What are the statistics for someone
building a baseball card set out of jealousy?
Or out of sheer
envy?
Anyone ever built
a set based on long-standing resentment?
Why
would anyone even build a set for such reasons? Collecting is supposed to be
fun, right? I’m having fun for the most part, being back in the hobby; although
small holes of discontentment creep in from time to time. Such is the life of a
long-suffering Pirates fan. I enjoy building sets, both old and new, in ways
that I never had as a young collector. I enjoy printing up the checklists,
cracking some wax, and collating the cards. Purchasing a card online and
marking one more slot off on the checklist. Building sets helps with my
anxiety. Sometimes it feels like I’m pulling together history.
So why build a set
out of jealousy and envy? To explain I have to go back to 1985, a year I’ll be
revisiting more than a few times in this blog. 1985 was probably the first time
I’d ever seen one of those baseball card variety packs. Think distant cousin to
the current Fairfield ones that you buy in a Walgreen’s, when in a card fix,
with no internet or LCS in sight. As I remember it, those variety packs came in
cubes with a card featured on each side, or in tightly wrapped cellophane in
sparsely decorated boxes. We got them at toy stores. Any Rust Belters or former
Rust Belters out there remember Children’s Palace?
As with the current Fairfield product, the pickings in these 1980s style variety packs were mostly unremarkable. I say mostly because, yes, I have watched a guy online pull a Bryce Harper rookie card out of one of those variety packs. I myself pulled three 1985 Donruss Bobby Meacham cards.
On the particular day in 1985 that I’m writing about here, my brother and I were strolling around the Children’s Palace with our friend, Phineas. It was shortly after Phineas’ birthday and he had some birthday cash burning a hole in his pocket, as it did with most kids lucky enough to receive a few dollars celebrating the year of their birth. Phineas’ mom watched my brother and I from time to time, although I was already reaching latchkey age, so we were a captive audience for his splurge. While we were mostly there for toys, we came across these baseball card variety packs sitting in one of those random, enticing toy store bins. In lieu of buying anything Star Wars related, Phineas bought the variety pack of cards instead.
The
group of boys I knew in 1985, well, to say that we were deep into baseball
cards would not be an accurate description of the ocean we consistently swam in
and whose bounty we drank from. Cards were all we wanted. Phineas was building
a 1985 Topps set. I was buying packs and packs of random brands, doing my usual
business of discarding the commons to one shoe box, and keeping stars and
Pirates team sets in another, better shoe box. Cards beat playing with action
figures, a rabid past-time whose grip on my attention was lessening and
lessening each day on the march toward puberty. I felt that while I could watch
He-Man I could not justify picking up an action figure and playing with one.
I even got into
petty thievery that year, though fall of 1984 was when I made my first big “score”.
I’ll admit to nothing but stealing a few packs of Fleer from Revco. Maybe I
desecrated a Topps rack pack or two then justified the purloinment by saying to
myself that such a rack pack wouldn’t be missed. A kid with not a lot of money
did what he had to do back in Reagan’s America. It wasn’t morning in America in
my Velcro, Pirates wallet. I took the Robin Hood ethos to heart. I never
claimed to be a true capitalist.
The
cards in Phineas’ variety pack were unremarkable…for the time. A random
assortment of Topps, Fleer, Donruss, and some odds and ends we’d never seen.
That being 1985, hell, now I’d love to open a variety pack full of random cards
from 1980-1984. One man’s junk is another man’s vintage. But, again, as I
remember it there was nothing much to write about in that variety pack. Ah… except
for one card. A card none of us had ever seen before in our lives. A strange
looking player, on a strange team, from strange city, in a country none of us
had ever been to. He had a strange name too: Shigeru Takada.
Who in the hell was Shigeru Takada? Who in the hell were the Toyko Giants and why in the hell did his helmet look like that? These were the questions that I had burning through me, as Phineas continued to go through his variety pack. When he was done and had moved on to other cards, I stuck with the Shigeru Takada card. Pulled it out of the pile. Examined it. Held it like a rare jewel. It was. I’d never seen a baseball card of a Japanese player before. I wondered how this card made it into that variety pack, and then made it’s why to a Children’s Palace toy store in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. In short, I craved that Shigeru Takada card and wished it were mine.
A trade perhaps? Phineas
was a notorious wheeler and dealer when trading, and was known to not want to
part with his cards. Like, any of his cards. But, aside from the initial
fascination, he didn’t think much of the Shigeru Takada card, right? I mean
he’d left it to sit there in that pile of commons. Good ol’ Phineas didn’t seem
to care at all about the Shigeru Takada card…that is, until I expressed an
interest in it.
Then the card
instantly became one of the crown jewels of Phineas’ whole collection. Not as
important as Pirate cards or certain star cards, or the rookies he wanted. But
more a point of pride. The Shigeru Takada card became something to lord over a
hapless beggar such as I. A card to entice me into trades, but never, ever to
be relinquished from his stronghold. He still has and talks about that Takada
card to this very day. Cursed Phineas!
I was determined
to get Takada card another way. But how? Children’s Palace, of course. But how
many parents did you know who regularly wanted to drive their kid to a toy
store. I know mine sure as hell didn’t. Besides, my poor mom was already
carting us out to one baseball card shop in the mall on the regular. In the
rare times that I got to go to Children’s Palace, I bought every variety pack that
I could afford. But I never came across a Shigeru Takada in the wild again.
Never came across another Japanese Card. The variety packs vanished from the
bins. Still, I resolved to one day make the Takada card mine.
Flash
forward thirty-five years and one pandemic later. I was in the doldrums.
Feeling trapped at home. Feeling fearful of everyone and everywhere else.
Ambulances roared down our street carrying the sick and dying. I began thinking
of trips my wife and I had taken in 2019, and would we ever get to travel
together again. I’ve perfected the art of drama mixed with a healthy dose of
paranoia and anxiety.
We were fortunate enough to go to Japan. That beautiful land of the rising son. I’ve been around the block and have been fortunate enough to have visited quite a few European cities, but nothing prepared me for the majesty of Japan.
The crowds
The neon.
The shrines.
The food.
This beautiful place
The efficient trains and subways that melted this New Yorker’s heart. The kindness of the people.
And, sadly, being confronted with a little
bit of America’s own dark history.
I wanted to see a baseball game so badly. I hadn’t been to a live game in America since 2014. But there were no live games to be had. In each city we went to, the home baseball team was playing somewhere else. The folly was laughable. The closest I got to Japanese baseball on that trip was visiting the Tokyo Dome and pulling into Hiroshima just as a Carps game was starting, and tons and tons of fans of all genders and ages were heading toward the stadium in Carp red.
I settled for watching the Soft Bank Hawks at night on our hotel tv, and catching a Giants game in an Irish pub. It is my determination that one could find an Irish pub on Antarctica.
In the midst of my
memories, hungering for a bowl of good, spicy ramen, I did a search on ComC for
Japanese baseball cards. That search lead me to the TCMA 1979 Japanese Pro
Baseball set. Something about the cards looked familiar. The plain, white
border. The colored crescent in the center of the bottom of the card, listing
the players name and team. The simple white and red backs that listed some
biographical information on the player and their 1978 stats.
More memories flooded me. A friend’s bedroom lit by the afternoon summer sun. The smell of wax, cardboard and gum. A certain variety pack. It was like I was back in 1985, and seething in the pit of want, envy and jealously. Until I shook them off and let the purchasing power of an adult be my guide. It only took me a matter of time before I found him on ComC. Shigeru Takada.
I immediately added
him to my cart. Mine for good this time. My precious.
The Shigeru Takada card actually comes from a set produced in 1979, known officially as the 1979 TCMA Pro Japanese Set. It turns out the set isn’t very Japanese at all. Yes, the 90-card set features players who played in Japan. But TCMA was actually a card company from upstate New York, in the 1970s and 80s, known mostly for its minor league sets and its 1975 challenge to the Topps monopoly by creating a 600-card set of major league baseball players known as SSPC; a pretty sharp set if you ask me. The Pro Japanese Baseball Card set was never even marketed it or sold it in Japan. No wonder cards from it ended up in a run of the mill baseball card variety pack.
As
for Shigeru Takada himself, he was an outfielder/third baseman who played
thirteen seasons for the Yomiuri Giants. Takada played in 1512 games in Japan
with 1384 hits, 139 home runs, 499 RBI, and a career batting average of .273.
After his playing days, Takada managed for the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters and
the Tokyo Yakult Swallow. He was also the general manager for the Yokohama DeNA
BayStars, and is still alive and well at the age of 75. I’m not a big autograph
guy, but, man, it would be cool to get his card signed.
Anyway…I didn’t really buy the card out of envy. I bought it because it’s cool, and the Takada card reminds me of my youth. I’m glad Phineas still has it and enjoys it to this day. I know I’m enjoying mine. That said, purchasing the Takada card has sort of resolved me to collect the entire 90-card set. I have about a handful of them now, and kind of want to build it slowly, enjoy the process.
You can get the cards on both SportLots and ComC at pretty good prices. Only one of the cards is really going to cost you. And that’s the card of the big fish. The all-time, global home run champ. The legendary Sadaharu Oh.
Lastly, I decided with this post to
take a walk down memory lane and actually buy myself a Fairfield variety box to
open and see what I could find inside...but Brooklyn retail stores had other
ideas. My neighborhood is usually a desert for retail sports card product (I
think I’ve found maybe one or two hanger boxes at my Walgreen’s), but they often
have Fairfield stuff. Not this time. I should’ve known my luck. Another time,
perhaps.
If you want to learn more about
Sadaharu Oh you can do so HERE and HERE
Next Friday: Topps 2021 Flagship Series 1 releases on Wednesday, February 10th, so I think next week I’m going to post about opening the very first wax box that I ever purchased with my own money, and take a small, slightly critical (and that can mean good or bad) look at what Topps has done with their 2021 Flagship brand.
Here's a Sneak Peak:
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