HOO! A Shout Out to the Night Owl

Of course he has a great blog; the dude is a writer, a sportswriter at that. This is what he does, he is very good at it, and it’s how he makes his living. I’m just glad that he doesn’t use up all of his words writing for pay-I am glad that he saves some of them for the masses of us who proudly list the Night Owl on our blog rolls. I love comparing players, I hate comparing bloggers, but when I say that the Night Owl is one of the best, I don’t think that anyone out there would (seriously) argue that point. I am not sure if I personally, actually despise the Dodgers; it is more truthful to say that I just don’t care about the West Coast Boys in Blue. They are the Night Owl’s favorite ball club, but fortunately he writes about other topics, too, and he posts nearly every single night without fail. TNO is generally the first blog I go to after midnight when I get home myself and I reread it again in the morning (er, afternoon) when I get up. Like I said, Dude can write, plus he seriously loves this hobby/obsession of ours as well as the game of baseball. It almost doesn’t matter that he blindly supports a team lead by a steroids driven monster… Anyway, if someone were to make up a blogger All-Star team, the Night Owl would be on it. I am not writing this to kiss his ass to improve my chances at a good trade, either. I already got the cards that he sent. I was quite surprised by the package, too. He and I had worked out a Rays for Dodgers trade a few months back, but I didn’t think we had anything in the works for now. It was a pleasant surprise and I keep a “Dodgers Box” for him where I dump all the Manny and Co. cards that I pull. I got that sent out this morning. Anyway, in the (surprise) envelope was a 2008 Heritage high numbers rookie card of Evan Longoria, which was on my “Magnificent Seven Most Wanted List”. I am relieved to add that to the Heritage book, I had nearly given up on finding that one… Anyway, along with the Longo card was a note that said “I wasn’t sure if you were down with OPC.” Well, you know me! Fortunately, Greg didn’t wait for my response, he sent them, likely assuming that I was in fact down with OPC. I had decided not to collect the set after opening two blasters of it. The set was just too big and it would be too costly for me to try and chase right now. I have been trying to help others out in their chase and I should mention that I still have more than 200 cards left, but no Dodgers, Brewers, Angels or Rays-those have been picked clean. Anyway, I had decided not to chase the set, but I was trying to gather the Rays team set, which includes 23 cards. Greg sent me 8 cards towards my goal, including one of my favorite players on the Rays, Jason Bartlett. I had been waiting for that one! He also sent JP Howell, Ben Zobrist, Carlos Pena, Matt Garza, Scott Kazmir, Dan Wheeler and…
My candidate for one of the worst looking cards of the year-#473 Dioner Navarro. It seriously looks like a family of five with a dog could live inside him. Not a flattering picture at all…
He also threw in a black bordered (my first!) card of Dan Wheeler (looking constipated) for good measure. With these cards, I still need the following:
42 Willy Aybar, 44 Gabe Gross, 284 Andy Sonnanstine, 298 Gabe Kapler, 400 Evan Longoria, 459 Jeff Nieman, 482 Jason Isringhausen and the Season Moment card, #559. Please send me your O Pee Chee wantlists!
I have yet to pull a “hit” card of a Dodger this year, but I did send you about 2 pounds of Dodgers junk, you should be getting it soon! It was a good day at the post office; I also managed to get a Brewers box out for Ed from Roll Out The Barrel and an Angels pack for Thomas of Cardboard Singles (sounds like a dating service for geeks like us). Also, thanks to awesome folks like Sarah, Brian, Mike, Justin, Jaimie and Jim-I am now 77% complete in my quest for this years Allen and Ginter set. My needs list can still be found here: http://collectivetroll.webs.com/ginter.htm A huge thanks again to Greg, the Night Owl! I seriously doubt that there is anyone out there that reads Collective Troll and doesn’t read Night Owl, but if there is, go read his blog right now-it will blow you away! Incidentally, this is my 96th post. How long do you think it is gonna take me to hit 100? Go Traders! Go Rays! Troll out.