were working on a movie version of "The A-Team." Movie and TV geeks have probably known about this for years -- since its scheduled release is next June -- but I'm just not that interested in movies/TV shows anymore. However, I do hold nostalgic feelings for the favorite TV shows of my youth, and "The A-Team" is definitely at the top of the list. My brothers and I were seated in front of the television in our basement "rec-room" each Tuesday for just about every episode those first couple of years it was on the air. Those of you who remember will know that "The A-Team" debuted after the Super Bowl in 1983 and was an instant hit. What wasn't there to love? Four Army outcasts who become soldiers of fortune, blast away baddies with jury-rigged weapons, bicker, and drive an awesome, beat-up van? That's prime-time gold, baby. The clincher for me is it was all done with humor. Too many action s...