One reason I prefer the 70s

Sammy Sosa's return to the Cubs

Sammy Sosa is a few months younger than I am, so as I write this out I have to remind myself that it’s not possible for him to have been among the players that I’ve written about here in the almost 12 months I’ve been at this. There’s no way that Luis Tiant, for example, could have thrown Sosa a pitch, since he retired after the 1982 season, when Sammy was about to turn 14. Likewise, the recently-departed Rico Carty could very well have been a hero to a ten or eleven year-old Sammy Sosa, as they both hailed from San Pedro de Macoris in the Dominican Republic, but there’s no way they could have been teammates in 1979, when Carty played his last game in the major leagues.

Up until 1981, which means for the entirety of the 1970s, it was difficult to get more than one or two cards for any given ballplayer. Topps had a legally-enforced monopoly on trading cards, and with the exception of Kellogg’s cereals, Hostess snack cakes, and a few other outlets, there wasn’t much in the way of collection opportunities. Which was fine with me, because who would ever think these things could ever have any monetary value?

That all started to change in 1981, when Fleer and Donruss won the right to put out card sets of their own. Others followed suit, and when Upper Deck came on the scene in 1989, things really started to get crazy. But by then, I was away in school, with baseball card collecting shoved into the furthest recesses of my mind.

I recall very distinctly a day in, I suppose it was 1990, when I was walking the streets of Downtown Chicago. I was a clerk in a law firm—my first post-college job—and was on my way back from filing a motion at the County clerk’s office. There was a business that specialized in antiquities like coins and letters and items that would have value, based on their age or their historical significance. And there, on display in one of their windows, was a Rickey Henderson rookie card which I remembered having several of when I was younger. The price tag was upwards of $100, and I was dumbfounded that a single card—much less one that I once had several of—could command that much money. That was the day I learned baseball card collecting had gone from something kids did for fun to something…else.

Throughout the 1990s, card companies couldn’t print these things fast enough, apparently. And the result was entirely predictable, too. Cards for star players like Sammy Sosa had value, and so the answer was to keep finding new poses, and new color schemes, and new distribution methods. I can’t help but think that the internet helped, in some way. And then, just as predictably, the bottom all fell out.

Ebay, of all things, helped me to acquire lots of old baseball cards a few years back. Rather than opening up packs and looking for Cubs players and stars like Pete Rose or Tom Seaver, I could purchase a box filled with Cubs players—hundreds at a time—for only a few bucks, and—I learned this the hard way—just as much, if not more, in shipping costs. The result was a few cards of just about every Cubs player I had ever heard of, and even some for the “Rookie stars” that never quite panned out in the majors. Sometimes the speculators got lucky and other times, not so much.

So when Sammy Sosa made a public apology today for undefined “mistakes” he had made in the past, roughly 20 years ago, and the Cubs replied by inviting him to their annual fan convention next month, I was glad, in a way, to see that they are putting the past behind them. Perhaps Rico Carty’s recent passing had something to do with this, or maybe it was a recognition that life is too short to carry grudges like the one that’s kept Sammy away from Wrigley Field for so long.

Sammy’s one-time teammate Ryne Sandberg is now battling cancer, while other Cubs teammates like Rod Beck, Kevin Foster, Geremi Gonzalez, and Dwight Smith are no longer with us on this earth. He’s not an old man by any means, but Wrigley Field itself, and the culture of losing that permeated the franchise when he played there, are now a thing of the past. Maybe, as Rocky Balboa claimed at the end of Rocky IV, everybody can change.

I dug out all my old Sammy Sosa cards and wasn’t inclined to count them at first. It’s clearly a number much larger than I could have ever amassed for a single player back in the 1970s. My highest number for any single player back then is seven, and not surprisingly both of them played for the Cubs (Rick Monday and Jose Cardenal). But the single Sammy Sosa card standing upright above is backed with 144 other unique Sosa cards. 144 of anything is known as a “gross,” but having 144 cards for a single player also just feels gross, in some respects. And every one of those cards held a monetary value—in somebody’s eyes—that they never will in mine.

I well remember a night in June of 1998, when Sammy hit three home runs in the same game against Cal Eldred of the Milwaukee Brewers, to kick start his chase of Mark McGwire and Roger Maris over the three months that followed. It was exciting in a way that baseball has rarely been in the days since then. It was all predicated on steroids, and finding that out is part of the reason why it’s still so difficult to come to terms with. But time heals—or at least it’s supposed to—and perhaps now’s the time to put that axiom to the test.

Welcome back, Sammy. It’s been a very long time, and so much is different now. But then, everybody can change, right?