17 Apr

Card Tricks

written by Bob Hunt in Blog | 1 comment

“Wonder what I could trade for a groovy Richard Nixon rookie card?”

With baseball season now underway and welcome signs of spring appearing each day, I recently indulged an old compulsion for the first time in nearly thirty years: I bought some baseball cards. I chose Topps, the brand of my youth and the name that adorned countless sports cards left behind by my older brothers. Noting the price of $2 for a pack of 10, I sighed at the fact that baseball cards are about as affordable a luxury for me now as they were when I scrambled for spare change as a child. Nevertheless, with the responsibilities of adulthood comes the freedom of frittering away our finances as we see fit, and so it was that I brought home a whopping 60 cards from the 2008 Series.

Among the stack were a couple coveted Cleveland Indians (Kenny Lofton - oh, he’s gone already - and Victor Martinez) and what I perceived to be a rather repugnant postseason card of Manny Ramirez “being Manny” (my apologies to Eric Greenberg). There were extraneous cards like checklists and promotions, and then…and then…What is this? Ron Paul?!

That’s right, Ron Paul, the U.S. Congressional Representative from Texas and candidate for Commander in Chief, one of a dozen presidential hopefuls to have their mugs grace the Campaign 2008 subset. I’m not kidding! Above his picture, in the space where a ball player would have his team name emblazoned, is the acronym GOP. Now, as an educator and advocate for informed children, I applaud Topps for doing their part to keep kids abreast of current events. It’s far more likely that your average 10-year-old will learn the names of John Edwards or Mike Huckabee from a trading card than from a newspaper. On the other hand, as a former kid (my wife might argue that “former” should be omitted here), I can’t imagine the disappointment of young baseball fans as they excitedly flip through a new pack of cards and find…Joseph Biden? Mitt Romney? Really, are there kids out there right now who are dying to trade their extra Dennis Kucinich for a Rudy Giuliani? What’s worse, with the race already effectively narrowed down to John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, three-quarters of the candidates appearing in the Topps Campaign 2008 subset were out of the race before Opening Day. It’s like having 75% of your collection on a season-long DL!

Maybe it’s not too bad, though. They way I figure it, most of these Campaign 2008 cards are not destined for decades of preservation in acid-free sleeves. So hang on to your Bill Richardsons and your Fred Thompsons. They might be mere presidential candidate cards to this generation, but one day, they could be the next Honus Wagner.