Night Owl Cards

October is one of the busier months for me, right up there with March and June. It is almost entirely because of sports. October is one of those months in which sports overlap into a giant headache-inducing jumble. We're currently watching a summer sport while fall sports are in full swing and winter sports are beginning. There is barely enough room in my brain for all this. Then throw in the fact that it is playoff time for local high school and college sports. In most cases, when work is all-consuming, I put my personal interests aside to focus on the work. I know I'll be able to get to what I like soon enough. But when my personal interests involve my favorite team in the World Series that becomes the exception. I tried, I really tried to focus on work last night. There is a large TV above my desk at work that was tuned to Game 1 of the World Series. If I zero-in on my computer, I can ignore the TV for hours. But everyone there knows I'm a Dodger fan. And they...

This program will have to be mine at some point. I have tried to obtain a World Series program for each time the Dodgers have gone to the Series since I became aware of professional baseball. Obviously, I've been a bit out of practice, given the 29-year-gap between Series appearances by the Dodgers, and I had to look up whether MLB even made World Series programs anymore. Fortunately, they do. Because there is nothing more that I want to do when my team opens the World Series than have some reading material by my side. To mark tonight's start of the World Series, I pulled out the programs in my collection for the previous four World Series involving the Dodgers. To hammer home exactly how long it's been since I've been able to watch my team in the championship stage, here are the ads on the back cover of each of those programs: 1988 1981 1978 1977 What a wonderful wild world of wood paneling and nicotine. I was pleased to see that to...

Context. I don't know if a concept is more misunderstood -- or just plain disregarded -- than "context." Context plays an important part in my job. It's where "news judgment" comes into play. Why is a damaged car pulled over on the side of the road at 2 in the afternoon no big deal, but a damaged car of a politician pulled over on the side of the road at 2 in the morning a big deal? Because of context. But I see on a daily basis people failing to grasp this concept. Many of the complaints I receive about my newspaper's sports coverage involve context. I just got into a battle about it last week as some parent failed to understand why his kid's high school swim team that competes before a handful of parents isn't getting as much coverage as the local college hockey team that draws 2,000 people every game. Context. Learn it. Know it. Context matters in this countdown, too. When I determined which cards made the countdown, I didn'...

I have been a fan of the Canadian band The Tragically Hip since 1992. That was the year the band released its landmark album, "Fully Completely," and '92 was also the year that a co-worker handed me a copied cassette tape of the album with his handwritten list of the songs. It is one of three personal moments I think of when someone mentions The Hip. Steve was from Buffalo, like me. He walked with a slight limp, the result of being pinned between two cars in the first few months of working his new newspaper job. Steve enjoyed alternative bands like The Hip and Pavement. He said I'd like The Tragically Hip, who hailed from across the river in Kingston, Ontario, and gave me the "Fully Completely" copy and a cassette of an earlier Hip album "Road Apples". The second moment I think of is walking into the Clarkson University hockey locker room each time after a game from 1993-95. After most games, music played loudly in the new, spacious room. ...

The Dodgers are National League champions. I'm still trying to absorb that. It's been a long time and many painful "so close" and runner-up finishes and I had forgotten what it felt like all those years ago in the '70s and '80s when the Dodgers regularly made the postseason and even the World Series. Now, for the first time since lights were a new thing in Wrigley Field, back when "are you on crack?" wasn't a rhetorical question, the Dodgers are in a World Series. Twenty-nine years ago, when I was two months out of college, the Dodgers last played in -- and won -- the Fall Classic. It's good to be back. I'm assuming the Yankees will show up and spoil everything and turn the whole experience dark with despair and mourning, but for now it's hopeful and I have to remember that at the end, regardless of outcome -- the DODGERS MADE THE WORLD SERIES. You can take your "1988" chants and stuff 'em in a sock. Even th...