1994 Topps Cards....Why Am I Writing About This? I Have No Business Writing About This.

 

1994.

            I suppose I’m not sure where exactly I want to go with this blog post. I could compare the goings on of 1994 to the current management/labor mess that Major League Baseball is embroiled in, in 2022. But at least there was (most of) a season in 1994. Not that I was paying much attention to it. True, there was no World Series. This year…they could be playing a lot or they might not be playing at all. And all my opinions on the subject have given me is trouble.

            But this mess sure makes looking at those brand, spanking new 2022 Topps Series 1 cards interesting, huh?

            Wonder what Series 2 will look like if there’s no ball?

            Do we really want a repeat of 2020 Update?

            Are the folks at Fanatics sweating this yet?

            I think for this blog post I’m going to have to use my imagination.

            You see I wasn’t collecting in 1994. Other than a Pirates team set, I wasn’t collecting in 1993. In 1991 and 1992 I’d essentially limited my card purchasing to Topps and Topps only. And just the base stuff. I didn’t actually buy my first 1994 baseball card product until 8 years later in 2002, when I made my first attempt to get back into The Hobby. It was the 1994 Topps Pirates team set that I bought a long with a lot of other 1990s Topps Pirates team sets, at a card show in the good ol’ Monroeville ExpoMart.

            Still have it.

            And the design is…okay.

            That weird over-sized half-diamond thing makes me think Topps design staff was like, hmmm, let’s do something Upper-Decky. And 1994 was getting all about the inserts. Gold cards. Black Gold cards. The late teenage me wasn't into the insert cards. I didn't care about pulling a Reggie auto from Upper Deck. Collecting was moving beyond me at that point. It's still beyond me in a way with today's bells and whistles. But I could see kids almost a decade younger than I was then being really into cards like 1994 Topps.

            Although it does have the last Topps card of Mr. George Brett, seen at the head of this post.

            And also the last cards of these guys.

 

I would've loved to have pulled their last cards.

But 1994 surely doesn’t make me wish that I was collecting in 1994 the way 1993 makes me wish that I’d hung around for just one more year.

            So why even write about 1994 Topps?

            Let’s just say I want to be a part of the current zeitgeist in some way. A way that doesn’t get me blocked by a person on Twitter for stating an opinion. (yes that happened to me). For the record, I’ve been blocked on Twitter three times. By the aforementioned person, some poet dude who sexually harassed women…and Eric Trump. Make of that what you will. But I want to imagine I was a card collector in 1994 on this blog post. Because if I hadn’t stopped collecting by then. I certainly would’ve had to at some point that year.

            I suppose it all starts with a girl.

            I first met Mary Bermiano at New Year’s Day Party on January 1, 1994. She was good friends with the girl throwing the party, and I was a friend of a friend of hers. To make a long story short, Mary and I hit it off at the party, and ended up dating about six weeks later after a few “chance” encounters at the mall and bowling alley in the northern Pittsburgh suburbs. She was my first girlfriend. With the coming of Mary came sexual awakening and all of the other sundry duties of couple-hood that I’d often pined for in theory, but in actual practice seemed to cause mostly anxiety and stress.

            Being someone’s boyfriend in 1994 left me flat broke.

            Even if I wanted to collect cards, it was going to be a task.

            Mary lived thirty miles away from me. Maybe that doesn’t seem too bad now. But in 1994, thirty miles away meant that our calls were toll calls. Remember those? It meant that I ate up gas in my parent’s, not my, car whenever I went to see Mary…which was a lot at first…less as you’ll see in a sentence from now. Thirty miles meant that I had to contribute to the phone bill at home. It meant that I had to put gas into a car that I’d previously hardly used. Mary didn’t work. So next to those expenses, add to that, dinners, movies and other relationship type activities (probably a lot of fucking mini-golf) on a part-time clerk salary at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. Well…

            Dating Mary meant that I had no money for the books I wanted to read.

            I had no money for the CDs that I wanted to buy.

            I generally had no money for the types of conspicuous consumption that rocked a twenty-year-old’s world.

            I couldn’t buy a cup of coffee let alone a pack of baseball cards.

            What if I had been collecting cards then?

            What if scenarios had been different? Let’s say the Pirates had won Game-7 of the 1992 NLCS. They beat the Braves and then went on to beat the Minnesota Twins in the World Series that year. I get to see the first actual Pirates World Series win of my young life. I’m ecstatic! I’m euphoric! I know no other fandom feeling like this! The sheer joy carries me into 1993 where I buy loads and loads of Topps baseball cards, and maybe a few packs of the other brands. Yes, yes, Barry Bonds and Doug Drabek would still be gone. The Pirates most likely would’ve still had the 75-87 record they actually had that year. They’d be in 5^th place.

            But there’d still be that tinkling there.

            That hope.

            And I’d wait for 1994 Topps Series 1 like I waited for baseball cards every year since 1980.

            But…Mary…

            And thirty miles away.

            And phone bills and gas bills.

            Mexican food at Chi-Chi’s.

            Seeing Forrest Gump three, yes three, fucking times.

            All on my dime.

            Would I have given up collecting because I was broke as a joke? Because I was getting laid on a regular basis? Or would I have been able to sneak in a pack here and there between Chain food and Hollywood blockbusters?

            Who knows?

            Man, I’m getting some pauper-ish déjà vu.

            The funny thing is, a lot was changing for me in 1994. Musical tastes. Film tastes. I began that year single and working as a part-time sales clerk in the Pittsburgh Pirates Clubhouse store in the suburbs, but by that summer I was a part-time clerk at the main library of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. The library was in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh, an area full of universities, bars, restaurants, etc. The people I worked with at the library were in art and music and film. Through them I got to learn about bands like Pavement. That there was a film called Clerks.

            Friends were kind enough to dub cassettes for me.

            In 1994 it felt like the world was opening to a kid from the suburbs.

            Only I was too broke to enjoy it.

            Maybe I would’ve stopped collecting because it wasn’t hip or cool.

            And…oh…there was Mary.

            Mary was around for these changes but she wasn’t really a part of them. With her, at times, I felt like I was living a double life. Sonic Youth and Pavement when I was in the car alone. Top-40 when Mary got inside the ride. We dated for a year and nine months. Mary actually managed to find herself a job, after a lot of pleading from me, and it freed up some cash. But…

When I turned twenty-one in April 1995 it was the beginning of the end for us. There were bars and clubs, and women who didn’t live thirty miles away. A girl named Rachel began working with me at the library, and she started getting some of my attention. Driving all the way out to Mary’s for a night of sitcoms and Spin Doctors was beginning to wear on me. I do wonder if we would’ve gone out that long had I had previous dating experience. And that’s not to slag her off. Mary was a good person. I was just becoming a different person from the kid she met at that New Year’s Day party.

            She did get me to go to one baseball game in 1994.

            When the Mets came to play the Pirates.

            I took a blurry photo of Bobby Bonilla in his Mets gear.

            Thirty years.

            Thirty miles.

            As a collector now, I’ve thought about going back and getting some packs of 1994 Topps. You can find boxes that are relatively inexpensive. But then there’s the U.V. coating problem. The first year Topps did that to their base cards. I’ve watched guys open older U.V. products online, and, man, sometimes its painful to watch. So far, I’ve done the next best thing and have just grabbed some cards for player I liked back then.

            This guy obviously.

            Look at the U.V. wear and tear on this one.

            The back is fine though

            

            And some others.

            Would I have been collecting in 1994? Well, the truth is the truth. It’s fun to imagine, but the Pirates lost that Game-7 of the NCLS. I stopped watching baseball for four seasons after that. The 1994 strike, 1995 scab players; none of that means anything to me. The Pirates went on to have 20 losing seasons. They continue to play mediocre ball because their cheap owner isn’t being forced into spending more money on his team by Major League Baseball because the only way he'll ever be forced is if baseball institutes a ca....

            Ha!

            Almost got myself there.

            I'm staying out of this....but you can read two good takes HERE and HERE

            I don’t know if I would’ve been collecting. I always made room for cards when I started buying CDs and books and the like. In 1991 and 1992 I stuck with my first baseball card love, Topps. I should’ve been collecting still in 1993. As a collector, I’ll always kick myself for missing out on the cards from that year.

            But 1994?

            What I will say for 1994 Topps, is it’s the very Topps base issue cards that I cannot connect to a particular time and place. Even with my just buying the Pirates team set in 1993, I was cognizant and aware that the set was all that I was buying that year, and that I was effectively done collecting. With 1994 Topps (or insert Fleer, Donruss, etc), it was as if I wasn’t aware of their existence. Aware that they were still on the shelves in drug stores where I sheepishly bought condoms. Or in Wal-Mart on weekend nights when I had no money, and Mary still wanted to go out somewhere, anywhere.

            1994 was the first year that cards and I slipped by each other like ships sailing beneath a dark night sky.

            And it's a shame...they're not too shabby.

            Heck, maybe if I had collected then, I would’ve understood all of the hoopla last year over those 2021 Black Gold inserts.

            I have a few of those too.

            Anyway…

Thanks for reading! Happy collecting!

NEXT FRIDAY: Perhaps I should find something to talk about that I'm actually suited to discuss. I have some ideas....but I think next week is gonna be a show & tell week.  I don't do this too much on here unless it involves travel, but I'm going to show off some recent card purchases.