Night Owl Cards

I haven't gotten around to tracking down candidates for the "best card of 2009" yet, probably because there are so many cards that I like, and also because singling out the worst cards of '09 is so much gosh durn fun. But the card above is a definite "best card" candidate. I have seen this card on the blogs and everyone has something good to say about it. I kept hoping to pull it, and although I haven't pulled the regular version yet, I did get the gold-bordered one today, so I'm quite pleased about that. (Gold has been overdone on cards for years and should be done away with, but the fact that they made this card more difficult to pull, coupled with it being such a nice photo, makes me happy). This card demonstrates, as close as it can, an "at-the-ballpark" moment. You can visualize having really good seats and watching the exchange between Josh Hamilton and David Murphy while taking in the expanse of The Ballpark at Arlington (I think i...

When I am writing blog posts late at night, I almost always play music on my computer in the background. It helps me think. Although I am at an age where I should despise modern music, I don't. Not all of it anyway. I like a wide variety. But more often than not, I'll go back to the good ol ' days for my background tunes. And for me, that is the '80s, when I want to remember high school and college, and the '70s, when I want to remember childhood. So that's where the deaths of Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett hit me, right in the middle of memories that I will always treasure. Michael Jackson's music was the soundtrack to my senior year in high school. "Beat It" was the anthem to the final four months before graduation, and freedom. You were nothing, and I mean nothing, if you didn't own the album "Thriller." You name a month in 1983 or 1984 and I can tell you what the hit Michael Jackson song was at that time. Farrah Fawcett wa...

I am almost certain I will not be able to post again until sometime Friday, so I better write something now. Also, I'll be announcing the winner of "the completely random multiple choice guessing game" contest on the weekend, so get in your guesses (and I do mean guesses) on the previous post . OK, the card featured above actually isn't awesome at all. From my perspective, it is "the saddest night card of all-time." This is a card of the key moment of Game 5 of the 1974 World Series. In fact it was the key play in the entire Series. In 1974, baseball received a glimpse of the future with the first All-California World Series, Oakland vs. Los Angeles. The two-time World Series champions vs. the young upstarts. This was before I started following baseball, but if I was of "baseball-watching age," this would have been a big moment for me. Oakland won the Series in 5 games for its third straight championship. The clincher was a solo home run by Joe Ru...

I am quite behind on my trade posts. I am also behind in sending my end of trades to several people. Work has been cray-zay since I am training someone for the next couple weeks, and I have no time to do any blog reading because there is no down time. So what I end up doing when I'm not at work -- when I should be packaging up trades or, um, not neglecting the family -- is catching up on blog posts. Rest assured, if you have a package coming, it will get there, at some point. And those of you who were kind of enough to send me goodies, I definitely will be featuring them for the world to see. So what I am going to do here is feature one of those goody packages, but then create more work for myself by offering a modest prize. You might remember my random multiple choice quiz in which there didn't seem to be logical answers to any of the questions, but there actually were. We're going to do this again. Except, this time it's with some of the Dodger cards that John of The ...

... Prepare the paper bags, the hyperventilating has begun. ... ... Breathless report prior to Tuesday's game: Manny Ramirez's at-bats can be seen live on ESPNEWS (a false acronym, by the way). Why? ... ... I guess I have 10 days to build my bunker before the media bomb goes off on July 3rd. ... ... Sometimes I get so annoyed at my profession. ... End of stream-of-consciousness rant.

Since I am more of a set-collector than player collector, I don't spend a lot of time on accumulating the Dodgers that I like the most. I do subconsciously target my favorite Dodgers, but the general quest for any and all Dodgers, as well as set completion, overwhelms the attempt to find the most cards of a particular player. But I figured I'd make a list of my favorite Dodgers to collect. Just so I don't lose sight of who they are, and to get them out in the open in case, you know, someone might want to, uh, like, send me some cards of these guys or something. Also, these are guys who would be the most likely to receive a TTM request from me. I assembled a list of my top 30. But I'm only going to feature cards of the top 10, a blurb or so of players 10 through 20 and just a list of names for 20-30. That'll give some of those Dodgers out there something to shoot for -- maybe, if they behave, they can get in the top 10 and get a card picture the next time I upd...

(Today is "Take Your Dog to Work Day." As much as I'd like to foist my dog on some of my idiot co-workers, I don't think this is a good idea. A better idea is Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 36 th in a series): This, my friends, is the best pose in the history of baseball cards. I love the "bat-in-mid-swing" pose. Why? Well, the pose looks quite intimidating. The barrel of the bat appears as if it just took out the cameraman. But the other part of this pose that I love so much is the fact that it is not based in reality whatsoever. When would anyone swing a bat like that? If your bat was in the position that this bat is in, you definitely would not be looking up. Your eyes would be aimed directly at the point of impact. And the body positioning is all off. No batter would look like that in mid-swing. Some batters in this pose on cards at least attempt to look like they're batting as they would in a real game. Rod Carew here, however, is not making...