When Baseball Cards Meant Something

Up until I was 12 or so, I was a crazed collector of baseball cards. There is no telling how much time and money I spent on them. I would buy them pack by pack, assembling a numerically ordered full set. I divided them up by player, giving Nolan Ryan and Rickey Henderson they own pages and binders. I spent hours poring over the stats on their backs; an opportunity to combine my childhood passions: baseball and math. One of the best days of my childhood was when I found an old box in my grandmother's attic, and opened it to find cards of Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Ernie Banks, and Ted Williams.

A couple of recent Slate pieces have rekindled thoughts of those times, and make it clear that those days have passed for good. The baseball card industry has shrunk and no longer cares about kids. And it turns out the companies are not such a great place to work anyway. It makes me wonder if much has changed, or if it was all just a childhood illusion. There have been many times I have returned to places of my childhood, both real and imaginative, to find that they are not what I remembered. That's probably partly it. But there was a real time when baseball parks had history and character and weren't named for agribusiness and tech companies. When shortstops looked like normal guys and not amateur body-builders. It was never perfect and pure, but it wasn't always the sham it is now.