Night Owl Cards

  Happy Canada Day to my Canadian readers.   I haven't written a Canada Day post in four years when once it was a semi-regular occurrence. This is no oversight, just someone writing a blog for two decades and running out of ideas.   For inspiration I went back to a post I wrote 10 years ago in which I researched a few MLBers who I didn't know were from Canada. I wondered if I could find some others. And I did.   This surprised me. I've lived near Canada for two-thirds of my life -- in three different places. I've attended baseball games in both Toronto and Montreal (and Welland, Ontario). And I've interviewed MLBers in one of them (Montreal). Maybe I should know more Canadians than Larry Walker, Joey Votto, Terry Puhl and Vlad Jr.   So here are a handful more of Canadian players I didn't know were Canadian. Although it's possible I did know at one time that they were. Facts are falling out of my brain all of the time these days.     JOHN AXFORD (Simco...

While doing my annual delayed post-Christmas shopping yesterday (you will never find me in a store Dec. 26), I snagged a long-awaited ipod for meself. I don't know what took me so long. I also grabbed a rack pack of random cards at the drug store. It was a toss-up between the jumbo pack of "100 Baseball Cards" that I wrote about previously , and a rack pack of 2010 Topps 206. Hmmmm. Let's see. 12 cards for 5 bucks or 100 cards for 5 bucks. Why are we buying current cards again? I already knew what would be in the pack with the picture of Anonymous Baseball Man. Lots of junk wax. But there'd be a few random gems, too, which makes this pack much more interesting than a pack featuring Placido Polanco's round, bald skull. I waited to open my 100 Baseball Cards in the hazy, buzzy first few hours of 2011. Skipping all of the junkiness, this is what was left: I am hopelessly attracted to any Fleer product issued between 2000-04. 1985 Donruss i...