Night Owl Cards

(This month is National Blood Pressure Month. You don't know how appropriate that is. Time for Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 66th in a series): I will keep this short and sweet, because the card certainly doesn't. I ask you has there ever been a player card that featured a larger collection of letters than this one? To review: We have a BRAVES TOP PROSPECT , named WONDERFUL TERRIFIC MONDS , making a fake leaping catch in front of a wall display for the FRYE REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER . That's a lot of the alphabet on one 2 1/2-by-3 1/2 card! (For people who don't know: Yes, that's his real name, and no, he didn't make the major leagues). (Also, the Frye Regional Medical Center is in Hickory, N.C.) (That's it. I have no more information for you).

We here at Define the Design do not shy away from the tough questions. After all, anyone can come up with a descriptive set name for 1987 Topps or 1982 Donruss. Finding design answers for a few other sets is a lot more challenging. Score, when we get to it, will be a bear. Some of the Upper Deck sets out there are almost indefinable. And then there's Bowman. The early days of Bowman produced some memorable sets and nobody is going to have much trouble coming up with a name for some of those '50s cards. You plaster a giant wood-panel TV set on each card and you've named the set, too. Done and done. Even when Bowman returned in 1989, it at least made the look of its sets relatively different from year to year (1990 and 1991 excluded). The problem arises at the turn of the century. Here is the 2001 Bowman card. Bowman went with a very cool black-and-red design. You can't argue with black and red. It always looks great, as the Atlanta Falcons have shown for years. ...

You hear a lot about "baseball lifers." Those are the guys who play the game professionally, then go into coaching or managing and spend the rest of their time on this earth doing good baseball works until they're carted out or called home. But baseball lifers are good for yet another activity. It's one that lets me know exactly how long I've been collecting cards. What I like to do each year is find a person in major league baseball who has a current card and then find a card of that same person from my very earliest days of collecting. It has to be a card that I pulled back then. Then I add up all the years in between and that gives me an indication of three things: 1. The player has been working in professional baseball for ages. 2. I have been collecting cards for ages. 3. Everybody is way too damn old. Last year, two specific people pointed out how long I've been collecting cards. I pulled Topps cards of  managers, Dusty Baker and C...

I often receive email invitations to buy baseball cards. The vast majority of the time I ignore them. One of the reasons I do that is I just don't have a lot of money to spend on cards -- or anything, for that matter. As a family guy with the usual expenses, card purchases are budgeted like anything else. I look on with envy at the collectors who bust multiple boxes of new cards, and I can't help but think of where that money could have gone. That's just me coming from the world I know. I'm cursed with a guilty conscience. And I have daily reminders (including a nice stack of bills) of why I need to stay on some sort of card budget. That definitely includes shopping for cards online, where money can evaporate faster than anywhere else. I restrict my spending to a certain small amount per month, and when the cash is gone the spending be gone, too. Most monthly online card shopping goes toward CheckOutMyCards. I'm comfortable with it and my cash ...

I've heard a lot of talk. And Dave Stewart's name has been mentioned quite often. But no one has come up with a definitive answer. I think we need to have an answer. Who was/is the absolute scariest-looking player in baseball? Comments welcome. Supporting arguments recommended. A long post containing nonsensical yet vaguely-entertaining conjecture and speculation will follow at a time of my choosing. Good day.

I don't know how you guys do it. It's like you read minds or something. And how do you time packages so perfectly? It's a little bit scary. My wife threw the mail on the table Saturday afternoon in the midst of one of her mad "clean up the entire outside" binges. A yellow package scooted out from underneath the stack of pale, sickly looking white bill envelopes and slid over to me. It was from Kris . Inside was the team set from the 2010 Albuquerque Isotopes, the Dodgers' beloved Triple A team. Thirty-five cards of once and future and never-will-be Dodgers. He knows what I like. But this set was extra important, because for two weeks I have been shouting at random everywhere and anywhere: "I WANT MY ELY CARD!" People look at me like I'm insane, but I don't care. It must come out. I will damage myself if I contain it. John Ely, if you're one of those clueless people who likes basketball or something, is a growing sensation in Souther...

As the apparent sole arbiter of "night cards," I am particular about what I declare to be a night card. My scan folder is filled with cards that may never see the light of this blog because I can't say for sure that they are in fact night cards. Even some of the cards that have already been declared Awesome Night Cards may not actually be night cards. I know that is a shattering revelation. I ask that you please try to get ahold of yourselves. I admit that sometimes I find my blog minions asleep on the job (what? you don't have blog minions?) and inferior product sneaks through. But after a lecture on the importance of time-wasting regular blog features and the occasional sound beating, we are all back on course, generating premium night cards on a weekly basis under a strict deadline. Really determining a night card comes down to a few of simple rules. They're posted on the walls of the NOC factory: a) Is it dark in the photo? (you'd be surprised b...