By Michael Barzee
In the summertime growing up in Kansas City, Mo., I remember playing tennis-ball baseball in my backyard and going to the nearest gas station or retail store to buy packs of baseball cards. It has been years since I have done either, so I decided to go to Wal-Mart and buy a box of baseball cards to help me relive those fond childhood memories.
As I was opening each pack and strolling down memory lane, I couldn?t help but think how the times of baseball cards had changed. Instead of 12 cards per pack for $1, there were six cards per pack for the same amount. I understand that these new baseball cards are printed on better cardboard and have the fancy graphics, but are these new traits worth it? The old packs of cards were little more than cheap cardboard with sticks of powdered bubble gum in them. For me, opening a pack of baseball cards filled me with emotions comparable to riding a roller coaster. If I had a Ken Griffey Jr. card or a special insert card in one of my packs, I was ecstatic, but if I got a pack filled with cheap guys, known as the common cards, I was upset.
These baseball cards also influenced other parts of my life. For instance, every morning I would wake up and read the previous day?s box scores to see how particular players did. If I had a card of a player that was having an exceptional year, I knew that I could get more out of his baseball card if I traded it to a friend.
Trading baseball cards was about as much fun as opening the packs of cards. However, you couldn?t just trade baseball cards without having the current issue of Beckett, a baseball card-pricing guide. We used to look up the value of the cards we traded to make sure we weren?t getting ripped off. The biggest trade I was ever involved in was for a Kirby Puckett rookie card valued at around $20 at the time of the trade. I had to give up a lot of cards to get that one, but it was worth it to me.
Besides trading the cards and looking at the box scores in the newspaper, I held home run derbies with my brother and neighbor. Before the derby started we would chose what baseball players we wanted to be. The favorites in those days were Ken Griffey Jr., Frank Thomas and pre-BALCO Barry Bonds. Home plate was in my backyard and in order to get a home run, we would have to hit it past a tree, two houses down. We would use brand new tennis balls for baseballs, so if we hit a house or window we wouldn?t break anything. We enjoyed having our home run derby so much that we would play in 100-degree heat in the middle of the day.
Those were the good ol? days though. Those were the days when I didn?t have to worry about work, school or females. All I had to worry about was how many home runs I would hit or when I could afford another pack of baseball cards.
Looking back, I wonder why I stopped collecting cards when I was in high school. I am really not sure. Maybe it was because the two baseball players I collected, Ozzie Smith and Kirby Puckett, were retired. Maybe it was the fact that baseball cards had gotten too expensive for my non-allowance piggy bank. Maybe it was because my older brothers no longer collected. It probably was a combination of the three.
My 1,000-plus baseball cards are stored under my bed at my parent?s home collecting dust, waiting for me to move into my own home so I can put them under a different bed to collect dust. I have thought about selling my baseball cards until I realized that selling my baseball cards would be like selling 10 years of my life. Those baseball cards are one of the things that made my childhood fun and memorable. No amount of money could compensate for these memories. (However, a million dollars or two sounds nice.)
