Tossed treasure

The Associated Press reports a 1909 Honus Wagner baseball card has sold for $2.35 million. See story: LINK

Every time I read one of these “baseball card goes for big bucks” stories, I cringe.

From my earliest recollection up until that fateful day, 8 October 1957, my daddy and I were devoted to the Brooklyn Dodgers. We put the “damn” in “Damn Yankees!”

Every extra nickel I could get my hands on went to the purchase of bubble gum-packaged baseball cards. Throughout the ‘50s, I collected shoeboxes full of these prized pieces of paper – photo on the front, stats on the back.

When I moved into my first apartment, I asked my mother to keep certain items I didn’t have room for, like my junior-senior prom evening gown and my shoeboxed cards. A few years later, I asked for them and learned the gown was handed down to a first cousin and the cards had ended up in the trash. I did not get my pack-rat genes from my mother.

The pain came later as Mickey Mantle cards began to go for thousands of dollars. I must have had them all!

In 1962 I traveled with a friend to California where we stayed in the Palos Verdes home of her aunt and husband, Bill Moon.

One of the highlights of that three-week trip was going to Chavez Ravine to watch Bill’s brother Wally play in a game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the New York Mets.

Los Angeles Dodgers. I should have been excited finally to see a Dodgers game, but the thrill was gone. It left on that fateful October day when O’Malley announced the Dodgers were leaving Brooklyn.

That night I did get within spittin’ distance of the legendary Casey Stengel, manager of the Mets, and former manager of the Yankees during all those seasons when his team beat the Dodgers.

To my credit, I didn’t spit.

Postscript:

In one of my favorite books, 84 Charing Cross Road, letter writer Helene Hanff, in 1955, wrote London book dealer Frank Doel:

“I shall be obliged if you will send Nora and the girls to church every Sunday for the next month to pray for the continued health and strength of the messrs. gilliam, reese, snider, campanella, robinson, hodges, furillo, podres, newcombe and labine, collectively known as The Brooklyn Dodgers. If they lose this World Series I shall Do Myself In and then where will you be?”

If you have not experienced this beautiful book of letters – a 20-year correspondence between New Yorker Hanff and a London bookstore staff - or the movie starring Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins, do yourself a favor and get them from amazon.com or half.com. The book is always in print and available at your local bookstore.