Vol. 1

I collected baseball cards when I was young. Out of every box of 500, there were 498 that were non-distinct. But those other two were priceless gems. Before my memory fades, I am going to try to chronicle some of my favorites.

Vida Blue 1972 Topps - Card #169

During the summer between 5th and 6th grade, I was sort of friends with a kid named Steiner who lived two apartment buildings up the road. Tim might have been his first name - I think. Or maybe not. It doesn't matter. Steiner and I would walk about 3 miles (it's 4-5 blocks now, but it was 3 miles then) up the road to the Triangle Drug Store and buy Topps baseball cards for 10 cents a pack. We chewed the rancid gum that came with them. If we bought two packs, we each chewed two pieces of gum. If we bought eight packs, we each chewed eight pieces of gum. We would come home and keep or trade the good players and attached many of the others to the spokes of our bicycles with clothes pins - the wooden kind with the metal spring hinge. I have no idea of Steiner's whereabouts today. If you forced me to guess, jail would be in my consideration set. So would CEO of a Fortune 500 company. I just don't know. Steiner was a knob if he wanted to be, and most often he was anyway even if he didn't want to be. In today's world he would be considered an obnoxious bully. Back then, it's just what you did. I would sometimes buy baseball cards when Steiner wasn't along. On one shopping trip with my mom, I bought a couple of packs and in one of them was the majestic 1972 card of Vida Blue, standing young and stoic for the photographer beneath the A'S crown on the top of the card. I don't know why, but Steiner thought Vida Blue was the best pitcher in the history of baseball. When we played strikeout, he would pretend to be Vida Blue, even though he was probably right handed and Vida Blue was not. There were other dissimilarities as well which I'll leave to your imagination. But I now had something that gave me a up on Steiner. I now had bragging rights. Something that would finally make me better than him. And then I thought to myself, "I can do even better than that." I took the new, mint condition Vida Blue card in by my mom and asked her if she would do me a favor. I asked her if she would write "Vida Blue" across the front. She obliged, in the beautiful cursive that she has. I think she knew what I was up to. I don't think that she cared much for Steiner either. Later that day Steiner was outside, probably up to no good. I went out to show him the cards I had just bought. I flipped through about 3-4 random players. When I got to the Vida Blue card at the place I had stacked it in the pile, I put my thumb over the writing and showed it to him. "YOU GOT VIDA BLUE???" he screamed. "Yeah, and I got it autographed," as I lifted my thumb off the card. Steiner let out a yelp that I will never forget. His eyes almost popped out of his head - never considering the illogic of me obtaining an autograph of a baseball player from Oakland on a card I had purchased only a few hours earlier. He leapt about three feet into the air and then stomped his feet in unison while his torso stayed perfectly stationary relative to the ground. It was something to see. The story sort of ends there. I don't recall if I ever told Steiner the truth. I doubt it. The faux autographed Vida Blue card I'm sure met its demise when my Mom "clean out my room" before we moved. But in Googling this card for a picture, I found the following: This is from the Topps 1977 set. I've got almost two full sets from this year, all from packs of cards I bought. I distinctly remember seeing this card for the first time. I remember how stricken I was that the autograph on it looked almost exactly like the one my mom wrote on my 1972 Vida Blue - the one that sent Steiner into a conniption. How did she know? But then I scrolled through the Google results some more and found this: What? I call bullshit. Who prints their autograph? My mom can sign your name better than that, Vida Blue. Or else your mom is a prankster too. Yeah,... peace.

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