W551's in a big card board box...
We were in the old house on Southview Avenue in Wantagh, so this was somewhere between 1985-89. I was in my early teens. Dad brought home a box full of old cards. This box was probably the size of a box you get from a liquor store when you are moving. Definitely bigger that a shoe box. I was familiar with T206s, the T205s, the Goudys. But these were sort of ugly. They were strewn and tossed into the box with very little care. Basically hundreds of cards dumped into a box. Dad's task for me: pick one for his friend to choose.
Dad was born in 1940. His father was a criminal reporter for one of the many newspapers in NYC at the time. He had no byline. My family suspects that he was friendly with the criminals he was reporting on. His brother, Harry, was the ghost writer on Murder Incorporated and only got the "dedication page". Apparently, Harry coined the phrase "Murder Incorporated, When he left the publishers office the day he heard he wasn't going to get authorship of the book, he apparently died of a heart attack on the streets of Manhattan. Dad's brother was 15 years older than him. He was a recipient of the Taylor Spink Award in the late 90s. Covered the baseball and football Giants in NYC from 1951 until they moved, then covered the Yankees a bit. Apparently he was offered Jack Lang's job when the Mets came to town, but turned it down. He moved to Pittsburgh and covered the Pirates from 66-86.
So dad. Dad was/is a frustrated author. He didn't put in the work and didn't really get along with his brother so, I guess, he went down another path. The path of a salesman. He worked at Honeywell in the 60s, opened up an insurance agency in Glendale, went bankrupt, worked for Wallace and then, in 1977 another pharmaceutical company based in Germany.
My sister (50 years old) and I (47) went to every Mets or Islanders game possible. Dad was a Jets season ticket holder, an Islander season ticket holder. We also went to 20 or so Met games a year. Now quarantine hit and everyone is posting pictures of ticket stubs they saved. I was getting some serious FOMO so, in May, I went to my folks house and went into my old bedroom and searched for ticket stubs. We had moved from my childhood home in 1990 and I moved out in 1995. Mom is a neat freak. What were the chances that the stubs would still be there? Well, they were! I started posting my stubs. Man, Mike Bossy scored a ton of goals. I picked like 5 random games from the ticket stubs I found and he scored like 14 goals total in those games. Anyway, it dawned on me that as a pharmaceutical salesman, dad probably wrote all those games off on an expense account! BRILLIANT
But I digress...so dad's backstory of being a sports nut, being a pharmaceutical salesman, having access sort of leads to the W551s. Dad called on a wholesale pharmacist named Sid. Sid was a lot of things. Quite a smarmy fellow. But it definitely was "you scratch my back, I scratch yours". Sid was pretty hard to take, but it was business and a commission check that counted, I gather. He was a sports fan and dad had access to tickets. (Actually there is a funny story about Game 4 of the NLCS that I could tell, but I've gotten sidetracked at least 6 times here).
So Sid did someone a favor. And in return, the client gave Sid a big box of old cards and told him to pick one card to keep. Sid had no idea what the cards were. He knew my dad and I were going to shows and collecting, but we were really collecting things that interested my dad: 1950s Bowman Browns, mid 50s Brooklyn Dodgers, 1962 Mets and assorted stars. (And no Yankees.). I probably already had Irv Young, Cobb, Matthewson, Evers, Chance. I knew that set well. But these funny cards, I had really no clue. Dad surmised that they must have been cut from the back of a cereal box. I sorted through them. I put them in order. There were Cobbs, Johnsons, Ruths and Joe Jackson. There were other guys I recognized too. Now I knew the legend of Joe Jackson. There were two in there. I picked one of the Jackson's for Sid. I told my dad that I never saw a Joe Jackson card and that would be the one I'd pick.
[Side note: I was going to Maria Regina Roman Catholic School at the time and truly believed in a higher power watching our actions. I also had this fear of my father. So in the back of my mind, I was thinking my dad was "testing" me with these cards. How would he wind up with hundreds of old cards? I honestly thought he was going to come up and say that these were for me. That someone gave them to him.]
So I gave the box back to dad. I was hoping against hope that he'd tell me to keep a few. He took note of the Jackson. And that was it.
A week later, I was in the basement. Actually, I was always in the basement, so this is odd. Remember I said there were doubles? I found a Ruth and Jackson card from the batch. Now I swear, I thought my father was testing me. I also had this Judeo-Christian guilt drilled into me by this time. Like an honest and wholesome person, I turned them over to my father. Again, I thought he'd say, "Keep them". But he didn't. He took them and said, "Ok" and took them from me.
I wish I could say I "did the right thing". Knowing now what I know about my father: he had absolutely no clue about those cards being there. Judging by the state the cards were in when I received them, my dad being oblivious, Sid being somewhat contemptible, I should have taken a handful of those cards and preserved them for future generations.
How did Sid get these cards? What is that back story? He did a family a favor regarding medication/perscriptions? The person that had this box of cards kept them for 60+ years. If it was the original owner, they were in their 70s at the time?
Yes, this is a big regret. I wonder if those cards ever got any love. I wonder what happened to the cards I "chose" for Sid. I should google him and find out if he's still alive.
EDIT: Alive and well in Ohio. I should reach out.
Last edited by Kevin; 10-28-2020 at 10:21 AM.
Reason: Tough to read, 4 year old son looking to play, limited time to write something cohesive
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10-25-2020, 06:05 PM
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