Night Owl Cards

   The main reason I have collected cards as an adult for the last 20 years is for that nostalgic rush.   That's what I've been chasing all these years -- that feeling of collecting cards when I was a kid, pulling pictures of the players from that time and storing them in my collection. Collecting modern cards of modern players is fine, but if that's all I was doing, I would've given up by now.   But I have been collecting those original sets from my younger days -- and sometimes even before I started collecting -- for the last 20 years, too. And I've just about run out of the major sets to chase. I've almost run out of "new" cards of my guys.   1983 Donruss is the last stop as far as major sets that came out during my formative years as a fan, which I consider 1975-83 (1975-85 if I want to be a little more casual about it). It's the only major release from this time period that I have not completed.   The other day I received around 40 cards from ...

There are a few guys in my office who don't work in the sports department but are sports fans. Just about every day, early in the shift, they discuss sports loudly. These guys are adults, some with wives and kids, and because they are adults, they are prone to talk about "the good old days" when it comes to sports. When I think of the "good old days," I think of the '70s and '80s. I believe everyone who reads this blog knows that by now. But these guys in the office, when they get nostalgic, revert to one particular time period that I don't think of as "good" or "old." Most of their discussions center on the late 1990s/early 2000s. Players like Scott Brosius are treated like long ago heroes. What the hell. For me, that is far too recent a period to start getting nostalgic about it. Besides, what is there worth rumination? Androstenedione? Jeffrey Maier? Big-headed Barry launching home runs like I'm supposed to car...

Today was not a good day for baseball cards connecting me with my youth. Today all baseball cards did was remind me of how old I'm getting. I thought I had an idea for a decent post. I came up with it a few days ago. I went about preparing for the post today, finding the right cards, scanning them and then beginning to write. I had written a few paragraphs, and two of the card images were already up, when something in my brain said, "better check to see if you haven't written something about this before." There was no nagging feeling really. But I've done this blog so long that it's just a generally good practice. There are only so many ideas out there. So I did a little blog search and, sure enough, I had written about that same topic ... FOUR MONTHS AGO!!! It wasn't even two years ago or some distant writing that I could justify having forgotten. It was in March , for bleeping bleep! The memory is not what it used to be. So with about 15 pe...

I may not be able to collect cards like I used to, but I still have my ways of repeatedly reminding people of how things once were. Like the time I jumped on my tricycle to buy milk for my folks' goats on the farm. Tricycles were the main means of transportation at the time. Five o'clock rush was a pickle with tricycles lining both lanes of traffic. But during the day, we used to dig up potato bugs in the yard and ride our tricycle to Ed's Mercantile to trade bugs for tassles for our trikes. Another name for bugs in those days were ticks. "Give me two tassles for five ticks," we'd tell Ed. Now, one day I drove my tricycle to Paul's Market and bought a bright, red, shiny wax package of Fleer trading cards. The wrappers were made from real wax from a beehive in the back of the store. Sometimes Paul would invite me into the back to watch as he stood under the humming hive next to a bubbling pot of wax, creating the wrappers right there in the mercantile. ...