Saving Tommy
I was 10 years old when I started collecting baseball cards. That’s when I was allowed to ride my bike beyond the block and I could pedal down to Al & Joe’s, the corner store about a mile away. They always had a box of cards on the counter in the summer.
Back then, a pack of cards would run you five cents, and I’d plunk down a quarter — a significant chunk of my allowance — and I’d pick five packs of cards. Then I’d go outside and open them one by one, hoping to find Willie Mays or Sandy Koufax and not some bum I already had. There was a sense of anticipation with every pack. It was the thrill of the unknown.
But collecting cards wasn’t just about the cards. It was the whole experience. It was about the bike ride and the ritual of walking up to the counter and waiting for Joe to put his palms on the glass and give me one of those looks, “How many today, kid?” It was about sliding my finger inside the wrapper and carefully cracking the seal. It was about the smell of the gum, sweet and rich, a smell that hooked me from the very first pack. Yeah, bubble gum was the gateway drug for me.
A lot of kids used to toss their cards into a drawer or in the trash at the end of the year. If you were a Cub fan that happened in June or July. But I couldn’t do that. I saved them all year. I’d pull them out from under my bed in winter and I’d organize them in different ways — by team or by rank, some category I’d invented. And as I looked at them I’d remember … that game, that hit, that bus ride, that time the foul ball almost bounced my way…
And I saved them from year to year and filled a few shoeboxes. I never threw any of them away, even after I quit buying new ones.
At some point, while I was in college, I thought about selling them all. The collection might be worth a buck or two. I might be able to pay off that loan, buy a new car, win the girl, find happiness. But I never tested the market. Seemed sacrilegious somehow.
I still have those cards. They’re in a box on a shelf downstairs, and I stumbled upon them the other day while pretending to clean the basement. I was surprised to find them again. And I was even more surprised to find that they still possessed a bit of magic.
——
I recall a day when I was about 12 or so and my Aunt Eleanor came over to see Mom. They were sisters, and Aunt El lived only a few blocks away so they’d get together a few times a week to play Scrabble. Well, this day she brought a stack of old baseball cards with her. Her son, my cousin Tommy, didn’t want them any more. He had other things on his mind.
There weren’t many cards in the stack, and they were all in pretty bad shape. They were beat up and bent, and part of the facing was gone on some because they’d been taped down and torn out of a scrapbook or whatever. Many had been written on with a ballpoint pen … “OUT” was scrawled on some, and a line was drawn through the team name if a player had been traded.
They didn’t fit with the rest of my collection. They were oddballs. Not only was their condition different, they felt different, too. They weren’t mine. But there was something about them that I couldn’t throw away. I didn’t know it at the time, but the reason I saved them had nothing to do with baseball.
———
My cousin Tommy was about six years older than me. And he was cool.
He slicked his hair back, and he was into cars and girls. He was so cool he rolled up the sleeve of his T-shirt to hold his Camels. Plus, and this was the best thing, he had that smirk, the same one Brando had. Or James Dean. It was always there, a sort of half smile, cocky and full of attitude.
Yeah, Tommy was cool.
I remember another day — I was even younger, maybe 8 — and we were all going to the beach. It was Mom and Aunt El, my brother Al and me, and Tommy was supposed to go. That’s what the plan was, anyway. But when it was time to go, Tommy wasn’t there. I was really bummed because it wasn’t every day you got to go to the lake with Tommy. Heck, I had never been to the lake with Tommy.
Aunt El didn’t know where he was, and she wasn’t happy with him, I could tell. We were getting ready to go anyway, and she turned around to tell me in the back seat of the car that Tommy had just forgotten to be home on time and I shouldn’t feel bad. It never occurred to me that Tommy, a teenager, might not want to go to the lake with his mother and his aunt and two little cousins.
So we headed off to the lake without him, and we’d driven about a block when I spotted him crouching between two parked cars.
“There’s Tommy!” I screamed. Mom hit the brakes.
“Where?!”
I pointed, and Aunt El jumped out and dragged him to the car by his ear.
We went to the lake, and Tommy swam with us. He played shark and threw us into the air, and we all squealed and laughed. Then we all got into a rowboat and went exploring along the shore. It was awesome. I thought Tommy had a great time, too. But who knows. It wasn’t until years later that I realized what I’d done to him.
I’d blown his cover. I’d ratted him out.
Tommy ended up being a little too cool. He dropped out of high school and got a girl pregnant, not necessarily in that order but he was 16 years old when both of those things happened. The marriage didn’t last, and neither did his second. He moved away, and the whole family kind of lost touch with him.
I’ve seen him only a couple of times since then: once at my dad’s funeral, and once at his mother’s. He stood apart. He seemed sad, but it wasn’t mourning I saw in him. It was a different kind of sadness. Deeper. Unspoken.
I doubt our paths will ever cross again. There just isn’t that many more people left to die. But I wonder what we might talk about if we ever did meet. Maybe we’d talk about baseball, and those old cards. Maybe I’d ask him why he ever thought Scotch tape was a good idea. And what was he thinking when he took a ballpoint pen to Jackie Robinson’s card?
But maybe I wouldn’t talk about that at all. Maybe I’d just apologize for pointing a finger at him that one time.
In a way, people are like baseball cards. Not all of them grow up in protective plastic, and some aren’t treated very well. Some cards live rough lives. Yet it’s hard to let any of them go.
Collected written works | Gary Marx
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