Saying Good-Bye To Baseball Cards

I reached the end of the stack of boxes. After shuffling through card after card, after sorting what remained of failed attempts to make complete sets, and after listing what I could on eBay, I softly whispered to my cat, “It is finished.”

Strolling down memory lane with pictures of Jeff Russell throwing a football on the back of his Upper Deck card is not something I pictured myself doing at 25. When I opened the countless wax packs of cards, I thought that a fifteen-year relationship between my baseball cards and me would have produced equally countless riches. But after sitting on the floor for countless hours, all I have to show is a sore lower back and some very countable memories.

I remember sitting on the floor in my upstairs bedroom, trading cards with Ben Beaudion. We’d swap a Clemens for a Sandberg, or a Mattingly for a Ryan. Hours would go by, and each of us would end up with nearly the same cards we started with, but it was fun to take each one out of its plastic sleeve and hand it to the other guy while getting an equally sweet player in return. I guess I just liked the feel of owning something, of being able to call something mine. One time, I went over to Ben’s house and we took about 2,000 1989 Donruss cards, dumped them on the floor, and then swam through them like we were Scrooge McDuck in his vault of gold coins. This of course explains why so many cards were bent when I looked in the Donruss box yesterday.

I remember walking into E.Gad’s, the local card store, with my dad a day after we pulled a Ken Griffey, Jr. rookie card from a pack of 1989 Upper Deck. Ed, the store owner, offered me $12 in trade value for it, which I accepted and got some Will Clark cards, some more Upper Deck packs, and some empty boxes to put my new cards in. The card is worth more now, and my dad and I joked through the years how the $12 worth of trade-in value we got is worth far less now and how we should have kept the Griffey we pulled. But I think I liked the power to take a risk and negotiate my own fate.

In a similar reversal of fortunes, I remember studying every new monthly issue of Beckett to see what my collection was worth. The market was particularly volatile during the summer, when a batter’s hot streak could make his rookie card double in value, or a pitcher’s slump could cause his cards to plummet. I now know I should have unloaded my Bernard Gilkey rookie Fleer card when it hovered near $1.50 for a few months in my eleventh summer. I could also say the same for nearly all the cards in my collection. Milt Cuyler, Jeff Juden, Rafael Novoa, and Rico Brogna have never seen their cards reach the heights of value like they did in the early 1990’s.

That’s when the going was good. Nostalgically, I remember it as a simple time for no other reason than that my summers were filled with barefoot baseball in the backyard, and grown-up worries like mortgages, cancer, and insurance were as far from my mind as the reality of my collection’s future worth. The card industry was booming and nearly every hamlet had a baseball card shop, where collectors could swap their wares and try to find the next flash in the pan. Cards were cheap, and some brands offered a pack of 15 cards for just $0.50. Other brands were a tad more expensive, but we all felt the investment was worth it, because for another half-dollar, you got a better quality card with a better picture and, if you could pull a Griffey, a better story.

Then the bottom fell out. The insert boom hit and limited editions became not so limited in their own right. Cutting up a game worn jersey of Wade Boggs and randomly putting it in packs was suddenly a novel idea. Because people for whatever reason wanted to own 2 square inches of a dirty, sweaty uniform, prices eased up a little. They eased up again when each brand went glossy, with high quality holograms on the back. And they eased up another notch with a plethora of other novel insert ideas: autographed cards, cards that companies only made 7 of, and a picture of a player on his first date.

By that point in time, other interests had entered my playing field. Girls, church, girls, grades, friends and girls took most of my time and money. The cards weren’t even in my room anymore; the attic or the back of the utility closet would have to hold my collection while I was out living my teenage life, unaware that my hopes for riches via pictures of men that could fit in my wallet were fading fast.

I returned to my collection at 25 chasing the same dream I first conceived a decade and a half ago. If fortune were to be mine, it would not come by these cards taking up room at my house, but by auctioning them on the open market. Each card is a memory, highlighted with regret, knowing that if I had sold the entire collection in 1993, invested the money in a medium-risk fund, I would now be worth six figures. But instead of writing about sitting on the floor and sorting baseball cards, I’d be writing about how much I love Italy this time of year, or how I can’t wait to have the elevator installed in my home.

Saying good-bye to baseball cards is a rite of passage that every man must manage. For some it’s easy and accomplished in 3 short steps 1) Take box off shelf. 2) Open trashcan. 3) Place box inside. But when you have a collection of nearly a hundred thousand cards that represent the better part of your life, it’s not the like band aid that needs to come off in one fail swoop. It’s like the mullet and Members Only jacket that was so closely tied to your popularity in the 80’s – yes it’s hard to get rid of, and yes they need to go, but do the memories?

Hopefully, saying goodbye to the baseball cards will allow me to say hello to other things in life. Maybe this saying hello will come as I count my millions I hope to make by selling the things (most of the auctions haven’t ended yet – I’ll keep you). Or maybe the hellos will come by storing some other memory in the closet in the place of the cards. Or maybe the hello comes in the removal process. There is a new page, a new day, and new memories to be made.

Getting rid of the cards means I’m growing up. I haven’t gotten my jollies from baseball cards in quite some time. Even if I went out today and spent $5 on a pack of cards and pulled a Griffey, I would feel very little joy. I would have wished I had gone to Starbucks and gotten a Chai Tea Latte and a piece of coffee cake. My, how priorities and dreams change.

Only one other time in life have I had this same feeling. It was during my own Great Awakening, part of which is still occurring. Wanting to eschew everything I once thought true and firm, I made sure to tread lightly on both the path others had helped me trod and the new path I was carving through the wilderness. Deconstruction comes easy to me, and is part of every new trail we forge. But I also find construction beautiful and know that it takes time.

Growing is rarely smooth. As a teenager, I had the pimples and the voice change moments that haunt all male adolescents. But I wouldn’t trade it if it meant that now I had the face and voice of a 9 year old. Growth is gradual, requires a process known as life, and takes us to a place that mere wishful thinking alone never will. We can plan to sell everything we own now for what we think it’s worth – but time will tell what it is that we value. Had I treated my cards as my friends and family instead of relegating them to the attic, all I would have to show now is a pile of worthless cardboard. Instead, I still have a pile of worthless cardboard, but I also have the love and support that only comes through close relationships with those we think the world of.

My journey, both personal and theological, is far from over. What I consider set in stone today will be tomorrow’s house of sand. What I consider nonnegotiable today will be optional tomorrow. But it all will be a fond memory, full of lessons and stories that we pass on to our tomorrows and to those who fill our tomorrows.

As much as I’d like to quickly turn my memories into riches, reality is playing a different game. What brought me happiness as a preteen brings me sore backs and pennies on the dollar as an adult. But the process of saying goodbye is a lesson that can’t be learned by watching a movie or another baseball season come to a close. It must be lived. And as I live and say farewell, I know that market winds could shift, millions of people could be throwing their cards out, and in twenty years my collection is once again the Fort Knox I knew it was always destined to become. But I also know that holding on to pipedreams at the expense of making new memories is futile. And as much as I wish I could still get $5.75 for my Carlos Baerga rookie, I know when life demands a different reality.

So I say goodbye to my baseball cards, my childhood, and my childish dreams as dictates for my life. Instead, I embrace today and invest in my own future. The cards will only bring memories and will never bring riches. But the areas in life that will bring both, areas like friendships, families, and giving – ah, those are worth more than any amount Jay Buhner’s rookie card could bring me.