Night Owl Cards

I don't do breakfast. I usually rouse myself out of my tree hole around 11 a.m. (although it's been a lot earlier lately for a variety of inconvenient reasons). By the time I'm ready for food, everyone else is at lunch. And because I consider lunch food infinitely more desirable than breakfast food, I simply slide into lunch with everyone else. Breakfast rarely exists in my world. This, no doubt, is heartbreaking news to whoever came up with the slogan, "breakfast is the most important meal of the day." They have no shot at shoving burnt toast and scalding coffee down my throat. The Eggo and Jimmy Dean people are powerless over me. I sound pretty smug about that, but I admit, this would be a tragedy if people were still putting baseball cards in and on cereal boxes. I'd have to eat cereal for lunch, I guess. Which would be quite the sacrifice because, boy, do I ever love sandwiches. Breakfast being the most important meal of the day would only mak...

About a week ago, the king of the Supertraders, Wes of Jaybarkerfan's Junk, announced that he wasn't interested in being the Braves supertrader anymore. With the Braves flailing through another season, collecting the team didn't interest him that much. That's not something I ever see myself doing, no matter how long the Dodgers go without returning to the World Series. But I do reach my smaller breaking points. This is one of them. I never expected the Dodgers to be a World Series or even playoff-contending team this season. I said that on this blog near the start of the season. But I did expect them to play with some degree of intelligence, meaning you beat the eternally bumbling teams of Major League Baseball that we all know -- particularly the Padres. The Dodgers can't even do that now. Thanks to a meager offense, which has basically been an issue for the team since Gary Sheffield and Shawn Green left, and a horrific bullpen in the seventh and eighth ...

I know nobody cares about my little problems, but I've made it a part of my blog act for going on eight years now, so there's no way I can dial it back. I always reserve my trade packaging for days off. It's the only period when I have enough mental energy for finding, sorting and packaging cards. I'm way too much of a mess during work days to be doing that stuff. Who knows what you'd find in your envelope if I tried to squeeze packaging in during a work shift. Some old tissues wrapped around thumb tacks or something similar. It'd be ugly. And harmful. So, Wednesday was my day off. I was ready to get some packaging done. It was then that I realized that my daughter had her road test. The test was scheduled for 1 in the afternoon, which, for a night owl like me is like scheduling it at 8:30 in the morning. I set my alarm early -- 10 a.m. But there was no need because fire engines screamed down my street at 7, and I approached the day with a refreshing 3 ...

(Hi. If you're in the habit of waiting for new posts to pop up on your blog roll or the old-fashioned Blogger dashboard thing, then you might have missed out on my last couple of posts. Blogger seems determined to make me into an early morning poster -- refusing to publish new content that I posted on my blog in the early evening and instead publishing it at 6 in the morning, when I am always 100 percent asleep. Meanwhile the blog roll acts like I did publish it during the previous evening, but it doesn't appear on the blog roll until 6 in the morning, and by then it has disappeared off the most recent items on everyone's blog rolls. I realize I'm complaining about a free service, which is something I just criticized people for doing in the last post. But some of you didn't read that post because of Blogger hijinks. Also, I know the old tricks about republishing the post to goad it into appearing. That ain't working. Believe me. Anyway, it's time -- I think ...

If you know the work of comedian Louis CK then you know the blog title reference and you may have his whole routine that includes that phrase memorized. I know I do. It resonates with me because, yeah, I'm part of the older generation now looking down on the "generation of spoiled idiots." Of course, "everything's amazing and nobody's happy" is now a saying on a T-shirt, and it will take you all of 20 seconds on youtube to find his bit on the old Conan O'Brien show. You can also -- if you really want to waste some time -- read the moronic comments on the video in which people demonstrate exactly what Louis CK is talking about by complaining that he is only funny because the interview/routine is scripted. OK, noncontributing zero, who scripted it? And how much did you pay to view it? And why am I reading the comments????? But I am not above being ungrateful. There have been times when I haven't appreciated the amazing in my life, the ama...

I've got to stop coming up with cryptic blog titles like this. I'm not going anywhere ... yet. No, this has to do with with my sportswriting assignment last weekend. I don't know how much it will interest collectors, but it's basically all I'm thinking about right now, and that's why this blog exists. I promise my story will drift into baseball cards. If you've been following the blog since the beginning, you know my relationship with Frank Smith, a relief pitcher from the 1950s who played mostly for the Reds and a year for the Cardinals. I've linked the original blog post on him so many times that I feel stupid doing it again. You can search for it easy enough. I did a very large story on Smith 14 years ago. He died from leukemia 11 years ago. He was a bigger-than-life character of the game who virtually nobody knows. But I found over the weekend people who do know him. I talked to lifelong friends of Smith and met all four of his children. T...

A little while ago, I sent this 1955 Topps Warren Spahn card to Wes at Jaybarkfan's Junk. It received the expected number of oohs and aahs, and I'm glad I was able provide something memorable to the man who has sent a whole ton of notable cardboard to me. But I hope nobody got the impression that I have cards like a 1955 Warren Spahn just sitting around. Spahnie hasn't been residing in my collection for the last dozen years, waiting for just the right occasion for me to spring it on someone. Spahnie card 10 years ago: Is it time? Me: no Spahnie card 7 years ago: Is it time? Me: nope Spahnie card 3 years ago: Is it time? Me: no sir. Spahn card: 1 year ago: Is it time? Me: Yeaaaa ... no. Spahnie card 3 weeks ago: Is it time? Me: (cackles with glee): Yes! Yes, the perfect time! I think most of you know night owl and his collection by now. I'm a collector of modest means. But I do luck out once in awhile, and I know what to do when I do. The Spa...