Baseball cards

The scratch-off lottery tickets common today remind me of something from my youth. The idea behind the tickets is that you scratch off hidden information in the hope of uncovering a winning combination of numbers, letters or symbols.

As a youth, I collected trading cards, both baseball and non-sport cards. Instead of scratching off a hidden winner, my friends and I would select a pack from the candy store and before purchasing it, carefully peel back the glued wrapper and push the stick of gum aside in the hope of revealing a Mickey Mantle or low numbered baseball card. For some reason, the numbers 1 through 10 were tough to find. If someone were to tell me that the card company actually printed fewer of these low numbered cards, I’d have no reason to doubt it. At least based on my experience.

It was next to impossible to collect a full set of any series, at least without spending a fortune, which in my case, would have been about a thousand times my weekly allowance. And it was not easy to trade for the cards you needed because usually none of your friends had them either. And if they did, they didn’t have doubles to trade. So we had to be satisfied with quantity over quality. So what if you had triples of some unknown pitcher for the Cleveland Indians. At least your stack of cards was higher than the other guy’s. Eventually the baseball year ended and the cards were tossed into a shoebox for the winter. Next season the old cards would be used to make noise when attached to the spokes of your bicycle wheels and the search for elusive cards would begin again.

Today, the luster, and fun, is gone from baseball card collecting. Especially when you can buy a complete boxed set at Walmart.

I never did get that elusive Mickey Mantle card and now I am no longer interested.

I’d rather toss a cowhide-covered baseball than contemplate a cardboard baseball card. Life is not like a box of baseball cards.

Get out there and live it.