One of the pre-requisites to being a Baseball Nerd is having an extensive baseball card collection. I started my collection back in the mid-80s, when the stars were George Brett, Robin Yount, and Don Mattingly. Though the only TV networks that televised games in Puerto Rico back then were home to the Braves, Mets, and Cubs, I learned all about players from the other teams by reading the back of their baseball cards (plus being in high school, I liked seeing who the cute ones were...Ron Darling...Craig Biggio...mmm!). I remember having a lot of Willie Randolph cards as well as lots of Kirby Puckett ones. At the time, I wasn't too sure who Puckett was (other than knowing he was the center fielder for the Minnesota Twins), but since I had so many different Puckett cards and he was such an interesting-looking fellow (I won't call him ugly, out of respect for the deceased), I decided to focus on collecting Puckett cards. As Kirby became more popular and I realized what a good player he was, I bought Puckett cards exclusively, at card shows and on eBay. My collection now has over 300 different Kirby Puckett cards, though it is certianly not complete. The problem is that at one point there were about a dozen different card makers out there (it wasn't just Topps anymore), and each company had "special" cards for the really good players ("Kirby Puckett All-Star," "Kirby Puckett Diamond King," "Kirby Puckett Dream Team...") and it was very hard to keep up with the different kinds. Now that Kirby has died and was inducted into the Hall of Fame, his baseball cards are worth a little more (though they're not going to pay for my kids' college education, like I once thought). So I have set my Puckett cards aside, and am now focusing on building my Iván Rodriguez collection. I have about 250 cards so far, with a long way yet to go. Luckily, many of the card companies have stopped printing baseball cards, because Major League Baseball decided that the business was getting too carried away, so they now allow only Topps to print baseball cards that are officially licensed. Fine, except Topps has their regular cards, "Premier" cards, "Heritage" cards, and many other subsets. I will keep collecting my "Pudge" cards, and will hopefully have most of them by the time HE makes it into the Hall of Fame.
My hobby of collecting Rodriguez cards isn't exclusive though; in my ultimate nerdiness, I subscribed to the "baseball card of the month" club about a year ago. Each month, I receive 5 or 6 packs of cards in the mail, and today was one of those days. While I could cheat and just wait for the full sets of all the cards to come out, I prefer the excitement and anticipation of opening every pack and seeing which players I got. While they no longer contain that nasty, stale piece of gum (thank goodness!), they are still fun to read and look at. This batch of cards contained way too many Phillies players, but I did get a Yadier Molina and one of my pal Chris Carpenter.
You can learn a lot from reading the back of a baseball card. That's where I learned that Chipper's real name is Larry Wayne Jones; I learned that in 1986 (his rookie year), 6'5 Mark McGuire weighed only 215 pounds (before steroids, you think?); and I discovered that Jeff Bagwell played college ball for the University of Hartford in Connecticut. So if you see a display of baseball cards at Target, WalMart, or at your local pharmacy, pick up a pack (just one, since they're no longer 65 cents each), read the backs so you can learn a thing or two, and then give them to your kids. And if you get an Iván Rodriguez card, let me know so we can negotiate a trade!
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