rpar1951

In about 1986, we started buying complete sets of cards for Topps, Fleer, and Donruss in honor of our daughters' birth years. Then I got hooked and bought complete sets of Fleer and Donruss from their startups in 1982. And went on collecting sets and wax boxes right up to the big strike in 1994. I've got tens of thousands of cards (added Score and Upper Deck sets when they came out). Like Glanzer, I think they are pretty much worthless. The bottom fell out of the market after the strike. And then so many of the most valuable players (then) turned out to be steroid users and their card values plummeted. I've got a Puckett 1984 Fleer Update and some odds and ends for HOF'ers...and a few more valuable cards from the 50s and 60s. But they didn't end up being the college savings account we thought they were going to be. Now I only have them for nostalgia purposes, but I know I have to get rid of them. My daughters don't want to be saddled with all that bulk to dispose of after I die. The market was so flooded in those years (1981-94) that they probably won't even be worth anything a hundred years from now.

Even before spring training began, I saw their pitching "improvements" as just guys who could be cannon fodder for longer innings per start. Their performances this month do nothing to change that opinion. Dramatic pitching improvement????!!! Posh! And the offense is, indeed, worse. Even though the bullpen hasn't shown much this spring, I expect it will be fine once the games start counting. But even the management is publicly complaining about the lack of production with the bats. But who can they trade? Who would WANT any of these guys? It will be tough for this team to get 65 wins. And I'm staying away from Target Field as long as Gardenhire and Anderson are still wearing Twins uniforms.

I have been going to games since the Twins' first season of 1961; games all over the country. I don't know how many games that adds up to be but in all those years, I have never caught an in-game ball. I've gotten some BP homeruns and Jeff Reardon tossed me a ball that rolled out to the warning track at the Kingdome during BP in 1988. Greg Maddux, when he was a Cub, picked up a ball in the OF while he was doing windsprints before a spring training game in Mesa. He looked up into the stands and saw me standing there virtually alone with my glove raised (it was about two hours before game time) and tossed it to me. I keep that one on my desk at work and "worry" it like Captain Queeg and his marbles. My biggest "catch" was between innings at an A's/Red Sox game in Fenway back in May of 1972 while I was in college. Reggie Jackson was warming up his arm by tossing to Dave Duncan in the A's right field bullpen. He threw one high and it glanced off Duncan's glove and straight back over the fence and into the stands. It struck four rows of empty seats in front of me (the Sox rarely sold out back then) and bounced right into my hands. Jackson yelled at me, "Toss it back. It's the only one we have!" I yelled back a one-word expletive that let him know that I doubted the veracity of that statement. He shrugged his shoulders, Duncan reached into a ball bag, and they resumed their game of catch. Later, Reggie Smith hit a walk-off homerun into the right field bleachers but nowhere near me. As I was exiting the ballpark rubbing my baseball, someone thought it was Smith's homerun ball and offered me money for it. I said I wasn't selling. But I didn't tell him it wasn't the game-winner. It didn't matter: I wasn't letting go of that ball. I still bring my glove to games and hold out hope that a foul will eventually come my way.