In 1985, while working as an editor at a daily newspaper in Southern California, I wrote an essay about baseball cards, the type of collectible that can become a touchstone in one's life. Under the headline "Seasons Later, '68 Baseball Card Collection Finally is Topps," I related how my 1968 Topps set - handsomely bound, in near-mint condition, containing the rookies Johnny Bench and Nolan Ryan, among others - had languished unfinished for 17 years, missing but a single player. The one, the only, the incomparable ...
... Darold Knowles.
Darold who? As I wrote back then: "Surely you remember ol' southpaw Darold. He was the 17-year rain delay in my summer pastime, the missing base in my diamond gallery. No. 483 on your Topps checklist - right there between Jose Pagan and Phil Roof. All those trips to the liquor and dime stores, all those pieces of broken bubble gum - for some inexplicable reason they never yielded Mr. Knowles.
"... You'd figure that at five cents a pack back then, with five cards to same, the chances of getting a less-than-stellar relief pitcher such as him would have been reasonably good, especially if your teeth ached for that chalky pink gum ... But it wasn't to be. ... When it came to Darold Knowles, you could say that it just wasn't in the cards."
I told of my friend Randy, a fellow baseball fan who, upon hearing of the void at No. 483, ceremoniously gave me a less-than-mint Knowles that he'd plucked from an old shoebox. Back then it seemed every hobbyist but me kept his cards in such a container. Mine were secured by gummed brackets and wax paper in a burnt-orange binder with gold lettering. I thought such a display would keep the precious rectangles safe from the elements - including well-intentioned moms who might have assumed that a well-worn box in a drawer or closet was a candidate for the trash. (How many 1952 Mickey Mantles have been lost in such a horribly innocent manner?)
But none of that was important. Here was Mr. Knowles, the elusive final link: "I almost felt like asking Darold why he had kept my collection an unfinished gem all these years - had he ever lost a no-hitter in the late going? Probably not - but instead I simply took him home, opened the book to that long-empty space, nodded at Pagan and Roof, and gingerly slipped him in. I took even greater pleasure when, pencil in hand, I filled in box No. 483 on the checklist."
I no longer collect baseball cards. I no longer attend trade shows. I think the last time I bought any cards at all was in 1973, the year the designated-hitter rule took effect. I know collecting will always be enjoyable, but part of me recoils at the thought that it's also become a mega-business, far removed from the innocence of bicycle spokes, stale gum and posters on the wall. That 1968 set, 35 years old, compiled by an 11-year-old Dodger fan at various places in California and Ohio, now sits in a safe-deposit box in Hawaii. The burnt-orange album is gone, replaced by a sturdy green one with clear plastic sleeves. The Bench and Ryan cards alone are worth ... well, a pretty penny, judging from what I've read over the years.
But I feel incomplete as a former collector. Not because of the time it took to procure Mr. Knowles, or because I chose to mail-order a few players (including Curt Blefary, the A.L. Rookie of the Year in 1965), or because I had mounted the cards with those gummed corners, which could have undermined their integrity (clean, sharp edges are one of the hallmarks of a pristine card).
No, I feel incomplete because of 1970. In my opinion - baseball-card aesthetics are gloriously subjective, of course - that year's Topps set was even better than the '68 issue. The classy gray borders, the player names in flowing black script, the team names in block letters of various colors, randomly situated on either side of the frame - this collection was a keeper. Again, I amassed the majority of the cards in California - where I lived - and Ohio, where most of my dad's relatives were.
Ah, 1970. Great baseball cards ... and great baseball. I remember lounging in my aunt and uncle's den in Dayton, Ohio, watching the National League's Pete Rose barrel over catcher Ray Fosse to win that year's All-Star Game in Cincinnati. I remember that fall's World Series, between Earl Weaver's Orioles and Sparky Anderson's Reds (my dad's favorite club). Brooks Robinson, Frank Robinson. Bench and Rose. Orioles in five.
At horse camp that summer, outside Dayton, I met a boy who also was collecting the 1970 Topps set. Unlike me, he didn't view sports cards as fragile showpieces; he treated them more as playthings, even going so far as to draw letters and numerals on their front sides. Naturally, I was aghast, and wanted nothing to do with such sacrilege. But I made an exception. I had coveted his slightly damaged Matty Alou card - outfielder, Pittsburgh Pirates, .312 lifetime hitter, No. 30 on your Topps checklist - so I carefully erased the pencil etching he'd made above Matty's cap. It looks instead like a puffy white cloud in a clear blue sky. Immaculate? Hardly. Passable? Like Randy's less-than-stellar Darold Knowles, most definitely.
For some reason, I never applied the same care and diligence to the 1970 Topps issue as I did to the'68 batch. I've pieced together most of the set, in an official-looking gray binder with protective sleeves, but large gaps remain. I've never placed the cards in a bank vault. I've never scrutinized their actual condition. I'm not even sure about which cards I'm missing, or how much it would cost to obtain them.
In the late 1990s, while living in Seattle, I went to a dusty sports memorabilia shop that specialized in baseball items. I flipped through the long, orderly card drawers, time-traveling back to a tumultuous era that had seemed perfectly safe to a 13-year-old. There were plenty of second-tier players, a few team photos, but no superstars. Even if I had found some premium cards from 1970 - Hank Aaron, Ron Santo, "Sudden Sam" McDowell - I suspect they would have cost more than I was willing to pay at the time. I can only imagine what they fetch now.
So here I am, out in Hawaii, far from a Major League stadium, thinking again of a distant pastime. Looking back, I wonder why I simply didn't mail-order Knowles along with Curt Blefary. Perhaps Randy and I deserved our little drama. Perhaps I needed to learn about patience.
The years are circling the diamond. Many of the players from the '60s and '70s are gone - not just from baseball, but from life itself. I'm compiling a list of those 1970 cards I never laid a glove on. Are they out there in a field of dreams, on some cosmic base, waiting to be driven home? How much would I sacrifice for them? Will there be another Darold Knowles, slippery to the end? I can scour the Internet, check out classified ads, visit trade shows on the Mainland. I can immerse myself anew in a hobby that I'm sure still has at least a trace of Rockwellian purity.
If I somehow manage to fill in the remaining checklists - is that my hand reaching for my wallet? - I can update by a couple of years what I wrote back in 1985: "So the search is ended, the game is over, the fat lady can sing, the designated-hitter rule can be rescinded and artificial turf can be ripped out across the land. My 1968 Topps portfolio is complete. Organist, strike it up."
At the very least, I should probably get another Matty Alou.
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Copyright © 2003 by David G. Bowman. Posted June 18, 2003.
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