Aint nothin' gonna break my stride....except that old guilt: Rod Carew and Bobby Smith were living legends

 

Henry Miller once said, I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.

But Henry Miller said this as struggling writer living in Paris, composing Tropic of Cancer at a madman’s pace, all the while mooching off of people for shelter, food and drink…and, of course, occasionally going to bed with Anais Nin. He wasn’t some dumb kid stuck in the suburbs trying to buy baseball cards without a job, and hardly an allowance to speak of. That kid was me. Perennially broke. Any inkling of an idea of a naked Anais Nin was years upon years away. Back then, I couldn’t have given one damn for Henry Miller and his bloody art and pauper-is splendor. Money…that was what I wanted.

My parents didn’t have much money in the mid-80s, which meant I hardly had any money. Were we broke? Of course not. We had food enough that I had a weight problem at a young age. We had shelter. I had clothes on my back. I went to catholic school. But there were hard times. For years there was little money for anything else than the basics and birthdays and Christmas. I remember one instance where we had to use money from my piggy bank for a loaf of bread to tide us over until payday. We had cars that were powered on WD-40 and sheer will. Not really the stuff of Dickens, I know. But purchases were made using caution and common sense.

            But I did have a piggy bank. By hook or crook, I had accumulated some money, and managed not to blow it immediately on baseball cards or candy. The foundation of my wealth mostly came from change from bigger bills or from birthdays or holidays; pocket change that I could put away to prove to my folks my fiduciary responsibility. I wasn’t going to end up penniless in Paris, like Henry Miller. Henry Miller never wanted Rod Carew cards from the 1970s. But I did. I’d stay as flush as a kid could.

Why Rod Carew? It had to be because of Miller. Not Henry Miller but my Miller. Miller Anatasio was a big Rod Carew fan. This was before his Barry Bonds fixation. Oh, it had to be late 1984 when this adventure happened. The Matthew Wilder song Break my Stride was still going strong. Miller knew Rod Carew. Or knew of him way better than I did. He knew Rod Carew enough to copy his batting stance when we played wiffle ball. 

Miller talked about him with awe. He made Carew sound like a legend. To diehard Twins and Angels fans he already was.

I only knew Rod Carew from his baseball cards. 

I didn’t really know much about him as a player. I knew he was good. The stats on those red, white and blue Topps 1984 card backs told me as much. I didn’t see much in the way of West Coast baseball on TV, save a playoff game, or an episode of This Week in Baseball. Being in Pittsburgh, I saw little to no American League ball at all. Interleague play was a pipe dream that today I wish stayed as such. I’d never seen Carew the legend in live action.

            In our neighborhood our legend was Bobby Smith. Not a grand name for a legend, but Bobby was older than Miller by about four years, and me by five. Fifteen. A magical number I couldn’t wait to reach. He dated good looking girls. Bobby Smith smoked cigarettes and had a dip in his bottom lip from time to time. He had a deep voice that put our falsetto shouting, pre-pubescent voices to shame. Bobby sported a thin moustache. That was legend to ten and eleven-year-olds.

Miller talked about Bobby with Rod Carew-like reverence. Bobby this. Bobby that. Bobby was going to come play ball with us…but of course he never did. Just like Rod Carew, I didn’t know much about Bobby Smith other than two things. He was Carolyn Smith’s older brother, and she was my dedicated, unrequited crush. I also knew that Bobby Smith had baseball cards that he no longer cared about; cards that he was willing to sell. Stuff from the 70s.

            Miller and I made an immediate plan to benefit from the Bobby Smith’s puberty-induced fire sale, even though he was in the same financial straits as I was. Miller didn’t come from money either. His parents were older than most parents for kids his age. They did spot work. Bartending. Waitressing gigs. Miller’s wealth, like mine, was based on pocket change and happenstance; his card collection built from wax packs bought with money found under couch cushions. Current cards from the 1980s and little else. But we were going to score this time.

I remember being dumb. I remember coming downstairs with an over-sized Dixie cup full of coins that I’d purloined from my piggy bank. This drew immediate attention from my parents. One didn’t walk around my home with an over-sized wax cup full of change. When I told them what I was using the money for, to get those cards from Bobby Jones, Rod Carew’s mom and dad, I received an immediate no. I wasn’t using that money to buy cards. Books, fine. Save for something nicer, okay. Not old baseball cards. I certainly wasn’t using my money to buy old baseball cards from some fifteen-year-old they hardly knew.

I got sent back to my room with strict orders to put the money back in the bank. But that’s not what I did. I took as many quarters as I could from that Dixie cup. I shoved them in my pants pockets. I shoved them in my jacket. I came back downstairs, careful not to jingle-jangle, and moped my way out the door like I was the upset and defeated, naive child my parents expected me to be. Then I raced to meet Miller, as quickly as my hefty, coin-laded body could. It was off to Bobby’s house.

            Though Miller and I hung around the neighborhood with Carolyn and Alice Smith, I’d never been to their home. The Smith’s had money. They didn’t live in a rented duplex, like my family did. The Smiths had a golden bricked and blond wood paneled, ranch-style home with a big, wide window in front. They had huge cars in their driveway before SUVs were the rage, and all Americans had big, huge cars in their driveways. There was talk they were getting a pool.

The Smiths owned things. Like businesses. The Smiths owned a deli in the strip mall up the street. They owned the famous Frankstown Lounge, where Miller’s dad occasionally bartended, and my old man sometimes had a beer with a friend or two. They had a big screen TV in their living room. A kitchen with something called an island. The Smiths took vacations in the summer. They were rich by our standards. And there me and Miller were with pocket change, doing our best to add to their wealth.

            I have to admit that I wasn’t at the Smith’s lavish digs just for baseball cards. I was there to see if Carolyn was home. What was it about her? She had wide, coal eyes and a crooked smile. Carolyn was tomboyish. She played tackle football with us that fall. I had a crush on her and I wasn’t shy about it. Miller knew. The ten-year-old overweight me was a year or two away from the self-consciousness and self-loathing that would darken my junior high and high school years.      

    Ah, but Carolyn wasn’t around that evening for me to see her in her own element. Skunked by basketball practice up at St. Barts. But her younger sister Alice was home. Alice was nine to my ten. She already had a mean streak. Or a bipolar streak. Mean to me one day, kind the next. I didn’t like her as a result. I was very black and white in how I treated people as a kid. I can still be that way now. Though drawn to Carolyn I did my best to stay away from Alice Smith.

            Bobby Smith’s room was unlike any I’d seen. There was nary a stuffed animal or anything deifying Batman or Superman or Wille Stargell on his walls. He had posters. Posters of bands. Van Halen. Posters of women. Daisy Duke. Christie Brinkley. Paulina Poritzkova’s cover of the 1984 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. Bobby Smith had an electric and an acoustic guitar propped up against his wall. His room was cool.

I remember him being casually kind to Miller and me. A little bored and disinterested. It was almost like Bobby had forgotten why he had two children in his room. Then the light when off and he pulled down two shoeboxes from his shelf. Cards! Older cards! 1970s stuff and it would be mine. I wouldn’t trade them all away again like I did the 1974 cards that I’d ripped off from Rick Stanton. Eat your heart out Phineas. Dimitri Danielopoulos, you could keep your brother’s collection of cards. I was going to build my own.

Miller started grabbing at Bobby’s Rod Carew cards. 

The 1976. 

The 1977. 

The 1978. 

All snagged before I’d stopped drooling over the shoeboxes and envisioning my triumph. 

Miller snagged the 1979 Carew too. 

All in Twins uniforms. I’d never seen Rod Carew in a Twins uniform. What was free agency to me, except a way of life in baseball by 1984. An accepted yet tragic reality in a city like Pittsburgh.

The Rod Carew cards were a little beat-up. What did condition matter? Bobby only wanted a buck a piece for them. Miller paid up with four crumpled bills. Then it was my turn. Oh, but what to get? There were Pete Rose cards…in his Red’s unform! Willie Stargell…with a beard? I might’ve had $4 in change on me. I dumped it all on Bobby’s bed. He arched his eyes and laughed. But he’d take the change and I’d take my cards. That was how capitalism worked. Then I’d go home, feeling like the luckiest kid in the world, like I really put one over on my parents.

But that’s not what happened. Guilt is what happened. The thought that maybe I was doing something wrong spending my own money on something I actually wanted. That early evening in the Smith home became a grounding theme that I carried through my teen years, and still have as an adult. Any pleasurable purchase comes with an echo of melancholy.

I feel like I have to explain myself to someone why I bought a card, a record, or went on a vacation somewhere. My wife looks at me like I’m nuts when I try and justify a simple purchase that neither of us should really be sweating. I don’t blame my parents for the way that I turned out regarding money. And I’ve never tried to correct the way I feel. The guilt is just there. It follows me in stores. It follows me when I make purchases online. I’m the guiltiest man lurking around ComC or SportLots.

I told Bobby Smith that I couldn’t decide what cards I wanted. Maybe we could do this later? Bobby shook his head. Sure, kid, sure. But he wasn’t going to let some ten-year-old with change come back into his cool-ass room and look through his beat-up cards again. My time was right there and then. But the ship had already passed for me and those old cards. I collected my change and Miller and I left. I enviously looked through his Carew cards on the way back to his house.

And then I went home empty-handed.

            Thanks for reading. Happy collecting.

 

            If you want to learn more about Rod Carew you can do so HERE and HERE

 

        And while I'll never be Henry Miller, I have managed to get a few novels and books of poetry published, which you can find HERE. Or if you're cash strapped, DM me on when of the social medias and I'll be happy to send you something.

 

    Next Friday:  Is Christmas....for whatever Christmas is this year. So no Junk Wax Jay. But I will be back on Wednesday, December 30th with my Year in Collecting post.

Have a Happy Holiday. Stay healthy and safe.

 

--JG