If you’re ever yearning for one of those cycle-of-life moments, you’ll get it when you see your children engaging in the same hobbies you did as a child.
If there were one singular activity that defined my youth ages 8 to 18, it would be collecting baseball cards. Sports-minded family that we are, perhaps it should come as no surprise to see our kids discover the hobby for themselves. And yet, it did.
Oh, our oldest has had baseball and football cards for years, since before he was able to read. But it was the recent weekend where he, our daughter and younger son spent hour after hour together, trading cards and taking them in and out of those plastic album sleeves that I saw how into it they really were. And parents know, anything that can keep your children entertained and not fighting for minutes – let alone hours! – is a special pastime indeed.
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That prompted me to share with them a story from my youth, because I’m a dad and that’s what dads do. In this particular case, it was recalling the summer when I turned 8, the same age our younger son will turn in about six weeks. That was the summer our Little League coach took our team to go watch the local minor-league team play. Growing up downstate in 1980, that team was the Springfield Redbirds, Class AAA affiliate of the St. Louis Cardinals at the time.
Of course, my parents sent me with $10 or $20 or some such amount they deemed adequate for my necessary food and beverage. Kid’s got to eat, right? But a funny thing happened on the way to the concession stand. Turns out they had a magical place in the stadium that sold hats, miniature wooden bats and, of all things, little cellophane packs of something called baseball cards! I would later learn that this mecca was called “the gift shop.” Who knew?
And so I spent every last penny of that food-designated bounty in my pocket like a sailor on shore leave (a phrase that I can assure you I did not know as an 8-year-old, but you get the point). Suddenly, a new world had appeared. Now, I could take “heroes” like Pete Rose, Mike Schmidt and George Brett home with me. Also of note, I would later gain a better appreciation of who real heroes are.
So began a love affair with baseball card collecting that continues to this day, albeit not an active one. Boxes, and albums and unopened packs, mostly from the heyday of my collecting through roughly 1990, some a little older, some a little newer. I never got rid of them, and I never plan to. For the most part, ours was not the generation with horror stories of how our moms threw our shoeboxes of cards away, or how we tore them all up in our bicycle spokes. No, we were young entrepreneurs, raised in the heady days of the sports memorabilia craze. What started as the innocent joy of discovering that you’d gotten your favorite player in a newly purchased pack quickly evolved into market speculation on how many hundreds or thousands of dollars said card might one day be worth. (Alas, recessions and steroid scandals that would undercut the value of the card and memorabilia market were still decades away.)
For me, the most sought-after card came to be the 1980 Topps Rickey Henderson rookie. If you were lucky enough to find a perfectly centered one with crisp corners and flawless gloss, then you might never need to work a day in your life. Or so we thought.
I’ll never forget the time I had my best version of that card out on the floor in front of me as I traded cards with my best friend. There sat the prized Rickey rookie, on the cusp of a deal that would surely have brought a king’s ransom in return. And then, just as we were about to complete the trade … wait for it … my dog appeared out of nowhere, sat on the card and spiderwebbed a series of creases right across that flawless Rickey’s midsection. Doh! I’ve long since gotten over it, of course, but my friend still reminds me.
I shared that story with my kids that weekend afternoon that they spent trading cards together, the day I also instituted a “three-day rule” in our house. Similar to buying a car or refinancing a home, if at any point over the three days following a trade any of the children wanted to undo said trade, then that would be allowed. After that, all deals were final.
Little did I know that the youngest thought the three-day rule applied outside the house as well. So, when he carted his album to school and promptly traded a Hall of Fame John Elway football card for that of comparative newbie Cam Newton, he thought the deal could be undone. Being the Denver Broncos fan that he is, the boy later came to his senses and wanted back the card of his favorite team’s legendary quarterback. Alas, outside the house, a deal is a deal. Lesson learned.
The kids are still carrying their albums to school, stocked with the Cubs’ Anthony Rizzo and Kris Bryant and the Sox’s Jose Abreu among other cards for baseball, football, basketball and any number of sports. They trade them on the bus and ask their teachers to guard them at recess. What had once been the rage of trading Pokemon cards or something of the like – and surely still is for some – is now replaced by a hobby much nearer and dearer to their dad.
They ask if they can have my cards, and I tell them yes – one day. That’s been the plan all along, and I’m sticking to it.
Even that old Rickey Henderson rookie, creases and all.
Rob Manker is a freelance writer who lives, works and parents in Naperville.
Twitter: @RobManker