Every Rascal is not a Thief, but Every Thief is a Rascal : Getting Ripped off Trading Cards (1984, 1987)

 

Thievery is as old as America itself.

            You could almost say thievery is an American pastime.

            Like apple pie.

            Like baseball.

            If you’re reading this blog post somewhere in America, the chances are very good that you’re reading this blog post on stolen land.

            Don’t @ me on that one.

            It’s the truth.

            There’s thievery in the sports card world. Sports cards are very American. In fact, there’s been a lot of thieveries over the last year. Thievery comes with expansion and growth. Just ask the Founding Fathers. 20K in merchandise was stolen from a card shop in Brunswick Maine back in April. 10K in a sports card store in Alabama. A card store in Knoxville got jacked for 50K+ in sports cards. And one in Louisville got 54K ripped off from them.

            Those are just the examples that I found doing a basic Google search.

            I’m so glad The Hobby is expanding.

Just recently at the last Dallas card show there was thievery. Some dude stole a Luka Doncic 1/1 rookie card worth 5K. How a much sought-after card worth 5K got out of the sight of the dealer, well, that’s not for me to judge. But The idiot thief got caught. Because the idiot went back to the card show the next day and tried to sell the card to another dealer.

            Idiocy is as American as apple pie too.

            Can’t wait to see what gets stolen during this week’s National!

            I was a thief. Here’s a tale about a Robin action figure if you need proof. But I was a petty thief whose reign of terror went mostly unnoticed.  When I was seven, I stole some 1980 Topps cards from this kid named Donny. Donny was five years older than me but let me pal around with him because there weren’t really any other kids in our West Virginia neighborhood. I think Donny’s mom made him befriend me. Donny didn’t like me much. I didn’t like him as a result. So, one day when we were looking though his cards, I hid some underneath my knee, scooped them into my pocket when Donny wasn’t looking, and then took them home.

            That’s what you get Donny, for not letting me play Atari.

As I got older, I stole some wax packs here and there. Mostly packs that were already opened, the gum taken, and the cards messily sitting on a shelf in a drug store candy aisle. If you want to put a positive spin on it, I was providing those cards a home. They were trash otherwise. The elderly drug store clerk wasn’t going to give those cards a home. You think she cared? My biggest drug store score was a cello pack of 1985 Fleer that someone had opened.

I’ve stolen. I’ve been with people who have stolen. Stolen drinks. Stolen cash. Stolen gas from gas stations in small towns. Stolen cigarettes. Stolen pitchers of beer under heavy winter coats and then drank them in cars. That Beavis and/or Butt-Head figurine I stole in Spencer’s Gifts? The bored teenaged clerk wasn’t going to miss it. The beer Bottles from a rich kid’s fridge? There was plenty more where that came from. I even bought a stolen Nike hat from that back of a truck in a questionable section of the city of Pittsburgh.      

I’m not proud of it.

            It happened.

            To use a phrase that I loathe: it is what it is.

            But this blog post isn’t about my nefarious past life of crime. No, this post is about me being the victim of theft. My friends being the victim of theft. I’ve written about Dmitri Danielopolous before on Junk Wax Jay. About Dmitri always having that year’s new cards first. How he had an older brother who gave him all of his old cards. Dmitri’s hot sister who liked to sunbathe, and seemed always at the ready to drive him to suburban cards shops that me and the rest of us collector kids got to go to maybe every other month.

But there was something else about Dmitri.

Something my old friend, Miller, reminded me of when I was recently back home in Pittsburgh.

Something deep and dark.

Sinister, if you will.

            Dmitri Danielopolous…was a thief.

            To unpack this, let’s initially go back to the summer of 1984. The Olympics were all the rage. Bruce Springsteen’s music poured out of every car. Madonna was on every boy’s mind. I was getting into card collecting. Like heavy into card collecting. Rebuilding my collection really. Every day seemed to include a trip to Thrift Drug to buy a cheap pack of cards. And they were cheap back then. You could couch dive and come up with the change for a pack of cards in 1984.

Us kids had just discovered the American Coin in the Monroeville Mall. A store full of surly men who sold baseball cards to noisy, half-broke, rambunctious kids by day, and then went home to drink away their nights. Aside from packs of cards and single cards, the American Coin sold team sets. I’d never seen team sets put together as one. Team sets were always something that you had to build via buying pack after pack. I’d only built one team set and that wasn’t even of my doing. Though they were garbage in 1984, I wanted a Topps Pirates team set.

            With my kid allowance I bought one.

            I loved that team set.

            I looked at it every day.

            I took it with me wherever I went.

            I stupidly took that team set with me to trade cards with Dmitri.

            I don’t know why Miller and I went to trade cards with Dmitri. We weren’t friends with him…at least not yet. I don’t think either of us really liked him. But that was the thing with cards a lot the time. You collected and traded cards with friends, but because cards are transactional you also did the same thing with kids you weren’t so close to. Kids in school. Kids on your little league team. Maybe kids you didn’t even really know. Or like. Other kids in the neighborhood.

            That’s how we ended up in Dmitri Danielopolous’ backyard trading cards.

            With his big goon friend Nick.

            Who kind of looked like this at twelve-years-old.

From my memory Dmitri and Miller did most of the trading. In the summer of 1984, because I was building up my collection, I didn’t really have anything worth trading, Dmitri had his brother’s cards. Miller a few good ones he’d come across. Dmitri gave my stuff a cursory glance. While he was doing that, Nick asked me if he could look at my Pirates team set. I let him. Then I went back to watching Dmitri and Miller haggle over something else while D flipped through my cards.

Nick had my cards.

Dmitri had my cards.

Maybe I could see why someone would lose sight of a 1/1 Luka Doncic rookie card.

People get distracted.

And even though I was distracted, I was still able to turn back in time to catch Nick trying to steal my Pirates cards. At least the few good ones on the team. The big goon was dropping my Pirates card onto the grass in Dmitri’s backyard. Like it wasn’t a big deal.

My Dave Parker card.

My Tony Pena.

My goddamned Johnny Ray.

When I caught him, Nick laughed it off. I laughed it off. Nick was two years older than me, about double my size, and had greasy hair cut into a bowl haircut.

            In my head he still looks like this.

            To be honest, Nick could’ve outright taken my Pirates team set and there really wouldn’t have been a goddamned thing that I could do. But he didn’t. He just handed me back my team set and left me to pick up the cards on the grass. That’s when I noticed that Dmitri had been doing the same thing with the stack of my cards he’d been looking at. About three or four of them on the grass underneath him.

Nothing special.

1984 Topps stars.

Cards Dmitri already had.

Cards he’d had weeks before Miller or I.

Thankfully nothing was destroyed by being dropped. Not that what I owned at ten years old was in great shape. I manhandled my cards enough that nothing I owned was ever in mint condition. At least not at that age. I was always looking at them. Examining them. Reading the stats. But deep down I was still upset at the attempted thievery. Upset at the sheer audacity. The blatantness of the act. How out in the open it was.

            The fact that I could do nothing about it.

            The fact that all I could do was go home.

            The funny thing is, Miller and I did become friends with Dmitri. Kind of. His parents stopped allowing him to hang out with what they considered the “wrong” crowd from a few blocks away. Dmitri began showing up in the cul de sac to play wiffle ball or Nerf football. He’d tried getting us into soccer, but we weren’t having that. I ended up having the kind of relationship where I could go to D’s, knock on his door, and come inside. He always came by when the new cards were out to show me. When my family’s cat got pregnant, D got one of the kittens.

            His hot sister even let me come on a trip to TnT collectibles.

            Flash forwards a few years and everyone is neighborhood friends, right? By 1987 we were full swing into The Hobby. Everyone had some kind of little job so they had extra cash. I delivered newspapers and was able to buy my first wax box with the money. 1987 Topps. Dmitri was older, less into cards, but he still got the new year’s release before any of us. We still traded. He still ripped me off in value. But no one stole.

            Until.

            Exhibit A: A 1974 Hank Aaron Card.

            Exhibit B: TWO 1983 Wade Boggs rookie cards.

            And worst of all Exhibit C: A 1963 Lou Brock rookie.

            These were all cards that Dmitri Danielopolous stole from Miller during one trading event. Sure, they’re not a Luka Doncic 1/1…but they’re more valuable in my eyes. Fourteen-year-olds didn’t come by cards like that, that easy. Thinking about this moment, one that Miller reminded me of, I remember him finding out about those stolen cards after the fact. When we were back at his house. Dmitri denied everything We weren’t able to prove anything. All those years of wiffle ball and Nerf football in the cul de sac, and the little bastard still did that to one of us.

            All we could do was drift from Dmitri.

I’d ask the question why. Why did Dmitri steal from us? He had more cards than us. He had more cards that were valuable. He had access to cards in a way that we didn’t. His family had money. My family didn’t. Miller’s family didn’t. Most likely Dmitri had those cards anyway. If he didn’t have the Brock, he most certainly had that Aaron. He definitely had those Boggs cards.

            Dmitri Danielopolous stole those cards because he could.

            Because he was a red-blooded white American male who came from money.

            The world was his to take.

            Suckers like me and Miller, we had to take our loses from guys like that. The playing field is never level. We had to go back to the Thrift Drug and buy packs to recoup our loses. Go to the American Coin and hope they had a beat-up version of what we lost. One that was affordable. One to fill that void. Ease the pain and embarrassment. Quell the helplessness that we felt. Pledge to be smarter next time.

            Keep those cards away from Dmitri Danielopolous.

            Miller said to me…that’s why I never brought my Tony Gwynn or Rod Carew cards to that little prick’s house.

            Because deep down we knew.

            As for that 1984 Pirates team set? Well…I still have it. In fact, it's the first picture you see on this week's blog. When I stopped collecting in 1992, I gave all of my cards to my brother. But I kept my Pirates teams sets. I’d collected Pirates teams sets from 1980 to about 1992. Just Topps. I kept them in a red binder that I used in high school. Every move that I made (and there were a lot) from 1997 on, that red binder has found a place on my shelves. That is, until last year when I upgraded. Those Pirates team sets now reside in a nice new black binder that isn’t thirty-plus years old.

            When I got back into collecting, aside from building complete sets from my youth, I wanted to buy and build Pirates team sets. But not just from my era. From all the decades of Pirates baseball reflected on Topps sports cards. I have grand dreams (or grand delusions depending) of those sets all snug in black binders, decorated with corresponding Pirates logos and the decades adorned on the spine.

            Probably never gonna happen.

            Why?

            Because of this guy. 

            Because of this card.

            But one can dream.

            And Dmitri Danielopolous wherever you are tonight…I hope that Lou Brock rookie card burned a hole in your ass.

            I’d like to say that I don’t steal anymore. I’d like to say that I too am reformed. But...let’s just say my weekend newspaper carrier isn’t the best at delivering my papers. And let’s just say when I lived in my last place the guy in 3M was pretty lazy about getting his paper. Maybe I’m up early. Maybe I’m up on a Saturday or Sunday before most people. And I see 3M’s paper just sitting there. And I don’t see mine.

            And…

            Thanks for reading! Happy Collecting!

            NEXT FRIDAY: Where shall we go? What shall we do? Let's talk about 1989, shall we? The Upper Deck Griffey. The Donruss and Fleer. My first trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Newspaper delivery. Girls. And the usual existential crisis that met an overweight 15 year-old kid who was growing out of things and growing into things....should be fun, right? 

 

           

Thomas Wolfe can eat cake...or a Smiley Face cookie : You CAN go Home Again.

 

New York City is hot in the summer.

            Unbearably hot.

            Tropical hot.

            Its longitude is on par with Madrid.

            Yesterday it was 100 degrees in Madrid.

            I’m tired of New York City in the summer…to say the least.

            New York City summers make me wish that I was independently wealthy. So wealthy that I could pack up every Mid-May and head to some air-conditioned compound whose insides I’d never leave. I wouldn’t bother anyone. I’d never venture outside. I wouldn't waste my money building penis-shaped rockets. I wouldn’t come back until Mid-October. At the earliest. When the heat is gone. When the tourists are gone.

            Living in New York City during the summer is akin to some kind of insanity.

            I feel crazy living here from May-September.

            Last summer (last summer? Ha! I’m mean last YEAR) I was stuck in New York City. Mostly stuck in my Trump-loving, mask-hating neighborhood in Brooklyn. I walked circles around the estuary in an effort to not go mad. Jogged before the sun came up to avoid the heat. Went to the local LCS if it was safe and not 100 degrees outside. The better part of my time was spent indoors reading, watching TV and watching my electric bill reach astronomical amounts, as I pushed the air conditioner beyond its known limits. What I did probably wasn’t good for the climate.

            I’d like to care about climate change.

            But I live in New York City during the summer.

            Last week I was finally able to get out of New York City. I went back home to Pittsburgh. Now, Pittsburgh isn’t some bastion of Arctic air. I did not go to an air-conditioned compound while in the Steel City. Unless you count the tin box of a plane I flew in. I hadn't been to Pittsburgh Internatinal Airport in a long time.

        It was nice to see this guy.

   

    I stayed with my parents. And they keep their home relatively cool. At least for me they did. Thanks mom and dad! Central air is a Godsend to someone who lives in an apartment in New York. It was nice to not move from in front of a fan and experience complete and shocking climate change like I do in my Brooklyn apartment.

            Consistency is key.

But Pittsburgh has its hot days.

It gets humid in Pittsburgh.

There is one thing that Pittsburgh has in the summer that New York City doesn’t.

Breeze.

I felt actual air circulate outside.

Another thing that Pittsburgh has that I find it hard to come by in New York City, is a reasonable place to buy sports cards. I’m not trying to slag-off the few and far between LCS that I’ve come across in the Five Boroughs, but most of them are over-priced. I get it. Rent. And most of them just cater to the new. I’m having a hard time finding places like antique store and flea markets in New York City. At least ones that sell cards. Older cards. At reasonable prices.

I had some luck in Pittsburgh.

The first place I went was an antique store in the North Versailles section of the eastern Pittsburgh suburbs. The Hub. 

I was at The Hub back in my April visit, and found a lot of success there, especially with Pirates team sets from the 1980s and some card lots. Last time I bought a 150-card lot of 1976 Topps baseball cards. A fine little starter set. The 1976 Topps set is one of my favorites. Once life settles down a little bit, I can’t wait to spend some time putting it together.

This time at The Hub? I was not as lucky. It seemed like they had more of the same. Or the turn-over in cards just isn’t that big in antique shops. The Hub pretty much had what they had back in April. Assorted lots of sports cards and non-sports cards. One could put together a pretty nice Superman: The Movie set if one were so inclined. They had Pirates sets, but they were the ones that I bought last time. There were a few vending boxes, mostly Topps from the late 80s/early 90s. Some lots of cards from the mid-80s.

Not much that caught my eye this time.

Except for a 150-card lot of 1979 Topps cards for ten bucks. The lot was at The Hub the last time that I was there, but I passed it up because I had a ton of other items and felt that maybe I was spending a little too much money on baseball cards. I have my Topps baseball sets done from 1982-1992, and the goal now is to start putting together 1980 and 81, and then some sets from the 70s that I like. I like 1979 Topps. I figured why not start that set too.

The 1976 lot yielded me a good 145 cards, and only a few doubles.

I was hoping for the same from this 150-card 1979 lot.

That wasn’t the case this time.

Buck Martinez anyone?

He wasn't even the worst in terms of doubles.

In all I ended up with about 64 cards to start my 1979 set.

But the day wasn’t a total wash.

I got to have two drafts of Miller High Life in a townie bar with my mom while some dude chain smoked and played the poker machines until he was broke. There were two TVs that played nothing but news about the Delta Variant of Covid. People need to get vaccinated. As I sat there drinking my drafts, I found myself dumbfounded by the idiocy and ignorance inherent in Americans. Yet not entirely surprised.

At least there was chicken fingers and French Fries.

And that night I got to go here.

I left Pittsburgh when PNC Park was only two years old, so I don’t have a lot of baseball memories of the place. Mine dwell in the confines of Three Rivers Stadium. I’m one of those people who miss Three Rivers Stadium. But PNC is a beautiful park to watch baseball in. And I was able to go with my brother, my old man, and some old friends. Despite a rain delay, the usually hapless Buccos pulled out a victory against the Mets.

I got to see these two guys play.

And this guy live for the first time, despite Citi Field being only a train ride or two away.

I was back at my parents in time to finally fall asleep around two in the morning.

With visions of this place dancing in my head.

Looks like a dilapidated movie theater right?

That’s because it IS a dilapidated movie theater.

Rossi’s Flea Marker (or Pop-up Marketplace as they refer to themselves online) is a 100,000 square foot complex that used to be a Lowe’s movie theater. With flea markets come card dealers. Unless you’re in Park Slope Brooklyn. Then its artisan bakers selling organic cookies. At Rossi’s there were at least three card dealers that I wanted to visit. Full disclosure, I had visited the Marketplace before. The last time being in December of 2019. I can’t remember what I bought back then save this card.

And maybe this card.

And maybe a few of this guy’s cards.

Gross!

I meant THIS guy's cards.

I knew that I wanted to get back to Rossi’s as soon as I was vaccinated and able to travel home.

I did not leave disappointed.

For some reason I’ve been on a real football card jag lately. Not current product. The outrageousness of The Hobby in the last year has soured me on buying modern football product. So has the price. That said, I do have some singles that I want from current stuff. But with this trip to Rossi’s, I wanted vintage football. Or at least football cards from the 1970s and 1980s. 

Cards of these guys.

Because I’ve been reading this book.

I was really young when the Steelers dynasty was in full bloom. In fact, I was less than a year old when they won the first of their four Super Bowls in the 70s. By the time I got to know some of those legendary players, they were retired already. Or like Bradshaw, Harris, Stallworth and Lambert, they were at the tail end of their football careers. The Pomerantz book made them come alive for me. Because I’m a card collector, that excitement translated into me wanting to get some of the cards of those legendary Steelers players.

One specific vendor had exactly what I wanted.

And for a buck-a-card.

I left his kiosk (or whatever you call it) still wanting to buy more.

Which is fine.

I intend to go back.

If you non-vaccinated assholes don't ruin it for everyone again.

As for the Steelers…I’ve always had a back-and-forth relationship with them. More mistress than marriage. All in or all out. Those teams in the 1970s cast quite a shadow over the teams that I grew up watching. And I watched those teams sparingly. Mark Malone? Bubby Brister? Even Neil O’Donnell. Meh. Not when we once had a Terry Bradshaw.

The Steelers themselves cast a shadow over the other teams in Pittsburgh. I’m talking pre-Lemieux or pre-Stanley Cup Penguins. The Steelers legend cast a constant shadow over my true love, The Pittsburgh Pirates. Now that might’ve been fine and dandy with some of those horrid Pirates teams in the mid-80s, but by the late 80s/early 90s, the Pirates were the team to see in Pittsburgh. The team fans should’ve been coming out en mase to root for.

But it never felt that way.

The Pirates were in first place in 1990, 1991, and 1992.

Yet as soon as Steelers training camp hit…

Well, let’s just say there could be a nuclear war and the top story in Pittsburgh would be what’s going on in Steelers training camp.

And then the carnage.

The current Steelers, I watch from afar. I root for them. I hope they win. I was excited when they won the Super Bowl after the 2008 season. I was bummed when they lost to Green Bay after the 2011 one. Most of the time these days, I just pay them a passing glance. I’ve watched the New York Giants more than The Steelers over the past decade or so. I was excited to finally get this guy’s rookie card.

I just find it hard to really get in there and let Steeler fandom reign over me.

Why?

Maybe it’s because of this guy.

I don’t know…there’s something strange about me.

I don’t like men who assault women and get away with it.

Call me crazy...After all, I DO live in New York City in the summer.

I’m looking forward to when Big Ben retires.

Maybe then I’ll become a true Steelers fan again.

I visited one other dealer at Rossi’s Marketplace. Well, two, really. A couple of guys who shared one room, and it was vague as to whom you were buying from. I’d pick up a card and ask how much, and one of the guys would say, that’s not mine, that’s his. Same thing would happen with the other one. It was a strange set-up they had. But once that confusion abated, I got down to some card buying.

Found the '77 Brock and '79 Reggie for cheap.

The '75 Brock and '72 Yaz for two-bucks.

Yeah, the ’72 Yaz has creases.

But it’s a ’72 Yaz.

One of the dealers had boxes of singles for a number of sets. Aside from my small (and smaller) lots of 1976 and 1979 Topps baseball, I’m actively working on completing the 1980 and 1981 Topps baseball sets. I need about 500 for the former and about 200 for the latter. Before going to Pittsburgh, I made it a point to photograph my checklists just in case I came across a dealer such as this. I was able to add a good 50 cards to my 1980 set from that vendor.

I would’ve added more...had he let me look through the box of 1980 cards myself.

But what can you do?

People have their quirks.

At least it wasn’t 90 degrees and humid out.

            Overall, it was a good trip home. I got to see a lot of family and friends that I haven’t seen in a long time. Got to bullshit over memories. A second cousin of mine said her cheeks hurt so much from laughter. That’s can’t be a bad thing, right? I had such a good time I’m looking forward to the next trip. Maybe in September or October. When there’s fall-like weather outside in Pittsburgh.

            While in New York City?

            It’ll still be 90 degrees.

 …and don’t even get me started on the bullshit winters here.

Thanks for reading! Happy collecting!

NEXT FRIDAY: Since thievery seems to be all the rage in the sports card world, we’re going to talk about that. Why? I was reminded by an old buddy that aside from having all the cards we wanted, Dimitri Danielopoulos (his name changed to protect him) used to try and steal our cards right from under our noses. So, we’re going back. Yeah. Back to 1984…and the time I almost lost my coveted 1984 Topps Pirates team set because of some punk-ass thief. 

Dave Parker...and navigating change.

 

I don’t like change.

            There.

            I said it.

            But I’m one of those people who thinks he likes change. A “roll with the punches” kind of guy. I tell my wife change is inevitable. Change is the only constant. Change is the only thing that we can truly count on in this world. Nothing ever stays the same. I expect changes to happen and I always try and act like I’m not bothered by change.

            I’m a bad actor.

            I’ve never “rolled with a punch in my life”

            I live as if I’m forever sailing upstream against the wind.

            Oh…

            And…

            Fuck change.

            Or maybe I’m just going through a lot of changes right now, so I’m taking change to task. I’m writing this at my desk in the bedroom of our new apartment. We lived in our previous place for fourteen years. That’s a long time. For me it’s five poetry books, thousands of poems, and at least three published novels long. The only place that I ever lived longer was one of my boyhood homes. And only by months. You get used to things, both good and bad, when you live somewhere for fourteen years. Things around you may change. Circumstances. You get older and look older in the mirror. But home can be a constant.

            I liked having a constant.

            But my wife and I fell out of love with our apartment. We used to call it The Bunker ala William S. Burroughs. By the time we moved out last week, we’d been calling it The Shithole for at least three years. There were a lot of constants that made us fall out of love with the place. The apartment got old and things broke. Our landlord, who had been used to NOT hearing from us, really didn’t want to fix things when they began to break down after fourteen years of use. Case in point, our bedroom ceiling has been leaking on and off for three years. We lived on the first floor of a busy street in Brooklyn. You get tired of people stopping in front of your window to talk, or the constant stream of people looking inside your window when you're just trying to read, watch TV, or make a meal. Get tired of watching people clean up their dog’s shit. Get tired of the cars roaring by.

            When we moved in, we were the younger people in the building.

            Now we’re the middle-aged people.

            Young people are loud.

            It’s amazing we stayed as long as we did.

            My job is changing. Or, rather, it’s going back to the way it was. I’m not going to go on a long prosaic diatribe about Covid-19, but like many people my work was affected by it. I work with the public. You can’t work with the public during a pandemic. So, they sent us home. They paid us but they sent us home. For four months (middle of March 2020 to middle of July 2020) I didn’t go to work at all. Since July 2020, I’ve been working two to three days a week with very limited contact with the public. Where I work the place is busy and the public is demanding. I’m the supervisor there and before Covid-19 it was stressing me the hell out. Without that stress I probably wouldn’t be writing about baseball cards on a baseball card blog. For evidence please read HERE.

            Starting next week, we’re going back to the way things were.

            The hours.

            The public.

            The stress.

            This is a change I’m not ready to make.

            I might be the only person who truly misses 2020.

            I was thinking about these stresses, about change, when I was trying to figure out what to write about this week. Then it hit me. Change is inevitable in your favorite sport, in your favorite hobby. Your team doesn’t stay together. Us Pirates fans know that more than most. Your favorite player changes teams. Players retire. A young star gets hurt and is gone for the season. I remember being sixteen or seventeen and complaining when the baseball card companies began changing their product to compete with Upper Deck, an expensive upstart that I wrote off from the beginning. I missed my wax packs. I missed the old cardboard on the cards, especially Topps. I didn’t want glossy this or glossy that.

            I didn’t give a shit about gold inserts.

            I still wanted to pay forty-cents for a pack of cards.

            But…

            Change…

            I wonder if I was thinking about change when I pulled this card from a pack way back in 1985.

            Dave Parker left the Pirates in 1984 when I was ten. He’d been a constant presence on the Pirates and in Pittsburgh for as long as I could remember being a baseball fan. He was the Cobra. A fixture in right field. A member of the Lumber Company. A key cog in the Fam-I-Lee. A four-time All-Star up until that point. An MVP. A batting champ.

            What in the hell was he doing in Cincinnati?

            Playing for the goddamned Reds?

            Sans beard and earring?

            It appeared that Dave Parker needed a change too.

            Or he needed some familiarity.

            Dave Parker is from Cincinnati. As a ten-year-old kid I didn’t know that. I guess I was a crappy baseball card back reader. Later on, I could appreciate him wanting to play in front of his hometown fans. But the ten-year-old me wanted Parker in right field at Three Rivers Stadium. Before I realized that I absolutely SUCKED at baseball, I often dreamed of becoming a big leaguer and playing in front of the cheering hometown crowd at Three Rivers Stadium.

            What baseball-loving kid didn’t?

            And why didn't the Cobra anymore?

Dave Parker probably also needed to get the hell away from the city of Pittsburgh. While there were a lot of good years with the Pirates, things began to turn sour for The Cobra in the early 1980s. There were injuries. There was weight gain. There was cocaine. There was that million-dollar contract that brought out the racist ire of sports fans in Pittsburgh, when Parker didn’t play at his elite level. Or just because he was wealthy and Black. Fans threw nuts and bolts and bullets and batteries at him from the stands. People I knew referred to him as that Rich N-Word.

I wouldn’t want to play for those bigots either.

Sometimes we have no choice but to make a change.

But I always loved Dave Parker. I followed his career in Cincinnati and then during his journeyman years in Oakland

Milwaukee 

Anaheim 

and finally Toronto. 

During those remaining years, The Cobra was an all-star three more times, He was a World Series champ with the A’s in 1989. When the Pirates started getting good again in the late 80s, I used to daydream that Parker would come back to Pittsburgh and be an elder statesman to young stars like Barry Bonds and Bobby Bonilla.

But while change is inevitable…you also can’t go home again.

plus...

Bobby eventually became a Met

Barry eventually became a Giant

When I got back into collecting in 2019, because I needed to make a change in my life, I started to think of players that I wanted to personally collect (PC for those who don’t know). Dave Parker was high on that list. But before I could even go and buy some Parker cards on my own, the wonderful poet and fellow collector, Steve Brightman, sent me some Parker cards along with a bunch of others cards to help get me back into the swing of things in The Hobby. While I thanked him then, I want to thank you again now, Steve, because those Parker cards are some of my favorites.

In fact, here ARE some of my favorite Dave Parker cards.

Obviously there's the 1974 rookie card that I bought in a Flea Market in the Pittsburgh suburbs back in late 2019....my last visit home before Covid.

            There's Parker's 1976 Topps card. One of my favorite sets of all time as well.

            1978 Topps. Dave deep in thought. Thinking of a home run. Or Europe

            1980 Topps Dave Paker. A bad ass card of a bad ass man from the very first year that I collected cards

            1984 Topps. Parker was gone but good ol' Topps still gave him one last card with the Pirates. The crown jewel of my team set.

            1983 Fleer. The uniform stands out. The Cobra looks bad ass yet again on Fleer's first really great design.

            1985 Fleer.  Parker's first Fleer base not as a Pirate. A bittersweet card. But a damned fine looking one.

Change is hard.

Change is frightening at any age.

Change is difficult.

Change actually is inevitable.

I’m writing this essay in a bedroom that is just over half-unpacked. The walls are bare and show no signs of a life lived. Items that I put on my writing desk are still in boxes, along with stacks and stacks of writing. The movers broke my desk during the move. It’s an old and cheap desk and I knew the risks with it. I’d been meaning to replace it for years.

How it’s still standing I don’t know.

All I know is that I’m going to be changing desks.

Very soon.

But the place we live in is much nicer than our old place. We’re on the second floor of a house instead of an apartment building. The street is quieter too. No one screaming in our windows. No cars racing up and down. No dogs shitting in front of me when I open the blinds.

No loud young people.

Once I get my new desk, I’ll unpack the writing stuff. The figurines. The signed balls. The 1984 Topps Dave Parker card that I keep on a little stand. I’ll hang the pictures of Pittsburgh and Jack Kerouac that I always had looking down on me. I’ll write my first new poems here. The first sentence of a new novel. Take a sip on my coffee and sit back when something good on the ol’ classical station plays.

Maybe change isn’t so bad.

 

Thanks for reading! Happy collecting!

 

If you’d like to learn more about the life an career of Dave Parker you can do so HERE and HERE.

           For those seeking a deeper dive, there’s an excellent bio/memoir out on Dave Parker called Cobra: A Life of Baseball andBrotherhood. It’s co-written by Dave Jordan and Dave Parker himself. I thoroughly enjoyed the book. It’s a must for baseball fans, Dave Parker fans, and fans of those 1970s Buccos teams. Jordan does an excellent job of getting Dave Parker down on the page, to the point where it feels like you’re sitting there chilling with The Cobra over a few beers, while he tells you his life story. If you get a chance, read Cobra: A Life of Baseball and Brotherhood.

 

NEXT FRIDAY: I’m heading home to Pittsburgh and plan on doing some card shopping. Looking for a lot of cards of Steelers from the 1970s and 1980s, as I’m on a bit of a Football reading jag as of late. So we’ll take a look I what I was able to find, and maybe review a few of the places where I stopped.