1973 Topps #615

I handed over forty cents to the kindly old woman behind the counter at the Arway Pharmacy. Exact change. She had seen my face many times before with my family. This time around, I'm with my dad. He was picking up a prescription for my allergies (actually, we all had allergies, so it wasn't just for me), and he let me pay for the only thing I wanted in the entire place. "The Pharmacy" was literally across the street from where I grew up. It was the rare occasion actual drugs were purchased there. It was a corner store and there seemed to be one every half-mile. Actual people owned them, literally a mom and a pop. Your neighbors ran the place and knew you by name. It was the place you'd get a Coke, the Sunday paper, candy, and cigarettes. I know, I know, you don't see those places anymore. It is not extinct, but the corner drug store is as rare as me having a date. No matter how much Walgreen's, CVS, or Rite-Aid tries to be convenient and all encompassing, nothing could beat "The Pharmacy". Making that one-hundred foot trek back to the house, I knew a tiny Christmas was about to happen. The bag was set on the dining room table, prescription removed, and there it sat: One pack of Topps 1987 baseball cards. Forty cents, fifteen cards, one stale piece of gum. To this eight-year old, it was simply heaven.

Long before his "Seinfeld" appearances, 

Keith came into my life as my first baseball card. 

1986 Donruss #190.

I went through the pack and looked for favorite ball players and specialty cards. I liked players from other teams than the Phillies. Although I attended a lot of games in the late 80s, I was open to rooting for other teams, which would be a clear violation of sports fandom as an adult.  My parents, specifically my father, just enjoyed baseball as a sport, and it was widely acknowledged during that time that the Phillies sucked, so we were free to root for any other team. Plus, in the driveway, where many a Whiffle Ball game* was played, we had to represent a team. No one was the Phillies because everyone wanted to be the hometown team. So, we picked non-Phillies teams. I was always the Mets, Blue Jays, or the A’s. Because of that, I followed those teams in real life more closely. But to be clear, the Phillies were, and still are, my favorite team.**

*Since I don't know where to put footnotes in a blog, I'll just do this here. The mere mention of Whiffle Ball usually brings howls from my sister, dredging up memories of how my brother and I never let her play. Well, we did, but we made her the permanent catcher. Her job was to prevent the Whiffle Ball from rolling down the driveway and under the neighbor's fence where the ball would be eaten by a giant dog named King. Occasionally (re: rarely) we let her have an at-bat and she'd take three swings, told she struck out, and shuffle her back to her catcher's spot. I'm pretty sure that ended, or was on its way to ending when she caught the end of a Whiffle Bat in the mouth on the backswing. So were we mean because we never let her play? Maybe. But she was four, and there were playoff implications, damnit!

**This was how easily I could be swayed into fandom then. I rooted for the Mets because the ’86 World Series was the first World Series I ever watched. I remember Ray Knight scoring after Bill Buckner let that ball run through his legs. Keith Hernandez was also the subject of my first baseball card purchase. I rooted for the Blue Jays because I won a Blue Jays hat at Dorney Park. The A’s love came when Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco tore up the American League from ’87 to 90. Yes, I loved juicers. The only significant Phillies moments for me during that time was when Mike Schmidt hit his 500th home run and when he retired two years later. So you can see why I gravitated towards other teams early on. The Phils didn’t get me back full-time until 1992. 

The phenom who talked to the ball, jumped over 
the foul lines, and took a picture with Big Bird. 

One of my favorite cards, and it's a "Cup Card".
1977 Topps #265.

Going through a pack of cards was our little kid version of the lottery. Maybe, just maybe, you'd get your favorite player in that pack. Maybe a card is there to complete your team set. Or maybe you got that rare error card. If it was a pack full of common cards, at least you got a piece of gum that was as pliable as a tongue depressor and lost its flavor quicker than Chumbawumba. Early on, I wasn’t into trading, but simply accumulating and completing sets. I liked completing the "Cup Cards" where the player  had the "Topps Rookie" trphy logo on there. I don't know why, but I was drawn to those cards. My favorite being a 1976 Mark Fidrych card.*** It wasn’t until a few years later that we realized these cards were worth money that we started pouring over the newest issue of the Beckett Baseball Guide to find out how much our cards were worth. And that changed everything. Now, we were after cards that were worth a lot. Allegiances out the window, to a degree. Saturdays were spent in intense negotiations with friends over trading baseball cards. The Beckett Guide was our arbiter and settled and standoffs with the cold hard facts of how much they were worth, not how much we thought they were worth. And if we had the scratch, we could always buy an elusive card to complete a collection, or get other types of cards that The Pharmacy never had.


***Ok, you're probably saying,"The fuck is up with the footnotes this time?" Settle down. I just read Zombie Spaceship Wasteland by Patton Oswalt and it was loaded with footnotes, so now I'm footnote crazy. Bear with me. The only reason I knew anything about Mark Fidrych or teams like the A's and Blue Jays was that I read all the books about every baseball team in grade school. We had a fairly new library built around 1986. I was in second grade. It was freshly stocked with books, especially sports books. When I graduated in 1993, I'm sure not one book was added to that library. We had "library time" once a week and not one new sports book came in over those seven years. I knew this because I plowed through all of them in 1986 and 1987. The baseball books were all the Major League teams and the history of the teams, with each team getting its own book. Reading the story of the Detroit Tigers was how I learned of Mark Fidrych. I learned his rookie card was a "Cup Card" and purchased him for three dollars at The Baseball Diamond, upstart rival store to The Baseball Man. I had to buy it because I was pretty sure none of my friends owned any cards that were printed before 1985. 

The Baseball Man was always around during the baseball card days. He was visited frequently when we had the money and he had all the varieties of baseball cards. The pharmacy only had Topps. The Baseball Man had Fleer, Donruss, Score, and the new kid on the block, Upper Deck. Plus, he had cards displayed that you could purchase individually. Or better yet, he’d buy the cards off you and you’d have a cash payout for your cards (in which he’d take them to a trade show and make more money off your original cards). He had tons of cards in display cases, from all eras. I brought my camouflage velcro wallet one day and nearly pulled the trigger on a 1976 Topps Robin Yount card. It was twenty dollars, and all I had on me was a twenty. It seemed like a lot of money at the time, and decided against it. It would actually be worth quite a bit today. It’s one of my great non-purchase regrets. By the way, The Baseball Man was the name of the store.You wouldn't get away with that today. It sounds like the nickname of a pedophile who got locked up. 

One of three pages of the Mike Schmidt 
collection I still have. 

I only traded and collected baseball cards for about seven years. Once I got into high school and the hormones were raging, music and girls were front and center. The baseball card business also got heavily diluted with competing companies, too many sets to keep track of, and interest was lost not just for me, but the entire industry took a dump. The market got flooded and the value of cards plummeted. I did make sure to hold on to my baseball cards, though. I was never a victim of having the mother or father who threw out all their cards. I have two binders worth, still half-stuck in their plastic sheets. All but one baseball card desire still burns. To collect all the Topps (and then maybe Fleer and Donruss) Mike Schmidt baseball cards. Mike Schmidt, is, and always was, my favorite baseball player. And even though I stopped collecting cards, I still wanted to collect his cards. I haven’t purchase any cards since I stopped, but I always thought about purchasing a few here and there. I have about thirty cards of his already, but I wanted to get THE card. The rookie card. The Holy Grail. The 1973 Topps #615.

When I got my first job, it was as a bag boy for the supermarket Genuardi’s, just outside of Philly in Rockledge. I was in high school at the time. I had no expenses. I told myself that the first thing I was going to purchase with my money was a Mike Schmidt rookie card. Back in 1997, one in decent shape was worth two hundred dollars. It was the only thing I wanted. I’d put it in a high quality card holder, maybe even some sort of frame to display it. That money would be about two paychecks worth. To me, it would be money well spent. I don’t know what happened, but I didn’t buy it immediately. In fact, I never bought the card while I was working there, piling up money for God nows what. During college, out of college, and a few jobs later, I never set aside the money to buy that card. Right now, as I’m typing this, I can go on eBay and buy that card in various conditions. I have the money. A “near-mint” condition card goes for over five hundred dollars. And that’s the upper end. There are cards for about thirty bucks. I never said I wanted a pristine card (although that would be nice), just the card itself! Yet, to me, it is still The Holy Grail. An unattainable object. Every time I get that feeling to go out and get it, that evil, sick, responsible voice pops in my head telling me that I have better things to spend my money on. The car needs to be fixed, I need clothes to buy, or save the money and use it towards a vacation. Stupid needs. Stupid responsibility.

The Holy Grail. 1973 Topps #615.

I think deep down I wanted The Holy Grail as a gift. I wanted, and to this day still do want, someone to purchase it for me as a gift. One of those, "I knew you always wanted this" type of gifts that make it extraordinarily special, especially if you were not expecting it. Here's an example of the complete opposite sentiment of such a gift. My favorite book is Catcher in the Rye. I owned the plain-looking paperback, but always wanted to have the hardcover. It wasn't expensive, but wanted it to be one of those types of gifts I described earlier. In June of 2007, my girlfriend at the time wanted to get me a gift for our fourth anniversary. She told me to pick out a gift and she would get it for me. There was a Barnes & Noble in the complex in Altoona where we were that day, so we went, I got the book, she paid for it, and I finally had my book I always wanted.  I told her the story of how I always wanted that book, it was my favorite, and all that stuff. I'm pretty sure it wasn't the first time I told her that story, but whatever. I had my book and she technically got it for me. Happy ending, right? Wrong. Although I didn't know it that day, that weekend was the last weekend I ever saw her. We broke up three weeks later, over the phone. I never opened that book.


So, although I'd love that card as a gift from a special someone, I'm a bit gun shy of who give me that gift. That gift is then tied to that person for a long time, at least in my mind. It seems so silly when I reread those last two lines, but I can't help it. Now, I'm not fishing for someone to go out and buy me that card, in any condition, for me. I'd appreciate it greatly, but that's not the point. I probably should go out and buy it, put it in a big frame with an autographed picture of Michael Jack, something real nice to put in the basement bar to show off. Yet, in an even odder way, I like having that card out there. Its a dream, a goal, something to look forward to that I never intend on actually doing. Within reach, but yet still so unattainable for whatever reason I decide to make up in my head. I am attracted to unattainable women, so this would be no different.


Would that feeling be gone if I just logged onto eBay and bought it right now?


I want to try to resolve that... I also want to open up Catcher in the Rye.