Mom, you owe me $3,850 (cash only, no Social Security checks or Bingo vouchers).
That’s the cost today of a complete set of the 494 baseball cards distributed by Topps in 1958.
I had ’em all — collected and bound in scrapbooks by league, team and positions. My pride, my joy.
Somehow, over the years, the cards got “lost.” In a garbage can. Most everybody else can identify with this sad story. Happened to you too, huh?
“We’re trying to help you return to the roots of your youth,” Clay Luraschi, Topps’ director of product development, said on the phone Thursday from New York City.
Just in time for spring training, Topps has introduced the “Million Card Giveaway — Get back the cards your mother threw away.”
Topps bought multiples of the 38,000 baseball cards produced since 1962, and is offering them — free — through a special promotion in the newly released 2010 cards. Among the retro cards will be at least three of the Holy Grails — the 1952 Mickey Mantle rookie card. One sold in 2001 for $275,000. There are also Willie Mays, Stan Musial, Roberto Clemente — cards I cherished in the 1950s — and Casey Wise.
In 1987, I was introduced in Naples, Fla., to a “Dr. Wise, our orthodontist who used to play baseball.” We shook hands, and I said: “Kendall Cole Wise, nicknamed Casey, switch-hitter, throws right, born in 1932, graduated from the University of Florida, four seasons in the majors with three teams, good glove, no hit, backup second baseman for the Milwaukee Braves to Red Schoendienst, one at-bat in the 1958 World Series, lifetime .174 hitter.”
Wise looked at me shockingly and said, “How do you know that stuff?”
“I memorized the backs of baseball cards. I had 10 of your cards and couldn’t trade any of them.”
Talk about a misspent childhood. I didn’t know the math tables, but I knew the entire rosters of all 16 major-league teams — and that Gil McDougald of the Yankees once had six RBIs in one inning, and portsider Billy Hoeft was “the whitewash king” of the American League, with seven shutouts.
I would use a clothespin to put a baseball card — Casey Wise — in the spokes of my Schwinn (to make it sound like a motorcycle) and ride it to the drugstore and put down my 34 cents for 34 cards — including 34 pieces of gum — hoping that the new series was out. Walt Dropo, Eddie Kasko, Solly Hemus and, yes, yes, yes, Kenny Boyer.
There hasn’t been such a feeling of nirvana since.
My best friend Ronnie and I would trade.
“You wanna Casey Wise?” “Nah, I got three,” he said. “I’ll take Al Kaline, a nickel and your yo-yo for Rip Repulski, Hobie Landrith and Hector Lopez.” No wonder Ronnie became president of a bank.
Topps started selling full sets of baseball cards in 1952, but the concept originated in 1887, when tobacco companies used the cards to stiffen cigarette packs. The most prominent baseball card was the Honus Wagner card, circulated from 1909-11, before he objected. Hockey player Wayne Gretzky purchased a Wagner card years ago for $451,000. It sold in 2007 for $2.8 million.
Several companies offered cards before Topps, owned by a tobacco company, jumped in and dominated for decades (paying players $125 a year). But Fleer, Kellogg’s (3-D cards) and Upper Deck then began competing. Last year, Major League Baseball signed a deal with Topps as the game’s official card.
I stopped paying attention, though, to baseball cards in 1959. I had discovered girls.
“Baseball cards were incredibly popular with boys for a long time,” Luraschi said, “but, honestly, the cards became less about the fun of collecting and more about adults making money selling cards. Pro football, then basketball, took away a lot from baseball. In the 1980s, interest in baseball cards for kids decreased. Now there’s the Internet, computer games, game systems and so many other diversions.
“We’ve had to change with the times. Last fall we talked about trying to put the fun back in baseball cards for the men who collected when they were boys — and no longer have the cards.”
Topps devised the Million Card Giveway gimmick. One of every six packs of cards has a special code. The buyer goes to the Topps website, types in the code and wins an old, authentic card of a random player. The card can be shipped or kept in the account and swapped for another card. “Get a card you don’t want, you can trade it to someone for a player you do want.”
“Like Casey Wise, for instance.”
I was saddened Thursday to learn that Wise died in 2007.
Luraschi e-mailed me my lucky codes. I haven’t felt so excited since 1958. My cards were Ed Bailey (1959), Jim Umbricht (1963), Jose Cardenal (1968), Jim Umbarger (1979) and Eddie Kasko (1958). Welcome back, Eddie.
Ronnie, I’ll give you those five cards for Al Kaline and your Lexus.
Online, an entire set of the 1958 cards can be obtained for $3,850.
Where’s my money, Mom?
Woody Paige: 303-954-1095 or wpaige@denverpost.com
