I have been both eagerly anticipating, and completely dreading, this particular day for a long, long time.Today I finally discovered whether I still own my childhood Baseball Cards.
How could I lose track of such a thing? Well it wasn't a deliberate decision, that is certain.
Some 20 years ago now, my seasonal life working in different states at different times of year went through a difficult period as my Michigan apartment building was going to be re-modeled. I had a sweet deal there, only having to pay half rent the months I was gone, as my landlord didn't want to lose a tenant (I did mention this was 20 years ago). So with that economic fact and the concept of moving everything I owned out of a 2nd floor apartment and then back again, later, I wanted to cut a deal.
What we worked out was that I would put all of my possessions in one corner of the building while the first apartment was rebuilt. When it was done, that one would be mine and all of my possessions would only have to be moved 10 yards.
After many twists & turns to the story, I eventually learned that my former sweet deal of half-rent for an unused apartment couldn't continue, as my landlord had used public financing of some sort for the remodeling, and the State would now be a participant in the financial end of the renting, which also came with new low income eligibility requirements - no special deals for part-timers. Simultaneously, down at my winter job I was starting up a new business partnership with a co-worker after our previous employer retired - & I needed every last cent I could scrounge. I managed to avoid selling off Baseball Cards, that time, but I could not pay the many months of now full rent for an apartment I wouldn't be living in while launching a new business.
So down all those stairs (extra-tall first floor in a downtown business building) went all of my possessions. Or, almost all. I knew already at the time that a few things were missing, as contractors had been in the building for about a year at that point. But I couldn't worry about it, right then. Everything went to a storage unit and out-of-state I went.
Subsequently, I never could quite get that storage unit emptied, as I lived on-the-road (jobsites) ever more & more. Years passed. New Baseball Cards accumulated. Online Baseball Cards appeared in my life, which was-is wonderful. But all new Baseball Cards inevitably reminded me of my childhood Baseball Cards. And that, was only partially pleasant.
A couple-three years ago now, I finally emptied that old storage unit, after another sweetheart deal finally drew to a close. I was both eagerly anticipating, and dreading, that particular day for a long time. The dread hit, very hard — my record collection assembled in college was largely destroyed by what proved to be a leaky storage unit. The music on all those records is fine, but the value of them is generally gone (molded covers). Many thousands of dollars worth of value.
Plenty of my book collection had also succumbed. However this was only a problem amongst certain boxes stored directly on the floor; most possessions were just fine.
But - my childhood Baseball Cards weren't in that storage unit. The horror, the horror.
I did find a few card items, that might make for an interesting post one of these days, as it included an unopened Hobby Box of a mid-10s product. And my college days Baseball Cards had been with me all along, as those had been acquired after leaving the "nest."
The problem created by emptying the storage unit was simple. If my childhood Baseball Cards weren't in there, that meant either I had wisely trundled them back over to my parents' house on the concept of general Security - OR they had been in my old apartment, accessible to a random melange of contractors for a year. As I have described them before, they became Schrödinger Baseball Cards.
The only way to prove their existence, was to go spelunking in a cavern like this one:
That's the closing image from the first Indiana Jones movie, showing the audience where the Ark of the Covenant ended up.
My Dad's basement isn't that large of course, but it was stuffed to the gills with antiques and his lifetime of possessions, some of them valuable, some of them not. Except of course, to him, for whom they were ALL valuable and needed to be kept. Forever.
My Dad is still with us and will be for some time, I can report, but now that he can no longer walk the steps into his own basement, he has finally relented on allowing us to begin sorting it all out.
And after many months and weeks of occasionally hauling things to Goodwill, or Recycling, or the trash can once a week, or a Safety Deposit Box, I could finally reach an area of shelving holding a half dozen remnant boxes of my "stuff."
So today, my final 5 yard journey to find the fate of my childhood Baseball Cards commenced. Truly a pity I hadn't spent my many years of Odyssey away from them eating Lotus flowers with Charlize Theron (how pleasant that would have been), sigh.
What I was mainly on the look-out for, was the image seen above already -
The Topps Super Sports Card Locker
Although my childhood collection was a fair bit larger than what could fit in that well beloved Baseball Card product of my childhood, I was particularly far more keen to find it than a few shoe boxes of cards, because I believed my collection of 1975 Topps, the first Baseball Cards packs I had ever opened, would be inside.
Instead,The horrors didn't return as I had finally found the Super Sports Card Locker inside a box sitting on top of the crucial shoe boxes. So I knew my 75s were now just one more box lid away.
Reunification with 8 year old me's key collecting accoutrement was interesting. I kinda screwed up using it, by putting the little team labels down at the bottom of the card slots, instead of on the side panels as intended.
I have long been planning to put this device back into use, as each and every year I still faithfully first sort Series One cards by team, to help me know which player plays on which team - isn't that the point of Baseball Cards? Only much later will I ever re-assemble a set by card number.
Alas, these days the Super Sports Card Locker wouldn't quite work to lovingly pull out an under construction "Team Set" when my favorite team has a new opponent to study, as there are only 26 card slots. Because this product was created before the Mariners and Blue Jays joined Major League Baseball.
The Locker is a cheerful celebration of sports however, let's admire a little:
Art by Ray Hammond
I think if I peel the protective plastic layer off the front/doors of this storage product, it too will look acceptable once again. So it seems likely come next February I will be putting some cards back in this, although the M's & Jays, and Rays & Marlins, will just have to squeeze in with some extra bunk mates, somehow.
Finally after that very short initial dopamine hit from Memory Lane, there they were:
Reunited
and it feels so Good!
1975 Topps!
I must have sure been proud of my collection of whichever set of Topps "Big" is sitting there next to my truly beloved. I'm sure I'll look through that stack of cards, someday. But not, Today. Today, is 1975 all over again. Hooray!
That picture doesn't reveal a simple thing - my modest collection of The Minis. That stack there with the Mike Marshal '74 Highlight is all Minis. Those came into my collection a few years after 1975, once my family had moved to Michigan, where all my new neighbors could only purchase Minis in 1975. I'm glad to have them, and they almost certainly explain the complete absence of doubles/dups in my regular size 1975 collection. Those are the other 2 stacks in the little shoe box, one standing vertically, one horizontal there next to Big Orel Hershiser.
And thus I ended up with a new-all-over-again First Card, for 1975 Topps:
Unfortunately, I have zero idea why this card appeared on top of the stack of cards.
But, that's OK.
This card proved to be the just exactly perfect Baseball Card to dive into another long-awaited card enjoyment: finally reading Night Owl's 1975 Topps blog, some 14 years after I discovered it. I could never bring myself to start into that, knowing that Schrödinger's cat might have died in that storage unit, or a shifty contractor employee's grimy hands. So today has another wonderful and long hoped for milestone: really learning just who some of these players really were. And my first specific, as in, by-card-number reading of NO's blog revealed the
mystery of that batting helmet, at long last, courtesy of another courteous reader of that entry, in the comments.The mystery of the stack continued. Let's go back 51 years...
In a little better shape than the Brooks, but what was the connection? Was I pulling Stars out of the little slots in the Super Sports Card Locker, 20 years back?
Maybe.
What a relief to know I really do own my own copy of this Baseball Card, so easily memorable courtesy of Purple + Pink. And mine is as AUTHentic as it gets with centering like that. Just exactly perfect.
And I was of course, yeah, reading the backs, immediately. This one supplied the first treat:
- as the Topps card back writer gives us a sly reference to Ryan's nickname there in the cartoon / trivia question.
That little trio of cards soon surrendered to proper Baseball Card organization as decided on by 8 year old me: team by team, is The Way.
Thus next appeared a robust amount of 1975 Topps Detroit Tigers, probably reinforced significantly in the later years of the decade by my neighbors, after rounds of backyard Home Run Derby.
That held an answer to something I had been wondering through the 2010s, on the next card, as well as informing a bit of up-to-the-moment Baseball action -
What I had been wondering all through Lamont's run coaching for the Tigers while Jim Leyland was managing all those great teams 20 to 10 years back now - was where did Lamont play in the Bigs (Detroit, surprise), and what position (Catcher, like oh so many Managers, Coaches, and Broadcasters)?
This card is a perfect one to enjoy for me today, as the Tigers' next series is with Pittsburgh, where a Fan Favorite from those Leyland teams, Don Kelly, is the Manager now. And he has in turn hired Gene Lamont to be his Bench Coach. 1975 Topps, still part of The Game. I would have to think Gene Lamont has to be the very last MLB paycheck receiving 1975 Topps card though. The 3 broadcasts this coming week will be a little sweeter now.
The Tigers collection also held an entry for my newest and l
ong-overdue Player Collection, though that one was not launched until events in 1978:
Following along soon after was another Player Collection need, on another robust team effort as my Mom's family was from Missouri -
The team organization quickly made me move into a let's-cut-to-the-chase mode, no matter how much I was loving each and every Baseball Card flashback to 1975.
The one card the most on my mind though all those years of uncertainty,
was this one:
I'm fairly sure this Baseball Card is not considered one of the better Hank Aaron Baseball Cards ever made.
But for me, THIS IS MY ALL-TIME FAVORITE BASEBALL CARD.
And it's not really close to the 99 other cards that might be in 2nd place. I pulled this Baseball Card from a wax package at some point during the 1975 Baseball season, with still fresh memories of being summoned to the TV set by my otherwise not-sports-fans-at-all parents, when Hammerin' Hank became the new Home Run King not long before.
And now, I owned Hank Aaron's Baseball Card! How freaking cool is that?
Infinitely cool.
And even though I could have purchased a copy of this card at any time in about the last 40 years, a new copy wouldn't be MY ALL-TIME FAVORITE BASEBALL CARD, because it wouldn't have been the one I pulled from a pack. Simple as that.
Now of course, one can't peruse a stack of 1975 Topps Baseball Cards without pondering the two most famous cards in the set. I presumed I had pulled both of them as a youth, & -
- yeah, I'm still reading the backs and learning the workings of Major League Baseball.
Do you know how old Robin Yount was during his Rookie season in 1974?
18.
I did not know that until the year 2026, all thanks to Topps Baseball Cards. Truly an impressive stat when you think about it.
Alas, it does not appear that 8 year old me lucked into owning the other key Rookie card in the set, for a player on Kansas City's team. A slight disappointment to be sure, but that's nothing compared to the immense Joy I re-obtained today, with the Baseball Cards my Mom didn't throw out.
For now though, I have some Baseball Cards to read. Cya soon...
