Baseball Cards...

Baseball cards are a funny thing to me. I used to spend ALL my money on them when I was kid, with the exception of an occasional action figure of course. And then one day, that I cannot even recall really, I stopped caring about them. Something that used to be so exciting and pretty much a necessary item in my everyday life just faded away into the past. I understand that priorities change when you get older and start to grow up. I stopped buying action figures too and moved onto buying CD's, or rather cassettes, and movies, etc, ya know, grown up things. Looking back now, I wonder why I stopped buying the cards. They are timeless and never changing. You can outgrow an Egon Spengler figure with proton pack as the Ghostbusters ended (until now that they are making a third) but you never outgrow baseball, at least I never did. I am still very much a baseball fan, probably more so now that I have a deeper understanding of the game. Well, the other day, I had had a rough day at work and was in a blue kind of mood. I made a trip to the store to pick up some cat food and cat litter. While waiting in what seemed like an endless line of customers, I got sucked into the "last minute" eye catching deals located conveniently by the registers. My eye was drawn by a small box on the top shelf that had a word I had not noticed in a long time..."Tops." I was intrigued and thought, "it's only $2, why not?" I grabbed two shiny packages from the box and placed them in the cart with my cat's groceries. After I got home and fed the cat and gave him a clean toilet, I sat on the edge of my bed and held the two packets in my hands. I can't explain the joy and excitement I felt as I opened the first package. The anticipation of finding a players card that had a name on it that I knew or a team that I liked. It brought back the feeling of excitement I had when I was a 6 year old kid scraping change together to get the pack with the gum in it. I went through both of the packs and my bad day that happened just a few hours earlier had completely faded from my memory and all that remained was thought of the past and my now adult appreciation of the sport that I love. I started thinking about it and I think I may start collecting cards again. I'm not going to be a die hard, but I do believe that little bit of joy I had the other night, could be replicated by spending an occasional $2 to feel like a kid again.