I've shared this story before, so please indulge me if you've heard it. My daughter was very young and was watching me sitting among dozens of cards spread out on the floor, with probably a few hundred more in stacks. Most were graded and pre-war, but all sports and eras were represented, and I was quasi-sorting or inventorying them but was mostly just basking in the moment of being surrounded by cardboard. Anyway, I asked her which was her favorite and she reached over to some cards somewhat off to the side and unnoticed by me and picked out this one:
Now I pulled this card from a pack when I was 7, and as you might guess, it was proudly carried and shown to both first graders and neighborhood pals. Anyway, I was calculating the dollars my cardboard might bring and frowning at previously undiscovered flaws in some of my cards when she picked out that Mantle and asked me what was my favorite. It hit me like a ton of bricks. I of course had no choice but to agree with her selection, and you have no idea how many memories came gushing back at that moment.
Sorry for being maudlin.
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Now watch what you say, or they'll be calling you a radical, a liberal, oh, fanatical, criminal
Won't you sign up your name? We'd like to feel you're acceptable, respectable, presentable, a vegetable
If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.- Ulysses S. Grant, 18th US President.
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