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Do you have a card that tells a personal story?
Do you have a card that tells a personal story? If you do post it and lets hear about it.
This is mine. I had this card signed at a private signing in February of this year to add to my signed Topps Cardinals collection. = = = This card has vaulted to one of my favorites in my entire collection. Not only does it have tremendous eye appeal, it has a story behind it as well. It was the summer of 1998. I had just married my high school sweetheart on June 6th. We are still happily married with 2 children (son 21 and daughter will turn 19 in a few weeks), but I digress. After the frenzy of a wedding and a honeymoon we settled into our rental house just in time to see Michael Jordan and the Bulls win their 6th NBA championship. Even though I had steadily kept up with the Cardinals and the home run chase, I focused my "sports attention" solely on McGwire and the Cardinals. My wife had never been a baseball fan at all. She told me she had heard of a few players from when she was a child. She remembered getting a Darryl Strawberry baseball card out of a cereal box when she was little but never cared anything about it....until the summer of 1998. With the McGwire and Sosa battling it out all summer long we were both keeping up with the chase every single day. We did not have cable or satellite TV at the time, so we were making plans on how in the world we would see the record breaking home run when it happened. Then I thought.....why don't we just get tickets for later in the year in hopes that we see it live! So, we did. I figured McGwire would get tired and the pressure would get to him a little, but he would finally pull it out in the final series of the season. I made a calculated guess that he would break the record on the second to the last day of the season, so we bought tickets for that game, which was on Saturday, September 26. Turns out it was really just a guess out of thin air. The first of September rolls around and we could see clearly that McGwire was going to break the record well before September 26th. The only question was, "Would Sosa do it first?" The answer would be, "No", and we would confirm this on September 8th. By this time, my wife was all in on the Home Run Chase of 1998. She was now a die hard Cardinals fan and could give you the starting lineup off the top of her head. On September 7th, we found out he had hit number 61, so we were determined to see him hit number 62 somehow. We decided to drive 45 minutes away to my grandmother's house who had cable TV. This is what we saw that night. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TiO...ab_channel=MLB With the record broken, all that was left was to see how many he would hit and what the final number would be. My question was always....would it be better to have seen number 62 or the final number, which would theoretically be the number every player would be chasing for the rest of time. Since we had tickets on the second to the last day of the season, we decided that, of course, it would be better to see the final number! On Saturday, September 26, we made the 3.5 hour drive from the western part of Kentucky to St Louis to see the Cardinals in hopes that Mark McGwire would hit a home run. We got there early for batting practice, and, boy, did he put on a show. One practice HR hit the scoreboard. I remember the sound it made. It was spectacular! Not only did McGwire hit a home run that day....he hit 2 of them! He hit number 67 and 68 that day. I don't think I have ever heard a crowd of people cheer so loud! As a side note, every time McGwire came to the plate, I had my 35 mm camera ready to take a picture. I was able to get number 67, but it wasn't very clear. But the best news was that I was able to get a fairly decent picture of number 68. You can see it in the picture below. The ball is in mid flight, but I have looked at this picture for years and cannot determine exactly where it is at. All I know is that this is the swing that struck number 68 and the picture was taken by me. Here it is! https://i.postimg.cc/R0RdWqbm/McGwire68.jpg If you will pause this video at the 25 second mark, that is the exact instant that I snapped the picture. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0b3_...LouisCardinals After that exciting day, all we could think about is that we saw history! Little did we know that the HR mark would only last about 24 hours because he would hit 2 more the next day for a total of 70. However, it was an exciting day of baseball that I will never forget! As a side note to my collection, in my non signed Cardinals team set, when it comes to the 1999 Topps #220 card, I started off years ago with having only #67 and #68 in my team set. A few years ago I was able to get all 70 variations of those cards. However, with my signed team set, I would go broke if I was so OCD that I had to get all 70 cards signed. So, I settled for number 68 for my signed collection. I think it is fitting since I was there! This card is one of the four cards I had signed at a private signing. https://i.postimg.cc/xTtDkyhX/Cardin...graphs-787.jpg |
Cool story!
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Great story to share.
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Just a guess, of course, but that white spot/dot is the only thing I see that "might" be it? Great story, BTW. Thanks for sharing. :) |
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