What does your collection do for you?

[Mark]

Pop psychologists will tell you that part of what motivates baseball fans is the association of baseball with your father. You don't need to be Carl Jung to detect some truth to this in my case. I got my first pro model bat when I was about 10. My grandfather, a baseball man through and through, had died the year before, and I found an old bat in his basement. After I removed the tar that covered it, I discovered that it was a model of a fairly famous player from the deadball era. I wrote to Hillerich and Bradsby and described the bat meticulously (for a 10 year old), and they wrote back saying that the bat was made for his personal use. I didn't pick up many more old bats until the early 90's when the Louisville find made it possible for me to pick up a number of bats used by my father's favorite players from the 20's and 30's. Like my ancestors, I am a Pirates fan, so most of the bats are Pirate bats. But I also love pre-war Giants bats. I don't know why. Maybe a need to see a shrink to find out. It also occurs to me that my father inherited his father's disdain for the live ball era ("rabbit ball" he called it). In my family, the deadball era was cool. So, I really love bats from that era. They connect me to my father and to his father. Even if they didn't, they are an intimate part of the game, each one tells a story, and who doesn't admire a good baseball bat?