Why we love the hobby

[Al C.risafulli]

I bought this card in about 1980, when I was 10 years old or so. It came from a place called Dollars & Sense, a card store in Ridgewood, NJ. I didn't have much money as a kid, and the owner took pity on me and created a shoebox filled with T206s and 1951 and 52 Bowmans, all off-grade, just for me. He'd charge me fifty cents a Bowman, and $1 a T206. I'd go there once a week with my allowance, buy a couple of packs of new cards, and spend the rest of my $5 on cards from that shoebox.

Then I'd go home and show them to my grandfather, who would tell me stories about the players.

It was the stories that got me, and still do - I love this stuff, the older the better, because I love imagining what it must have been like when baseball was just taking hold in this country. Most of it was just legend - there was no TV, very little radio, so it was all imagination. If you were a kid, baseball cards were the only way you could find out what players looked like, especially if you lived in a place where there was no pro baseball.

What's amazing about that is that today, since there's very little video from those times, we're in the same boat - we have to depend on legends, photos, cards, etc. to try and imagine what players looked like, what their voices sounded like, how they played. And there are so many mysteries to solve - how did the cards get issued, why were certain players included or excluded, how were they distributed, why certain cards are more rare than others. It's part poetry and part archaeology, all wrapped around the greatest game ever invented. I can't imagine any more relaxing or gratifying hobby.

-Al