Sy Berger, the father of Topps baseball cards, died Sunday, at 91. And while that's a shame, it doesn't change a thing.
Many of us, to varying depths and degrees, remain emotionally afflicted. There's still scar tissue. We still resent our mothers for throwing out our baseball cards, typically as the cards, in shoe boxes, sat out of sight in a closet, in a basement or on an attic shelf, not bothering anyone.
Not bothering anyone but our mothers.
It was a conspiracy of matriarchs. In our jammed and jellied minds, with only a few variables, it went down like this:
On the day we left for college or the military or otherwise moved out of our childhood homes, our mothers kissed us goodbye, then ran — bolted — back to the house on a search-and-destroy operation. They found our baseball cards, and with a cruel cackle, threw them out. Threw them out like wilted cabbage, but with none of the regret.
Yep, within minutes of being kissed goodbye, we could kiss our baseball cards goodbye.
Ask anyone over, say, 50, what happened to their baseball cards. Go ahead. Did they quickly — and maybe in a voice flaked with anguish — say, "My mother threw them out?"
Sy Berger, the father of Topps baseball cards, died Sunday at 91.Photo: Topps
In my neighborhood there was a reverence for baseball cards, so much so that those who claim to have fastened them with a clothespin to their bicycles to produce a clicking sound as the spokes passed over them committed sacrilege.
First of all, if you wanted to produce a real clicking sound, you used a laminated playing card, not a nickel-a-pack baseball card. But above and beyond, it didn't matter how many Jesse Gonders or Chris Cannizzaros you had, you didn't sacrifice baseball cards.
The hobby — who knew we kids were "hobbyists"? — died an ugly, greedy death in the 1990s when MLB-licensed companies such as Upper Deck jacked up the prices and pitched the cards as a form of legal tender à la platinum, gold and silver. Dubious come-ons included "limited edition" and "special autographed" inserts that gave kids an early sense of "action," as in buying lottery tickets.
Baseball card collecting, an innocent, fun and low-cost experience that well served kids and MLB as an introduction to big league baseball, was lost to another just-give-us-our-cut strategy of both MLB and the MLB Players Association.
And, gee — and golly and gosh — it was fun. The backs of cards of players of limited achievement would carry word that he, "Enjoys fishing in the offseason." A cartoon showed a man in a baseball uniform using a bat as a fishing pole. And Tigers pitcher Don Mossi had the world's largest ears.
I suppose we used them as gambling chips, too, flipping them (heads and tails), scaling them (closest to the wall) and "colors" (matching the color of the borders on the front) to see who took the pile. I only risked my expendables, what we called "doubles."
There also were disappointing "checklist cards," inserted to gauge whose card we had, whose we didn't. Those cards were worthless. We already knew. We would go through one another's stacks, chanting, "Got him, got him, need him …"
Rest in peace, Sy Berger. But our pain and wonder remain irreconcilable. How could our mothers — our own mothers — have thrown them out?
It's like that Jack Benny bit when a stickup man demands, "Your money or your life," and Benny, after a while, responds, "I'm thinking; I'm thinking!" My wedding album or my Topps baseball card collection? Hmmm …
Trying to make sense of Gruden's nonsense
Jon GrudenPhoto: AP
So, Jon Gruden has signed on to remain ESPN's "Monday Night Football" star through the Clinton — Chelsea Clinton — Presidential campaign, 2021. OK, it's not as if there's room left for him to get worse.
And the reviews are in:
Reader Pete Travis — "I'm sitting here watching [this past Monday's] New Orleans-Chicago [game] when I realized that half the time I haven't the slightest idea what Jon Gruden is talking about."
(By the way, who plays more home night games, the Cubs or Bears?)
Bill Maroney of Evergreen, Colo., hopes ESPN will expand Gruden's assignments: "If he covered the Coney Island hot dog eating contest he could praise Joey Chestnut's 'esophagus discipline.' "
Why do Rex Ryan and John Idzik get all the heat? Woody Johnson's greatest contribution as Jets owner is to have overseen a 20-year season-ticket waiting list shredded overnight, replaced by PSLs sold with bogus claims such as "Hurry, we're nearly sold out!," and that PSL buyers will have VIP access to tickets to all stadium events.
The same news media now debating whether it's fair to make public what email hackers found in private missives among Sony executives, are the same media who ran — and hard — with a private conversation covertly recorded by the 30-year-old "girlfriend" of 80-year-old dementia sufferer Donald Sterling.
Stunning happenstance during Sunday's Jets-Titans game: A CBS crowd shot focused on a man and his son having a conversation, the father nodding and smiling. Neither held a beer, was bare-chested, wore a funny hat or face paint. Either they were related to someone at CBS or there was no one "better" to show.
Bud's legacy: Not saving MLB, but ruining it
Let's see if we've got this straight: Athletics pitcher Brad Halsey was coked up when he threw the pitch that steroid-enriched Barry Bonds hit to tie Babe Ruth for second on the career home run list.
That was in 2006, 14 years into Bud Selig's reign as commissioner.
And this same Bud Selig now credits himself as the hero who saved baseball from a drug epidemic. And the media sit there, nodding in agreement, as if, "Yep, you saved baseball."
ESPN NBA studio analyst Amin Elhassan, former Suns executive, leaves us with practical stuff worth knowing. On Tuesday, Elhassan addressed Warriors center Andrew Bogut's knee problem: "Tendinitis is the most day-to-day injury you can have."
"SportsCenter's" NFL Plays of the Week included a clip of what was described as the Giants' "surprise" onside kick. Both teams fully anticipated that "surprise," given that the Giants, following two Skins misconduct penalties, were kicking from Washington's 35!
The Texas Southern Tigers, the Washington Generals of college basketball, continue to play anywhere in their "Kick Me. Pay Me" jerseys. Friday, it was a 75-50 loss at Florida. Monday, a 94-54 loss at Gonzaga. Previously this season, there were scheduled losses at Indiana, Tennessee, SMU and Baylor. Coming: at Michigan State, Auburn and Kansas State.
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