I have spent the better part of the past 30 years collecting
baseball cards. I can still remember
getting baseball cards in the checkout lines of the local hardware and grocery
stores, and the best part was the packs only cost a quarter. I was never fortunate enough to get a high
value card (partially because the 1980s nearly ruined collecting with mega mass
production) but when I was a kid, I collected them for pure joy. I would read the backs of the cards day after
day, memorizing useless stats and facts about even the most mediocre
players. Anytime I would get new cards,
I would painstakingly separate them into teams and store them in old lunchboxes
and shoeboxes.
I collected practically any brand of card I could get my
hands on but my favorite brand has always been Topps. They were so appealing to me as a kid because
they were cheaper than Donruss or Fleer and much less expensive than Upper Deck
when they burst onto the scene in 1989.
My favorite design of all time is the wood border of the 1987 Topps set. I still think this design is by far the most
unique design for a base set ever.
As I got older, collecting became less regular but when I
decided to buy I always went at it with such a fervor that I would nearly
become obsessed with it; mainly because I was finally gainfully employed and
could buy in quantities that I once only dreamed about. A few years ago I was even able to do
something I once thought was impossible: I bought a case of cards. Twenty-four boxes, thirty-six packs per box,
ten cards per pack. It was heaven on
earth. (I sold some of the boxes and
several of the cards and was able to recoup a large percentage of the cost of
the purchase).
But baseball collecting forever changed in summer or 2009
when Major League Baseball announced an exclusive deal for Topps to be the only
MLB licensed brand on the market. Upper
Deck tried to battle the deal but to no avail.
Topps had cornered the baseball card market. I was apprehensive about the deal but each
manufacturer had so many products available that the average consumer would not
even notice they were all made by the same company. Topps had their base set that was released in
three different series, their Bowman line, and their Allen and Ginter throwback
cards just to name a few. The quality of
cards Topps was producing and the cool inserts that included legendary players
were extremely appealing. I thought
Topps being the only baseball card producer might just work. After all, they had always been my favorite.
Now in the fourth year of the exclusive deal with MLB, Topps
has finally found away to ruin card collecting for me. I am not one to usually protest, but I feel
like Topps has stepped across a line that I will not support. Their egregious decision is nothing life
altering but it can be attributed to political correctness run amok and I just
can't stand for it. By now, I am sure
you are asking yourself what Topps could have possibly done to upset a lifelong
collector? For some, hearing the answer
may still leave you perplexed but for those who really know me, they will
understand. The egregious decision that
Topps has made is to rewrite the MLB history books. On the back of the 2013 set just released a
few weeks ago, they have included a gimmick called Career Chase that tells how
close the player on the card is to reaching an all-time record. Some examples are as follows: With 260 home
runs, (Prince) Fielder is 502 away from Barry Bonds' all-time record of 762;
With 191 RBI, (Buster) Posey is 2,036 away from Hank Aaron's all-time record of
2,277; and With 149 runs, (Mike) Trout is 2,146 away from Rickey Henderson's
all-time record of 2,297.
Ordinarily, I would think this feature would be fantastic. It allows a collector of fan to see where the
player on the card stands against some of the greats to ever play the
game. But Topps took things too far when
it came to mentioning the number of hits a player has and comparing it to the career
hits leader. Here is an example of what
I am talking about: With 3,304 hits, (Derek) Jeter is 952 away from the
all-time record of 4,256. There is no
mention of who holds the record; a record probably to never be broken in our
lifetime. Of course, anyone with any
baseball knowledge knows that the current hits record belongs to one of the
most controversial players to ever suit up, Pete Rose, but to not mention him
on the back of the card like his career never happened is preposterous and
cheapens what Topps is trying to do.
(For those of you who are casual fans at best and may not
know, Pete Rose has been banned from the game of baseball since 1989 for
betting on games. The evidence at the
time was circumstantial but enough to ban the Hit King and years later Pete
finally confessed his sins. It has now
been nearly a quarter of a century and Pete has never gotten a sniff of being
reinstated. The greatest pure hitter to ever
play the game, a man who embodied his nickname "Charlie Hustle", is
not in the Hall of Fame and will not be any time in the foreseeable future.)
But this is not about Pete Rose still being ostracized for a
sin that he has already paid a severe price for. This is about the audacity of
the executives at Topps to make the holier-than-thou decision to exclude any
mention of Pete Rose from their baseball cards.
Who gave these guys permission to rewrite the history books? And if the execs are holding players to
certain standards, then why is Barry Bonds mentioned on the Career Chase for
homeruns? I know Barry never failed a drug
test, mainly because baseball was making tons of money at time when they needed
it more than ever off roid-ragers and turned a blind eye to what was going on,
but anyone who watched the man play or has read Game of Shadows can tell you that circumstantial evidence on Barry
is just as damning as what MLB had on Pete.If it were my call, however, I would not exclude Bonds name from the card because it is asinine to pretend that a player's career never happened. Yet, I have another question for the sanctimonious yahoos in charge. I can concede that nothing was proven of Bonds but how about Alex Rodriguez? He is an admitted steroid user and has once again been linked to a PED mill in Miami. If the decision makers at Topps are the morality police, then why does A-Rod have several different cards in each of their sets? And what about the freshly minted Lance Armstrong of baseball, Ryan Braun? How many times does he have to deny, deny, deny before Topps holds him accountable?
Whether you love or hate any of these players is irrelevant. But to pretend that someone's career, especially a player that played at such a level to set a near unbreakable record, it's just ludicrous to say the least. Clay Luraschi, a Topps spokesman, characterized it as a "simple decision" but would not elaborate on what was so simple. I agree that it was a simple (minded) decision. To ignore history is never a good idea. Would we do justice to the Holocaust if we ignored Adolf Hitler's role? Would we do justice to the civil rights movement if we ignored slavery? Now, I am in no way comparing the stats on a baseball card to the loss of lives and atrocities suffered during the Holocaust and slavery. I am merely making the point that when we try to change history years after the fact, we put ourselves on a slippery slope that once you start down, who's to say where it will end.
For the record, I am a big fan of the way that Pete Rose played the game. I remember watching him get hit number 4,192 on September 11, 1985 to break Ty Cobb's 57 year-old record. (Ty Cobb was a unapologetic racist and generally regarded as one of the dirtiest players ever, yet Topps doesn't shy away from putting him on cards). I saw him a play in person a few times when he was in the twilight of his career while also doubling as the manager of his beloved Cincinnati Reds. I admit what Pete did was wrong and deserved punishment. But he has served his punishment. It's time to move on.
So that is what I am doing. Topps, I am moving on from you. Unlike Topps decision to rewrite history, my decision was not so simple. With the current stranglehold Topps has on the card market, this appears to be the death knell for my card collecting hobby. I know I am not the only one who feels this way. But also unlike Topps, I will not omit my history of collecting their cards. For me to do so would be robbing myself of part of my childhood. For Topps to omit Pete Rose from the hits record is to rob loyal fans of the integrity of historical accuracy. How can we ever move forward in society if we aren't willing to address facts? After all, if we aren't willing to discuss and recognize history, aren't we doomed to repeat it?
