So THAT'S How He Did It!!!

I made an interesting "hook up" on Facebook recently. Someone from the old neighborhood back on Staten Island, where I grew up in the 60's and 70's, contacted me and wanted to re-connect.

What I remember most about this friend (I'll call him "Gary") was that his Dad was a "sanitary engineer", or as we called them, a garbage man. More importantly, he was OUR garbage man, and his route consisted of 20-30 blocks surrounding our neighborhood.

Now, this family did not come from money. In fact, all of us were middle class, and this family was slightly less. We could tell this by the fact that Gary never had new clothes or new toys, they didn't have anywhere close to a new car, and never took a vacation-ever! In any event, though, his Dad worked hard.

I now learn that the family is worth millions of dollars and own several homes across the United States. Gary, who struggled in school and never attended college, is heading up a sports memorabilia company, presumably started by he and his Dad. How did this happen? Did they win the lottery? Were they recipients of a large cash settlement in a lawsuit? How did they go from one end of the social spectrum all the way, and beyond, the other end?

Well, after doing some investigation, and asking the right questions of the right people, I found out.

You see, while Dad was patrolling the streets tossing people's garbage into the huge compacting truck, he was also taking mental note of the kids on his route. He noted which homes had sons as opposed to daughters, and he bided his time. Whenever a boy in the neighborhood grew up and went off to college, Gary's Dad would leave a box on that family's front porch, with a short note saying "FOR OLD BASEBALL CARDS ONLY".

You have to remember, back in the 60's and 70's, us kids would save our allowances and birthday money and buy packs of baseball cards looking for that one superstar we loved- Tom Seaver, Willie Mays, Johnny Bench. We would take a shoebox and fill it to the point of overflow with these cards- won and lost through flipping or trading. We would also attach some cards (the duplicates or the stars of teams we hated) to the spokes of our Schwinns to give us that "cool" engine-revving sound, at least in our over-active imaginations. I would sometimes attach three or four cards at one time- using my mother's wooden clothespins. Eventually, we would grow up and the lucky ones moved away to college or work. These shoeboxes were carefully stored on the upper shelves of our closets, with all of the cards sorted and rubberbanded by teams. I went a couple of steps further- arranging the players in order of their batting averages, and the teams in order of their finish that year- but that's just me.

When our mother's noted this box on the stoop with the note "FOR OLD BASEBALL CARDS ONLY", the mothers knew exactly where these boxes were stored (there was no hiding baseball cards, Playboys or bad report cards from Moms. They have antennaes for those things, didn't you know?). Some mothers asked Gary's Dad why he wanted the cards, and word was that he told them that he knew some younger, poorer kids in the neighborhood and wanted to "pass them on" to them, regardless the condition the cards were in. Everyone thought that was a very thoughtful and considerate gesture and were just too happy to accommodate him on this quest. So, in HIS box, OUR box went.

Needless to say, Gary's Dad eventually had hundreds of thousands of baseball cards from the 60's and 70's. Some kids had fathers and grandfathers who passed THEIR cards down to the son, and these cards were stored in these boxes as well. Cards from the 30', 40's and 50's- Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays rookie card, Bob Feller, Lefty Grove. Some cards still smelled like the pink cardboard-stiff bubblegum each pack came with; some cards still had the gum powder on the face. These cards soon became part of the collectable world, increasing the worth of the cards considerably. My Seaver rookie card was worth $25 when he was inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Gary and his dad financed a small storefront, borrowing money using a few cards as collateral, and soon thereafter, major collectors like Bruce McNall, Donald Trump and later, Charlie Sheen and a few rock stars battled over buying some of the rarer cards. Collectors came from all over the United States; one to purchase the entire 1979 World Champion Pittsburgh Pirate collection, another to buy a Wayne Garrett or a Nate Colbert. While they sold cards, they also bought other's collections, proving the old adage that "one man's trash in another man's treasure."

So, in the future, when standing around a cocktail party discussing the economy, the latest slide on Wall Street or the recent bank bail-outs, you will reflect on a simpler time back in your youth when your biggest worry for that day was not losing all of your left handed powerhitters in the upcoming flipping challenge in the corner of the schoolyard. Of course, you'll announce to everyone that you'd "be a millionaire today if you had kept the baseball cards" from your childhood.

Suddenly, you stop and wonder to yourself "What DID ever happened to those cards? I'm sure Mom will know; I'll ask her tomorrow."

No need. Now you know...

PS- I also heard this rumor, not yet confirmed. It's been said that the principal of P.S. 22, Mr. Finkenseiper, went in as partners on this business venture. Apparently he also had a very large collection of baseball cards- confiscated from us during those flipping contests in the corner of the schoolyard.

Bastards...