Monday, August 31, 2020

You can't beat memories from a PWE

Much of my earliest baseball card knowledge came directly from a single friend, Gary, who I met in 3rd grade.  Gary way far more worldly and experienced than I was.  My parents cared about me very much, but didn't encourage me to have experiences outside of our little family world. 

Gary helped me break out of that mindset, in a lot of ways, but the first was to introduce me to both professional sports and then baseball cards.  My family never watched sports, either in person or on TV, so I was unaware of them.

In comments on some other blogs, I have mentioned that my first card memory was of a friend giving me a 1980 Topps Frank White.  That friend was Gary.


I was impressed by this card as an 8 year old boy, mostly because he was an 'A.L. All-Star'.  I didn't know exactly what that meant, but it sounded good.  Gary noticed that I had more interest in that card than his others and kindly gifted it to me along with a mini-lesson on how to get more of these cool cardboard treasures.  I don't even think I have a copy of that card anymore, maybe I should add it to my wantlist.

As my interest in cards and sports quickly rose, Gary was always there to show me new things to add spice to my life.  The one I want to talk about today is simulated baseball games.  Here's how we did it, and I am sure many of you did similar things:

Step 1. Make lineups for two teams.  We did this by choosing the teams and copying the players from the box scores in the local newspaper.  Then we determined for each player whether they were right handed, left handed or switch hitters.  That matters later!

Step 2. Set up the 'field'.  Ours was usually at the end of the road that Gary lived on.  It was a dead end into a grassy field.  At the end of the dead end, a short barrier separated the field from the road.  That was the home run fence.  About 5 feet short of that we drew a chalk line that marked the triple line, and further in, a double line and single line.  You see how this works?

Here is basically what the 'field' looked like. 
Step 3. Then we played the game with a wiffle ball and bat.  You had to throw and hit for each player, and use the correct hand to throw or hit with.  We rarely started lefty pitchers, but we used all the batters regardless of which side of the plate they were on.

We kept statistics religiously, so the games went pretty slow, since we stopped to record the results every plate appearance.  But all that work made it so we actually knew what Mike Schmidt's batting average (and everyone else's) was in our little league.  That fed into my life long love of statistics.  And when a power hitter was up, we swung extra hard.  Gotta make it as true to life as possible, I guess.

Anyway, that is a lot of background to what I actually want to talk about.  As time went on, we each gravitated to certain teams for certain reasons.  Gary loved the Cardinals, and I liked the Mets, and for a short time, the Padres.  The main reason for my infatuation with the Padres was Kevin McReynolds.  It started with us both having the same first name, and him looking like he might become a star.  But what really made the connection for me was that in our simulated games, I could always hit better when I was being McReynolds.  I was a small kid, and it took time for my athletic skills to blossom.  Gary always won our games.  But when I was channeling Kevin McReynolds, I hit more home runs than for any other player.  Was it real?  Or did I just see the world through little kid glasses?  Really, I don't care!  It is a beloved childhood memory, and I will remember it how I want.

Now let's take another turn...

Recently, I was working on my wantlists, as they are a challenge for me.  I was trying to think of cards I loved as a kid, but didn't have anymore.  (Like the Frank White above!)  One that came to mind was the 1984 Fleer and Donruss Kevin McReynolds RC's.  I added them to the wantlist.  But nothing came of it.

A week or so later, Daniel of the cool blog It's Like Having My Own Card Shop posted an offer to those who had commented on his blog recently to send them some cards for free if we would give him a few reasonable options.  I told him a couple of cards I needed to complete some sets, and since it was fresh in my mind, the McReynolds RC's.  You probably can tell where this is going...

A week or so later, a PWE showed up at my house.  As always, I was excited, but when I opened it, I was blown away.  Here is the card that Daniel sent, along with a note:





I don't know why this affected me as much as it did, but all the memories came flooding back.  I collect cards for a lot of reasons, but the feeling I had when I opened that envelope has got to be the biggest one.  Thank you Daniel!!!!!  And even though you aren't reading this, thank you Gary for getting me into a world I might have never found on my own.

19 comments:

  1. Why doesn't Gary read your blog? Is he in prison for killing a drifter? You're supposed to bury them in the desert. Too many people forget that part.

    Frank White was good though. 5-time All-Star, 8 Gold Gloves, ALCS MVP in 1980.

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    1. You get right to the heart of the matter, don't you! Yeah, the drifter thing is it. Actually, he just grew out of sports cards, while I never did. Go figure. And I agree about Frank White, very underrated.

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  2. I'm jealous that you kept stats, I really wanted to keep stats of all of our wiffle/rag ball games growing up but nobody playing wanted to stop, I was the only guy who loved stats. I would try to keep my own in my head and write them down later but half the time, I'd forget things.

    I did have a dice game that I created with baseball cards and I kept stats on that for years because I could do that in my own room, by myself, away from judging eyes.

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    1. Yeah, that was a good time. I made several dice and/or card games to generate games and stats too. Most of them were rip off of games like Statis-Pro Baseball, but I had a lot of fun.

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  3. Awesome memories. I always loved stats as a kid, too.

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  4. I feel ya with the keeping stats. Didn’t really have too many friends to do wiffle ball games or anything, but I did my own league in my room using a marble as a ball and a pencil as a bat kind of for the same reason Jeff Laws did, to be by myself away from my sisters. I played an 11 game season using the ‘98 rosters, and a 13 game season using the ‘99 ones, and still have a decent amount of the stats. Did you save any of the wiffle ball stats? This would make for a good blog bat around.

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    1. I wish I could find some of the old stats! But nope, nothing yet. As my parents continue to clean out their place, there is always a chance.

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  5. That's a cool send by Daniel.

    We played lots of ballgames in the backyard (mostly with a wood bat and tennis ball) but the only stats we kept track of outdoors were individual home runs, which were balls we sent over the garage in the back and into the neighbor's yard (coincidentally named Mrs. Ball).

    We saved the stats for the dice games we played with lineups and baseball cards.

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    1. That's great you still have some of the stats. And as for the backyard games, well, chicks dig the longball.

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  6. My friend and I played a ton of backyard baseball as kids as well. We used a wiffle bat and tennis balls, which often ended up in various neighbors' yards. We always tried to go through an entire batting order with real players, which meant batting lefty at times, something I was not very good at.

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    1. Yeah, we ended up in people's yards sometimes too. Over fences, on roofs. Fun!

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  7. That game is awesome! We played baseball in the driveway with tennis balls when we were little, but never kept track of statistics. That's very cool. Love that you actually pitched and batted with the proper hand.

    As for the McReynolds, that's a great card. I wish Topps would include him in their Fan Favorites set as a Padre. He doesn't have many certified autographs and the two I know of both feature him as a Met.

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    1. I do love the card. Not a ton of demand for him, I imagine. And I would definitely want him as a Padre!

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  8. When I was around nine, there was kid named Joe, who was a stathead, except his interest was in basketball stats. He desperately wanted to start a "league" with the large group of us who were always doing stuff together, but nobody else wanted to commit to just playing basketball everyday (myself included), especially we had so many other things that we'd rotate depending on which way the wind blew. I feel a little bit bad for him in retrospect, if only because the idea meant so much to him.

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    1. Nice! We played a lot of basketball also. Not a lot of stat keeping there, but a few times when we had too many players and had to rotate players in, we would make the guys sitting out keep track of points, rebounds, assists, blocks and steals. That was pretty fun.

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  9. I played wiffle ball similar to that once where we had different levels for singles, doubles, triples, and home runs. But we were competitive and over time we started to just run out our hits lol

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  10. What a great story! I need to make a diagram like yours of our backyard baseball setup!

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  11. a "feel good" story, Kevin! I don't have childhood memories like these, for many reasons. Mainly because I was born as a twelve year old. Such is life! Daniel is a thoughtful fellow to send this card, even though there's writing all over it!

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