Light at the End of the Tunnel

Bring on the Fall! Thanks for sticking with my son and I as we continue our journey to complete our first-ever set together as a father-son duo! It's the opening Sunday of the NFL season, but I'll be waiting for my Broncos to open their season on Monday night against the newly-minted LOS ANGELES Chargers. That just sounds weird. I feel bad for one of my best friends, Dave Warren, who WAS a lifelong Chargers fan, and grew up on the outskirts of San Diego. He simply couldn't force himself to continue rooting for the Bolts since they abandoned his city. His fiance is from Michigan, so now he's a Lions fan.

I've spent a good chunk of the past day or so going through cards with my son, updating our online checklist, and figuring out whether or not continuing to pay $5 per pack was worth trying to assemble the final pieces of our first set--the 2017 Donruss baseball set. I'm sitting here, my wife is napping, the kids are playing Lego Marvel, and I'm listening to the Yankees romp the Texas Rangers. Both Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez each went yard twice. Not bad for a pair of 20-somethings.

Anyway, the last time I logged in and updated you on where the boy and I were at on our set, my friend and co-worker had just returned from Oregon and brought us back multiple packs and a box of cards, spanning three states in the hopes of helping us finish the job. Thanks Josh! The other great thing I love about this online checklist, is that not only does it keep track of what you have, what duplicates (or as I called them as a kid, doubles), but it also provides a percentage of each set that is completed.

My wife (bless her heart), has been helping my sister-in-law out with laundry, because at separate times, her washer AND dryer were both on the fritz. So she spent Friday helping her out. Last night, my daughter was at a sleepover, and the wife needed a much-needed, much-deserved ladies night out with that same sister-in-law. That left the boy and I to go through our packs and box uninterrupted. We began with a pair of packs on Friday, got some needed pieces in the '83 Retro Variations subset of the Donruss collection. I coach middle school football, and I had an early morning on Saturday, so I told the boy that we would finish the remaining packs (6) and do the box when I got home from my game.

After a cold shower and some ibuprofen (fried to a crisp sunburned), I was ready to dig in with my son. I took out the final packs and box, and we sat together. I opened the packs, he took out the cards and read off each card. He was so excited on Friday night, as he received his first card that had a piece of a game jersey implemented into the card. By the time the evening had turned into the next morning, we had three. I absolutely adore the look of excitement on his face when he feels like he can touch, and be a part of the big league game, and these cards do exactly that for him. I really need to try and get the boy back down to Denver for a Rockies game before the season is over.

By the time we were done opening each pack, examining the cards, and delving into the box, he was tired, and fell asleep on the floor next to me. The fun part was over for him, and I believe the excitement of it all wore him out. I put his pjs on him, woke him up long enough to brush his teeth, and laid him on the couch in a blanket. I began the tedious task of updating the online checklist, card by card. By the time I was done, the final tally and percentage had us 57 cards short of completing the 195-card set, good enough for a 70.8 percent completion rate for the set. There are a ton of subsets in this collection that will take us months, if not years to finish, but the base set that I aimed to complete with my son, and the inserts that come in the actual packs, are just about finished.

The one subset that comes with the most inserts, are the 1983 Retro Variations. These cards are in the same format as the original Donruss 1983 cards, except they have both modern AND past players. From what I've read online, collectors aren't real thrilled with this subset, but I like it. When I was in the early years of collecting, a neighborhood friend of mine sold me dozens of cards from the '82 Donruss set. Both the '82 and '83 sets are very similar in appearance, so it's a nice reminder from my childhood collecting days. In our current 2017 set, the '83 Retro Variations have 50 cards in the subset, and the boy and I have 39 of the 50.

That takes us to the next conundrum in our pursuit of completing this first set together: keep buying packs and boxes, knowing that 1. both are difficult to come by where we live and 2. odds are good that most of the cards we get now are duplicates. So how do we get around it? eBay my friends! Rather than spend between $5-$20 on cards we already have, I made the command decision to start hunting down the remaining 57 commons, variations, and '83 Retro Variations for individual purchase. So I head on over to eBay, and begin my search.

Right away, I find two sellers that have most of what we need at an affordable rate. I picked up 13 cards for about $5.00. That included shipping, so I was satisfied with the find. The other seller, was a tad more pricey, hawking the variation cards (multiple cards of the same player), for .99 each. I picked up 14 more and paid $3.95 shipping. That leaves the boy and I exactly 30 cards to acquire to complete our first set together! I placed a bid that should get us down to 16 remaining cards in the base set, as the famed "Rated Rookies" and "Diamond Kings" could be had for $3.69 if my bid holds up.

My son is very excited, and I couldn't be more proud of the patience and care he has taken with each purchase, each card, and understanding that piecing a set together card by card is a process. What's crazy to me is how many darn subsets there are to the 2017 Donruss collection, with little to no clue as to how or where to acquire these cards without using eBay or another auction site. I know that Topps has so many different sets, series, etc., but with Donruss, it's almost as if they don't exist on the open market as recognized cards. No worries however. We will put them all together, no matter how long it takes us.

I know that I complained when this blog first began about "cheating" the hobby by purchasing whole sets rather than hand-collated sets. Card companies I'm starting to realize, make that dream almost an impossibility simply based on access to products, and the price of said products. What I firmly believe will be the beauty of this 2017 Donruss set, is that I hope in my heart, is that my son will cherish this one specific set with the same romantic viewpoint that I think of the '86 Topps.

While we may have wiped out the base set in just a couple of months, along with the one '83 Retro Variations subset, the additional subsets are the ones we can track down together, get excited over a good find, and eventually complete every single subset that is being offered by Donruss in 2017. This challenge is what builds the love of the hobby, and what I hope is a lifelong partnership between my son and I, no matter how old he gets, and no matter how his interests and other hobbies change. I hope this is the bond that keeps us close for the remainder of my life...

Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Lose, Sometimes It Rains...

I know it's been a couple of weeks since I last checked in on the journey of a hand-assembled baseball card set with my 7-year old son. The family has been pretty busy these last couple of weeks. I had Freshmen Leadership Academy and in-service at the high school I teach at. The kiddos have been making their rounds of the local summer vacation bible camp circuit, and last week, the 2017-18 school year began for me. I'm entering my third year teaching at St. Stephen's Indian School. And today, the big event...the total solar eclipse that brought thousands of extra visitors to our small oil town in central Wyoming.

So what have these past couple of weeks brought to my son and I as we attempt to complete the 2017 Donruss set? To be honest, not a whole lot. As I explained in previous posts, only two places in town: Walmart and Walgreens sell baseball cards, and only Walmart sold (yes, past tense) Donruss 2017 baseball cards. I purchased all five 30-card value packs they had in stock, and that's been it. I would visit Walmart, go directly to the aisle that I found our cards, and there the rack where they once hung, sat empty. Day after day, week after week. I would ask various clerks if and when the store was going to restock the packs. Unfortunately for my son and I, I was told "Once they're gone, they're gone. We're not restocking something such as these items." What?! Are you kidding me?

So what did I do? Instead of opening all of the packs I had purchased at once, I decided to spread it out to perhaps one pack every week or two. As I write this, I still have a couple of packs that remain unopened. I've been performing the obligatory on-line searches through popular retailers, and I'm beginning to think these five Donruss packs were throw away packs, and that nobody else on the planet ever carried them.

As of this writing, the boy and I have made it through three packs. The nice thing about the on-line checklist, is that I can see up to the second, percentage-wise, how far we've come as a father and son collecting team, and how far we still need to go. The second pack produced some gems...the Clayton Kershaw card, the Adam Duvall error card, and more of the '83 retros that take me back to my early days of collecting. How much of the set is complete? 28.7%! Of the base set, we have 56 of 195 possible cards. That's a pretty good clip for two 30-card packs. The third pack? We weren't so lucky. About 1/3 of the pack or a little more, were all doubles that were already in our collection. Including doubles, we're up to 68 cards in the base set, 18 of the '83 retros, 2 cards from the "Rookies" subset, 1 from the "Prospects" subset, and 1 from the "American Pride Red" subset.

The boy is still extremely excited, but doesn't quite understand why we're taking our time opening all of the packs. I want this experience for us to be enjoyable, and I want to enjoy each individual experience of opening a fresh pack, and seeing who we can add to our set. It's like several mini-Christmas mornings, rather than doing it all at once.

I'm not going to lie...the lack of available Donruss packs were driving the boy and I crazy. I had to find something to satisfy us...for now. I walked into Walgreens one afternoon to pick up a prescription, and it wasn't quite ready. So I was on the prowl to the small toy aisle in a neighborhood drug store. I found two strange looking boxes of baseball cards. They were generic boxes of cards. They contained 100 cards for $4.98each. I said to myself, "Hell, why not?" and I picked them both up. Braden and I went through each, and to my surprise, while there were no "gems", in either of those boxes, they contained cards from some of my all-time favorite sets from my childhood. Cards from the '87 Topps, the '86 Topps, the '82 Donruss, and the like. Most of the cards were from the Junk Wax era of cards--a time from 1984 forward, where cards were in mass production, and are still readily available. My son was ecstatic seeing and holding cards that Dad had collected some thirty or more years earlier. This may provide the foundation for us hand-collating sets of our own together, aside from the Donruss 2017.

Our boredom with the lack of available packs for our Donruss set didn't stop with the 200 cards purchased via the local drug store. I've been getting into online auction sites once again, browsing, reading, and browsing some more. My favorite era of cards is obviously from the 1980s, and late 1970s. These were the first cards in my collection, and this is where unlike my late father, I'm going to give my son the best of both worlds. Yes, I have and will purchase complete sets for us to enjoy together later in life, but I also like the chase and appreciate the value of building a set from scratch. Shortly after my 41st birthday at the beginning of August, I purchased the entire 1981 Topps set via auction. The boy was excited, I was excited. We looked through the set carefully, and he had a hard time understanding why any professional baseball player would be named Fernando Valenzuela.

Our latest venture in picking up random cards and sets doesn't end here. I downloaded an app on my phone a couple of months ago called Wish. It's a shopping app, and I hadn't spent much time looking through it, but one night, that's exactly what I did. I had shared stories of my enjoyment in building sets via wax packs with my son. He had never actually touched or seen a real wax pack in his short seven and a half years on this Earth. I found a retailer selling various wax packs for around $8. I placed an order, and two days after the '81 Topps set arrived, I had a small envelope in my mailbox. It contained 8 packs of cards, several of which were real wax packs.

I opened the envelope, and called my baby boy over to see his reaction to getting his first-ever wax packs. In the envelope was a pack of '87 Topps, a pack of '91 Fleer Ultra, a '90 pack of Donruss, a foil pack of '90 Upper Deck, and a couple of others. My son looked quietly at each pack, smiled, and handed them back to me. I asked him if he was ready to open the packs, and he replied with "Dad, let's save the foil, and the wax packs." "I can open the Fleer and the '88 Score." I asked him if he was sure, and he said "Yep." So he opened the Score (the best card was the #592 of HOF catcher Carlton Fisk, worth $1.25). My son thanked me for the cards, gave me a hug, and said, "Dad, let's put these away for now and concentrate on the Donruss '17s." Perhaps I overwhelmed him with all of the different types and brands of cards. I tend to get overly excited when it comes to sharing my love of baseball cards with my boy. I have over thirty years of great memories and great experiences to share with him.

However, our pursuit of completing the Donruss 2017 set is not over just yet. A coaching friend of mine, whom I work with, is on his way back from Oregon. I had discussed my issues with not being able to acquire any more packs of Donruss '17s. I asked him as he was travelling, if and when he had time, if he'd look in various Walmarts and see if there were any packs, and if there were, if he'd pick them up for me. As luck would have it, he found several more packs, along with a 56-card hobby box in two different states.

Add in the fact that the family and I will be headed to Casper and Billings, MT over the next few weeks, the boy and I should be in the driver's seat for knocking out a ton more in our set. I'm excited, he's excited, and I hope you're enjoying reading our ongoing journey to complete our first set together as father and son...

The Boy Enters The Picture...

The very first pack ever opened by my son!

Another week, another opportunity to share in our journey. By now, it's early August. I've returned to school to begin in-service, with school starting on the 14th. My son and daughter, the 24th. Our little town is getting ready to host thousands of tourists for the solar eclipse on the 21st.

It's still baseball season in this household. My kids have taken sides in the Yankees/Red Sox battle for the AL East crown and perhaps more--an in-house rivalry that has occurred between my wife and I for the past 13 years or so. Our local little league will be reorganizing at the end of the month, and my big project: finding suitable property for an all-inclusive baseball complex for our three local programs is getting underway. However, my son and I continue to spend our free time discussing baseball, its history, and of course, baseball cards.

As I've stated in earlier posts to this blog, I began collecting with wax packs of 1986 Topps cards. From there, my obsession moved to add Donruss and Fleer, some Sportflics, and eventually a few hundred packs of Score, Upper Deck and the like. One thing I cannot get over is the expense of wanting to simply collect cards. The other thing that bothers me living in a small town of 10,000 or so people, is the lack of quality places to purchase cards and supplies. My family has lived in Riverton for almost six years now, and our primary shopping outlets were K-Mart (closed in December of 2016), and Walmart. There was briefly a hobby shop in town, but the owner only sold gaming cards and collectibles, and literally laughed at me when I asked if or when he was going to be selling baseball cards. Our local Walgreens sells the occasional 100 card multi-pack, with various cards over the past couple of years, but nothing consistent.

So my son and I are stuck with Walmart until we travel to Casper or Billings to find a better selection. My son is a tad younger than I was when I began collecting, but I still believe now is the time. I've spent quite a bit of time at Walmart, trying to decide which set and make of cards would be "Our first set" to put together as father and son. I'm not a wealthy man by any means, and I didn't want to overwhelm him by selecting a set that would break my bank, or one that had so many cards, he might get discouraged with our progress right out of the gate.

Our Walmart also doesn't carry a vast array of cards as other larger Walmarts or Targets might normally carry. They have one little section, with packs from this year, last year, and a couple of boxes (Allen and Ginter, Topps Archives) and the like. When I decided a few weeks ago that this year was the year for our journey, I found these packs of 30 cards, with a logo that was like a long lost friend: the 2017 Donruss. I had remembered reading some time back, that Donruss was back in the baseball card game, but couldn't use team names or logos because of contractual exclusiveness with Topps, but it didn't matter to me. I did some research, finding out that the '17 Donruss set contained less than 200 cards in the base set, along with several dozen others in sub-sets, and thought "Perfect!"

I remember when I was growing up, the Internet and Google were still many years away, and to keep track of cards and checklists, one would have to write the numbers and cards down on notebook paper, based upon the checklist cards that were included in sets. It was work, but man was it fun to cross off or check mark the names in the notebook as my collecting would get closer to being completed. I've brought technology into my son's world of collecting, and we use a site called The Trading Card Database  which allows my son and I to keep track of the cards we acquire for our '17 Donruss set. We even set up an account on the site, called TheBrostBoys, and we can see who else collects this set, what they need, what they might have for sale or trade, in the hopes that we can complete our collection by the end of 2017.

The day finally arrived when I was ready to either turn my son's life upside down, and give him one more thing to obsess about (He's a tad OCD, he gets that from his mother), or to find out that he had little to no interest in carrying on the Brost family addiction of baseball card collecting. I called him over by where I was sitting in the living room, handed him his very first pack of 2017 Donruss, and said "Son, if you find yourself loving this hobby as much as I do, and I hope you will, you will remember this day the rest of your life." He smiled that toothy grin, and said "Can I open them?" I replied "Absolutely!" I pulled out the cell phone to capture this moment, and he began our official journey into the wonderful world of baseball card collecting!

My son carefully opened the seam on the back of the pack, splitting the entire pack to where he could remove all of the cards at once. He then did the cutest thing I've ever seen...He put his nose up to the pack and the cards, took a deep breath and said "I love the smell of baseball!" I was the proudest papa on the face of the Earth at that moment. I knew he was hooked, The first card he pulled? The #1 card in the entire set, a Diamond King of Paul Goldschmidt. We continued to look through each card, the "Bringer of Rain" variation of Josh Donaldson, the '83 replica cards, some of the stars of yesterday such as Pedro Martinez, some of today's legends like Albert Pujols. The final card in that first pack? Charlie Hustle himself, Pete Rose. Say what you will about the gambling, the latest issues he's facing (which I in ZERO way condone), but it's pretty cool to pull a card with the all-time hit king swinging away in your very first pack of cards you've ever opened.

Thanks for checking in, and here's to many more fun years of collecting with my boy! We'll be back soon with the results from our second pack that was opened!

The Saga Continues...

If you've returned for further stories, I applaud you. I thank you for taking the time to read the first post of this new blog. So now you know where my love of collecting baseball cards originated, and hopefully, as I continue to tell my tales, you'll understand why it's still such a deep passion of mine, and why I hope to pass along this obsession to my son...

As I previously explained, I was not the "buy the sealed set" kid growing up. I pieced together all of my yearly collections pack by pack. As I've gotten older, and realized the "value" of factory-sealed

sets, I've done what I said I'd never do--I've purchased factory-sealed sets. Before you say "What the hell are you doing?!", let me explain. I'm still all about piecing sets together by purchasing packs and individual cards. Remember when I said my Dad, who NEVER purchased complete factory sets for me growing up? He did something even better, and to this day, that action still shocks and amazes me. Before we get much further, I'll let you know that my father passed away about seven and a half years ago at the age of 57 due to lung cancer. With that said, what he did for me makes the gesture even that much more important to me...

During my Dad's final year prior to his passing, I went and visited him at his home in Ariel, WA. My stepmother had taken a short vacation with her sister, and I took the week and went to help him out. My wife was a couple of months pregnant with our son, and we lived in Las Vegas. During my visit, I would go to the pharmacy to pick up Dad's prescriptions, I would take him to his treatment appointments and wait for him, fix his meals, etc. That time as I look back on it, is something I'll always cherish, because we had that time...just he and I, before he was too weak and frail towards the end of his life to do much else.

One of the hardest parts of the visit, was sitting at his kitchen table with him, as he opened this big binder, and page by page, we reviewed his final wishes, both for his medical treatment, and for when he passed. For the first few years after he died, the only image I had of him was how he looked and was in his final days and hours. Now that time has passed, I can remember the good times, and even some of the sad times, but at least he was able to be mobile, walk, talk and eat...

As my April, 2009 visit with my father was coming to an end, and I was preparing to fly back to Las Vegas, my Dad said, "Hey, sit down at the kitchen table, I've got something for you." He went upstairs and came back down with what looked like a cardboard baseball card box. He came down the stairs, and said "Son, I want you to know how much I love you." He sat the box down on the table in front of me, and said "Open it."

As I slowly pulled the flaps from each side of the box, Dad returned upstairs, and came back down with a tiny cardboard box and set it down on the table as well. He explained that when he was growing up, my grandparents didn't have much money, and that he worked jobs to buy everything from school shoes to clothes, to yes, even baseball cards. When he left home, he left his baseball cards behind, and most of them were disposed of. Dad explained that after both of my grandparents had passed (Grandma in 1998, Grandpa in 2000), he and my Uncle went into their attic and cleaned out a bunch of junk. Dad had found one small box of cards left behind from his childhood.

What Dad gave me in that small second box, was possibly a few hundred cards from the late 1950s and early 1960s, and a bunch from the late 60s. I looked quietly through each, and we talked about players from his era. Dad grew up a Yankees fan, and had switched his allegiance to the Padres after George Steinbrenner had purchased the team, and from his time being stationed at Balboa Naval Hospital in San Diego. Dad remained a Padres fan until he died, with Tony Gwynn, Dave Winfield, Steve Garvey, and Puff Nettles being his favorite players. As a Yankees fan, he rooted for Mantle and Ford, and during the first half decade of my life, Dad was quietly a Thurman Munson fan...now, back to the boxes Dad brought to me...

Dad was a very private person throughout his life. Some things I'll never know about his life, some things I probably don't need to know. However, one of his private tasks that he undertook was in that first cardboard box he presented to me on that rainy day in April, 2009. After going through the second box he gave me, he had a smile on his face that could've lit the entire house. I finished opening the first box, and he said "They probably aren't worth a whole lot, but they weren't from a factory set either."He chuckled. As I looked inside, examining card by individual card, it dawned on me, that this man, who had been my hero my entire life, this man, who taught me how to throw and hit a baseball, this man, who along with my mother, encouraged my involvement in all of my sporting endeavors throughout my childhood, and supported me every step of the way, had hand collated the ENTIRE 1976 SET OF TOPPS BASEBALL CARDS!!! I began to cry. He began to cry. Dad said if he didn't give them to me at this point, he may never get another chance. A stark reminder that as my little boy was growing and developing within the womb, Dad's time was quickly coming to an end...

After we collected ourselves from the emotion of the moment, Dad said he knew before I was born that I was going to be HIS boy. He said he remembered how much joy collecting cards brought to him, and how it helped to build his love of the game, and he wanted to ensure that I had that same love. I asked, "What if I had been a girl?" He laughed and said "Son, there's always grandchildren." Dad went on to explain how he knew that as an adult, money had been tough for me, and that I'd make some stupid mistakes, and if I desperately needed the money, to feel free to go ahead and sell the set, and get what I could get for it. I began to cry again. Not because he was right, but because I looked into his sunken eyes, the dark circles and gaunt frame of the strongest man I ever knew, and knew in my heart he didn't have long for this world, and how there was no getting lost time back.

I've never sold a baseball card in my entire life. Not one. I just can't pull myself to do it. I probably have between 60-70 thousand cards total in my collection. I have a few sets that I have completed by hand. The most valuable cards I may have as a single, is either a Carl Yastrzemski 1960 Topps, or a 1969 Reggie Jackson Topps. Both from my Dad's box of cards, neither in mint condition, but they are sentimental favorites of mine. None of the cards in the second box were mint...nowhere close, but they came from Dad, and someday, I hope to pass them along to MY son...they remain in his small box.

Dad knew I was never going to sell the '76 set. EVER. The set isn't worth much, a few hundred dollars perhaps. That's not the point. This set is worth more to me than all of my other cards combined, because MY DAD pieced it together during the year I was preparing to arrive. To this day, I've never discussed this surprising event with many, other than a handful of friends and family. I'm not even sure if my Mom was aware of what he did. Maybe she was, and she kept his secret, to be shared with me when HE was ready...Dad passed away in January of 2010--a mere three months after his only grandson arrived, and there isn't a day that goes by that I don't wish I could pick up the phone and chat with him. I will always believe Dad fought through his illness, and hung on longer than he should have, just to meet his little man. I wish he could see how awesome his grandchildren are...

Now that you've dried your eyes, I hope you can understand why I'm so deeply invested in this hobby. Remember when I said I've purchased factory sealed sets? The year each of my children were born, I purchased a set for each of them. The Topps 1999 set for my oldest daughter Alexa. She will be a freshman in college this fall. A Topps 2009 set for my son, who doesn't have a clue or knows the difference between factory sealed and a foil pack. Then there's my baby girl, Kamryn. I even picked up a Topps 2011 set for her. Someday, I plan to give each of my children THEIR complete set. You might be thinking that I cut some corners by buying the whole set rather than hand collating each set like my father did. I'm already a step ahead of you on that one...I am in the process of assembling all three sets for each of my children. Hopefully I have a heads up when my time comes...hopefully one day I can sit with my children and give them my gift...

Today would've been my Dad's 65th birthday. Sometimes it seems like it was just yesterday he was visiting my wife and I in Las Vegas, taking us to dinner, telling dirty jokes, and shaking his head in disbelief that his son, the one he raised in a small Oregon town of 10,000 people, had become comfortable living in "Sin City." Other days, it seems like a lifetime ago. I have his gift of love for the game, and a handful of his personal possessions...and several voicemails that I saved during the last year of his life. I can listen to his voice anytime I choose. My son and daughter often ask about "Papa Don", and I do my best to make sure that even though they will never know him, that they know his memory and spirit aren't too far away. It is my job now to ensure that my children--especially my only son, build their love for the game, a love and respect for the hobby, and hopefully as the years go by, he can look back on his childhood and know how much this "baseball" time together means to me, and smile, just as I do today...Happy Birthday Dad!

Where It All Started...

There are plenty of things going on in my life right now that don't necessitate the creation of yet another blog, one that is no more unique or special than the hundreds of thousands of other blogs in the world. I've been hired help for blogs, served as a freelance writer, staff writer, and yes, even as an editor. My passion has been baseball as far back as I could remember. Whether it's minor league ball, the big leagues, or even a local little league game.

Things that go along with that obsession go far beyond writing, reading, etc. I've coached Little League, Babe Ruth, Junior Leagues, high school and legion ball. As I'm writing this, it's 2:56 a.m. on a Monday morning--exactly two weeks before I return to my normal job as a social studies and weight training teacher at a small reservation school in central Wyoming. The common thread since I first fell in love with the National Pastime more than thirty years ago? Baseball cards. What?! Yes, the little pieces of cardboard that have an image of our game's players on the front, and statistics on the back. What's different now than when I witnessed my first big league game in the Kingdome back in 1981? My seven-year old son, that's what.

As I write this initial entry--my tale to my little boy, I'm on the second movie of an in-house double feature that started with Moneyball  and is concluding with my all-time favorite: Bull Durham. My family is baseball obsessed to say the least. My son and I root for the New York Yankees, while my wife of 11 1/2 years along with my six-year old daughter, are one-hundred percent invested in Red Sox Nation. My oldest daughter? The one who will begin college this fall at Montclair State in New Jersey? She began as a Yankees fan, but quickly changed her allegiance to the New York Mets. That's a story for another day...

As a child growing up in north-central Oregon, the closest thing we had to big league baseball were the Mariners up in Seattle, and the Portland Beavers--the Triple-A affiliate of the Philadelphia Phillies and later, the Minnesota Twins. My first pack of baseball cards? A wax pack from the 1986 Topps collection. I remember that first pack like it was yesterday. Fifteen cards, a stick of bubble gum, an entry form to attend the 1987 spring training for the team of my choice...all for a whopping forty cents. Thirty-one years later, the '86 set is looked upon as one of the ugliest, unpopular sets of the decade produced by Topps. It doesn't matter, as I put the entire set together by hand. Pack by painstaking pack. Well worth the reward, as it hooked me for life, and fueled my increasing love for the game from that point, through today.

I'm creating this blog as an online diary. An official entry as I take this newfound journey with my son. Now that baseball here in our little town is almost complete, I decided to quit using chewing tobacco after 27 years of constant use (another side affect of my baseball life). I need another hobby, something productive to occupy my time. After four years of being involved in Little League, my son has officially caught the bug of being obsessed with baseball. He's always dogging me to go hit (we live directly across the street from our local baseball complex), have a catch, to take him on in MLB The Show, watching or listening to games, whatever. If it's baseball, he wants to share in it with me.

When I began collecting, never in my wildest dreams did I ever consider purchasing an entire set of baseball cards. To me, that was cheating. I remember during the winters of my childhood, laying in front of the fireplace, looking through the Sears, JC Penney, and Jafco Christmas catalogs, at the full, complete sets for that specific year being offered. By 1987, I had expanded my desire to conquer the world of baseball cards, learning of Fleer, Donruss, and later, Sportflics sets. My Mom (God bless that woman) was all about feeding my addiction. Any time she would go to the local grocery stores (Albertson, Safeway, etc.), rest assured that by the time she was done putting the week's food away, a pack or two of cards was sitting on the counter for me. I also earned $2 per week in allowance for picking up dog poop, taking out the garbage, mowing the lawn, and doing some occasional housework like vacuuming or loading up the dishwasher for dear old Mom.

I would take my hard-earned money, and meet up with my buddies each morning before school. We'd walk up to DeHart's corner market, buy a Hostess fruit pie, a nickel box of Lemonheads, Boston Baked Beans, and a couple of packs of cards. When times were good, multiple brands of cards were available--the aforementioned Topps, Fleer, and Donruss. Fleer and Donruss cards would sell for only .35 per pack, so if funds were low, we'd snag an extra pack of those until allowance day came, and we could buy some packs of Topps again. We'd go to school, eat our pies, save our candy for lunch, and go through our new treasures, trading cards to help us each fill our sets.

As my buddies and I continued to grow up, cards were never far from our minds, but other things often took our card money (girls, beer, chew), but we'd still buy packs when we were thinking about it. Our little town even produced a card shop, where the owner, Larry Krutsinger, who was a local volunteer umpire, would show mercy on us, and give us a really good deal on cards of our favorite players (Mine was Don Mattingly, my friend Josh, Mark Grace, my other buddy Sean, Ozzie Smith). Sean and I would spend summer days playing ball with our other neighborhood friends, but our favorite stop was a junk store called Jolly's. The guy who ran that shop, was a crass, grumpy guy who looked like he hadn't bathed in a few weeks. The place was dark and dingy, but we knew he had boxes upon boxes of old baseball cards. Sean and I would collect all of the loose change we could find, and head up to Kelly Avenue to Jolly's. Mr Jolly as we called him, was so preoccupied with trying to sell his other junk, he'd allow Sean and I to go through those boxes for hours, looking for gems at discount rates. He kept an out of date copy of Beckett Baseball behind the counter, and we'd come to the side counter with all of the cards we could afford for that day, and he'd hand us the Beckett, a piece of paper, and a calculator.

Between the card shop and Larry, and the junk shop and Jolly's, Sean and I built our collection that most of our other buddies quickly became jealous of. Sean and I would spend hours upon hours, laying out our catch, talking baseball, trading cards, and preserving them for when we were all grown up. Sean moved away a year after we entered junior high school, but I found another friend who was into cards, my friend and Cubs fan, Josh. This is where my eyes were opened wide to parental involvement in the "hobby"of baseball card collecting.

You see, Josh lived on the opposite side of town. No quick walk or bike ride. I actually needed rides to Josh's house, but I got there and he to my house on the east side of town. I was floored the first time I entered Josh's house. It is a ranch style, with a living room through the garage entrance, a dining room and kitchen, then another living room and hallway to the bedrooms. Josh had a younger brother, Andrew, who was two years younger than we were in school. Josh and I would play Bases Loaded, RBI Baseball and the like on the Nintendo for hours. However, in that second living room, were boxes and boxes and more boxes of complete sets of baseball cards. You name the year and set in the 1980s and earlier, and odds were good it was stacked in that living room, or Josh and Andrew's bedrooms. His family would take trips to Portland, stop at multiple card shops, and come home with many more sets of baseball cards.

I remember asking Josh's dad why he bought complete sets rather than hand collecting. He responded by saying if taken care of properly, full sets could be worth big money in twenty or thirty years when we boys were grown up. I'd go home and ask my Dad if he'd buy me a complete set, and he'd just laugh and say "Buy you complete sets of toys?" "You're on your own son." I felt like I was behind the power curve and at a disadvantage to Josh because his Dad would get the complete sets, and I'd be stuck piecing my yearly collection together pack by pack. I still felt like it was cheating, and not really an enjoyable way to collect cards. My own father had a couple of treats for me later in my life...

I've been blessed enough to have suitable storage for my cards all of these years later. I've lived in many different states, all over the country, but I have always taken the time to ensure my childhood gems were taken care of.

I have many more stories to tell, and to explain where I am at in the hobby and my new journey with my son. My children are my absolute world. My family and baseball. It's a pretty simple life for a school teacher, and I hope you'll enjoy taking this journey with me each week as I document what I hope is something you might enjoy reading. Perhaps my entries will take you back to a special time and place in your life. Perhaps it was you and your friends, or you and your father that once enjoyed collecting. Maybe, just maybe, you'll get the bug once again and you can carry the tradition on with your own children...thanks for reading, and God Bless!