Finding my Father in an Old Piece of Cardboard
"It's a beautiful card." A fellow collector says, looking over my shoulder. "You're not gonna regret buying it."
In a large auditorium hosting a trading card show featuring hundreds of vendors, we're staring down at one of thousands of expensive pieces of cardboard. This one is a 1955 Bowman Mickey Mantle baseball card, graded a 2 by SGC. He's not wrong, of course. It is a beautiful card. Like its fellow Bowman cards of the early 1950's, it features magnificent, detailed artwork of one of the game's greatest players. The '55 set is of particular interest in that the cards have a wood-grain border, and a picture screen surrounding the artwork. A set of knobs complete what is intended to look like a color television set. As a historian I can't help but appreciate how well the '55 Bowman set tells the story of the era it was produced in. The first national television broadcasts in color came in 1954, alongside the first widely available commercial television sets. The novelty of it all- seeing your favorite ballplayer in living color- must have been so incredible.
I know that if I do so, I'm not gonna regret buying the card, but this guy doesn't quite know why. It's more important to me than beautiful artwork or the fact that it will hold its value well. The meaning is much deeper than that.
My dad was the greatest man I ever knew. He loved me and my mom and my three sisters more than words could describe. He was patient and understanding, and always made me feel cared for and validated. Despite a busy work schedule, he always had time for his family.
We devoted countless hours to our shared love of sports. We played basketball in the backyard (always sure to make our last shot), catch in the front yard, and watched whatever game was on TV each night. In the summers, we would go down to the town batting cages almost daily, where he pitched bucket after bucket of balls to me to try to improve my swing. While it feels like a cliché, made-for-TV father-son relationship, our bond over sports really connected us.
My dad was a stoic guy. I rarely saw him get too worked up over much, and almost never saw him act like a child. There was only one thing I can really remember that consistently made him do so: talking about Mickey Mantle. Like probably every other kid born in 1950, Mantle was my dad's childhood hero. He would tell me about his first real glove, a Mickey Mantle Triple Crown model he got when he was seven. He told me about traveling from his small Northeastern Pennsylvania coal mining town to Yankee Stadium to see The Mick play when he was a teenager. He loved the fact that Mantle was a switch-hitter, the greatest ever. I have a clear memory of my dad and one of his colleagues talking about the home run Mantle hit on May 22, 1963, reciting the oft-told story that the ball was "still traveling upward" when it hit the Yankee Stadium façade. Here were two grown men, talking like excited little kids about their idol. Mickey Mantle was a superhero to so many kids in the 1950's, and my dad was not an exception.
Unfortunately, when I was 10 years old, my father passed away. Multiple Myeloma, a cancer caused by his exposure to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, took his life after an 18-month battle. At a young age I was left to continue on in the world without my best friend, without MY superhero. It seemed like an impossible task, and still does some days even 14 years later.
Living without my father since the age of 10 has undoubtedly been tough. There have been so many moments I wish he could have been there for, so many things I wish I could talk to him about. I am lucky to have my mother and sisters to lean on for memories of my dad and a reminder of what he might say in a tough situation, but sometimes that just doesn't feel like enough. I am jealous that, as the youngest child, I have less memories and pieces of advice to look back on.
This leads me to try and create new memories, to seek out ways in which I can connect with him in new ways, that will hopefully give me the full picture of who he really was. I wear his old clothes, rewatch his favorite movies, and recently arranged a trip to his hometown. Lately, however, a new connection has brought me a lot of joy: collecting Mickey Mantle baseball cards.
"It's $400, but I could do $350," the seller tells me. He's a nice guy, but he's trying to get his money here. Who could blame him? The sports card hobby has exploded since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. I have to assume he's making a fair bit of money on the side by setting up at these weekend shows.
$350 is a great deal for this card, but it's more than I can afford. I took out all the cash I could spare from the ATM this morning, but it's not much, especially in a room where cards are commanding five figures. I've got a few cards with me that I may be able to trade if the dealer is open to it, but I am still not sure if it will be enough. I struggle with the idea that I may be out of luck.
I try to decide if this is even worth it. Will it really make me feel connected to my dad? He was not a big collector himself. He told me stories about buying Topps packs for 5 cents as a kid, but getting a stick of gum seemed to be the highlight. He did however pass one card down to me, a 1959 Mickey Mantle All Star insert, that his cousin gave him as a wedding gift (joking it would pay his kids college tuition). He entrusted that card to me as a young kid, and I held it tight for years. I would study every millimeter of the card, every ding and crease. It made me feel close to him.
I am reminded of this feeling when the dealer lets me hold the card to get a closer look. I flip it over and read the statistics. Mickey had a good year in 1954, but '55 would be a breakthrough, the first of four consecutive seasons in which he led the American League in Wins Above Replacement (WAR) I wonder if this is the year that my dad would have first heard Mickey's name on the radio, or seen his face on TV. The card is already helping me think deeper about my dad than I had before. That's all I can ask for. I want to hold tight to the things that made my dad happy, the things he looked fondly back on fifty years later. I don't want to let this card go, because I don't want to let the memory of my dad go. I want to keep learning more, keep getting closer.
"I'm trying to make a deal," I quickly texted my girlfriend, who knows how much this endeavor means to me. As my father died more than a decade before we started dating, these little connections help her get to know him better too.
I struggle with that a lot. The love of my life, the person who I spend the most of my time with, will never meet my dad. She supports me in my grief, but she doesn't know the man I'm grieving. I've been struggling with this issue for a long time now. I was so young when he died that very few of my current friends had the chance to meet him. Everyone I met in middle school, highschool, undergrad, grad school, and various jobs has come into my life after his passing. I try to deal with this by talking to my friends about him as much as I feel comfortable doing, and hoping I'm not making anyone uncomfortable by doing so. I try to paint the picture of the kind, funny, loving man, who could talk to you for hours about sports, or his family, or his job. I hope I do a good job explaining, but I know deep down that it will never be enough, that they will never truly know him. It's part of the reason I'm trying to find new ways to connect to his memory, so that I can give a little clearer picture about who he was to those I love most.
A few minutes later, I shoot back two words: "Its mine". A deal had been struck. A combination of assets- all of my cash, a Carl Yastrzemski rookie card, and a few other vintage cards I was willing to part with- added up to be enough for the dealer. He shook my hand, I passed over the cash, and the card was mine.
One more text to my girlfriend: "Holy shit omg". I'm too stunned, and far too excited, to say anything articulate in this moment.
I run across the auditorium hall to show off my pickup to a friend who understands just how important it is to me. I even find the guy from before, the one who told me I'd never regret the purchase. In the same way I want to tell everyone I meet about my dad, the greatest dad, my favorite person; I want to tell them about this card, now my favorite card, one that reminds me of him. One that reminds me of how new connections to a man I sometimes feel I barely know can still be made.
I'm never gonna get my dad back. I'm never going to have another conversation with him about his childhood, or have the chance to ask him about his experiences in college, or the Army, or starting a career. I'm never gonna see him at the dinner table, never gonna be able to play catch with him in the front yard, or give him a hug. He won't be at my wedding, and he won't meet his grandkids. Maybe most painful of all, I'll never again be able to talk with him about baseball, to hear how he talked with childlike wonder about Mickey Mantle.
While it hurts, I know all that, and I've come to terms with it. But moments like these, and little objects like this card, remind me that his spirit and his memory aren't gone forever. They're within me, waiting to come out when I need them most. When I hold this card, I feel connected to him. I can almost hear him telling me about going to Yankee Stadium to see Mickey Mantle. I can almost feel the ball smack into my glove as we play catch in the front yard.
To me, this card is priceless. I'm not gonna regret buying it.