Not a baseball fan - but still a collector who loves the hobby

[WillowGrove]

Interesting thread.

I guess I'm all baseball - history, collecting, playing (softball), and keeping up with the daily box scores (Rotisserie baseball).

Okay, so i stopped playing last year at 46 but in my mind I still play.


So when my team (Mets) let me down, I have the rest of MLB thanks to my Roball league. And when they're tanking I have my collection. And when buying and selling is slow due to being busy or low on funds, I have this awesome forum and my library of books.

It's been interesting to read about collectors who don't really follow today's game. I can understand it totally. If I didn't have to keep up with the players I would consider moving away from today's game because I am tired of seeing so many players yammering with the other team during the game. They're the enemy, why are you giggling with them down at second???

Also when I was a kid at a show and the dealer didn't know much about the player I was buying a card of, I thought that was weird. "You've got all these cards, I'm buying your Chuck Klein but you didn't know about his awesome 1930 season?" But I was young then.

But hey - it's sport. And it's a hobby. So enjoy it however you would like.

peter

[Hot Springs Bathers]

I love baseball for several reasons. I think the history of the game is very interesting as evidenced by my longtime membership in SABR. I find the deadball era very interesting because of the individuals that played the game.

I love the 50s & 60s because I grew up with those guys in the newspaper every day. Baseball gave my Dad and I something to talk about every day until his passing a at 93 a few months ago.

With all that said I almost never attend games anymore. I find the games pretty boring even at the ballpark. I do attend anywhere from 5-10 college football games each year and love every minute of it.

I can't get excited about collecting football anymore though because of several disturbing factors. The quality of individual that plays the game is highly suspect and the injuries related to the game are horrendous. I think that is the reason the NFL promotes Peyton and Rogers so much.

I have also come to think of college football as paid fun for alumni like a rock concert is paid entertainment for the student. I think that there at very few actual students making up the rosters of most Division I teams and yes that goes for Notre Dame too (great article on their program in the new SI.)

I thin for the most part baseball players were just regular guys that found that they had a gift, this has changed in the last 30 years or so but the game and it's people are still interesting to me.

I do think if I lived up north I could have been a big hockey fan. I have always heard that the players are some of the nicest people in sports. Fun discussion!