The Thrill of the Rip

The eight-year-old's gaze was glued to the Sony 55-inch Class X750H LED 4K UHD Smart TV as the pitcher delivered a 98-mph two-seam fastball that painted the outside corner like only could happen in a video game.

He jerked the controller like he was reining in a runaway horse and began furiously punching one of a dozen buttons. Suddenly he stopped, tilted his head back, blew his golden bangs out of his eyes, and sighed deeply.

"Just knew I squared that one up," he said to no one in particular, disgusted with the dying quail caught by the center fielder.

Clank Grosser shook his head as he watched his son, marveling at how realistic the video game looked and thinking back to his youth when video games were much more primitive and much less compelling. In fact, it was that same year he started collecting baseball cards that he got his first video game console, an Atari 2600. But the Atari was no competition for Greg's PlayStation 5, which definitely lived up to its reputation of "lightning-fast loading, ultra-high speed SSD, deep immersion with haptic feedback, adaptive triggers, and 3D audio."

"Series 1 just came out. Wanna sort them?" Clank asked.

Greg frowned, not taking his eyes off the big screen and again moaning in agony as he whiffed on a nasty back-door slider. "Can't Dad. All I need is 100 more points and I can buy upgrades for my team."

Clank furrowed his brow, stroked the weekend stubble on his chin, and considered the challenge of using pieces of cardboard to compete with the stunning graphics and game experience of a PS5.

"Upgrade?"

Tossing his controller aside and bemoaning the fact that he lost the game to his nemeis, yankeelover2001, Greg exited the game screen and pulled up another screen that showed all of the players on his baseball team. Immediately capturing Clank's attention was that the players were displayed in the form of baseball cards, complete with their statistics on the flip side -- which were updated in real time every day. Geez, technology never stopped amazing him.

"Yeah, I gotta get a better outfielder for my team. Like Mike Trout. That'd be awesome."

Michael Nelson Trout. The Millville Meteor. Arguably the best player in Major League Baseball history. Yes, better than even Ruth, Williams, DiMaggio, Mantle, Mays, or Aaron. Drafted in 2009, Rookie of the Year in 2012, signed a 12-year, $426 million contract with the Los Angeles Angels in 2019. Mike Trout would be a first-ballot Hall of Famer and go down in history as the greatest ever.

"I bet," Clank said, still unsure of what he was seeing on the big screen. "You know, Trout's rookie card just sold for $3.9 million."

For the first time, Greg focused on his dad, eyes wide and eyebrows arched. "Dollars!"

"Yes, good ole American greenbacks."

"For a baseball card?"

Clank grinned, and nodded his head. "Hey, some baseball cards are very rare. And people are willing to pay a lot of money for them. Some cards are worth a penny, some a few dollars, some hundreds of dollars. It's fun sorting through a new pack and seeing what you have. Who knows? Maybe you'll get one worth something."

He pulled a pack out of his back pocket and tossed it to Greg.

The wax paper wrapper of Clank's youth had gone the way of Betamax. Now cards came wrapped in metallic foil displaying photos of instantly recognizable All-Star players. The 2020 Topps Series 1 wrapper featured Pete "The Polar Bear" Alonso, who made his professional debut last year by breaking the MLB rookie home run record with 53 bombs for the New York Mets.

The pack was one of seven in a "retail blaster box" that Clank bought from Amazon a few days earlier. The box promised one Rookie Card Retrospective RC Logo Medallion Card. Greg ripped into the foil wrapper and excitedly sorted through the cards, finding mostly "commons," those cards of lesser-known players that fill out the set of 700+ cards. Nothing very exciting. But it's being inundated with commons that makes finding a "hit" so thrilling.

Greg didn't seem to think so. He tossed the stack of cards aside and went back to his super-ultra-high-def video game with haptic feedback, whatever that was.

But Clank had an idea.

#

Clank's disdain for Sugar Corn Pops began 41 years ago.

Every morning at the crack of dawn, he'd slip out of bed, tippy-toe down the hall, climb down the rickety stairs avoiding the spots that creaked so loudly it sounded like a tree splitting, and dash across the kitchen linoleum to the cabinet holding the cereal.

He'd quickly fumble with the box and pour himself a bowl of that sweetened popped-up corn cereal. If he was lucky, a prize would tumble out among the unnaturally yellow corn pops. If not, he'd have to choke down another bowl, doing it quick before the puffed grain turned soggy and inedible.

He once tried to dig around in the box to find the prize he was seeking but his mother quickly disabused of him such a shortcut.

"Nobody wants a bowl of cereal that your dirty hands have touched! Plus, isn't it more fun to be surprised when you pour the cereal in the bowl and the prize falls out?"

She was right. Few things compare to the anticipation you feel as you pour a bowl of cereal, praying to the baseball card gods that one of those coveted plastic-wrapped 3D baseball cards will suddenly fall among the corn pops.

And when a card did fall out, another explosion of anticipation hit as you quickly grab it to see if it is one of your favorite players, or at least one that will help complete your collection. Even getting a duplicate was not the end of the world because you could trade it with a friend for a card you don't have.

So Clank spent most of 1979 eating Sugar Corn Pops and collecting cards. And it was one of the best years of his life. For one, it was a great sports year for his hometown Pittsburgh. The Steelers beat the Cowboys in Super Bowl XIII to begin the year and the Pirates ended the year by shocking the Baltimore Orioles to win the World Series, becoming only the fourth team in Major League Baseball history to win a best-of-seven set after going down three games to one. 

Two parades in one year! It would never happen again.

But it was also the year Clank fell in love with collecting baseball cards. And it all began with his mission to collect the complete 60-card Kellog's set of 3D baseball cards. The No. 1 target of the set, of course, was his favorite player: David Gene Parker, the 6'5, 225-pound right fielder for the Pirates. Dave Parker had a helluva year in 1978, bashing 30 home runs, driving in 117 runs, and logging a .334 batting average.

Clank's wife always tells him it's also the year he became a complete sucker for marketing gimmicks but that's another story.

Kellog's smartly included one baseball card in every box, so any kid who wanted to collect all 60 cards had his work cut of for him. And by the end of the year, Clank's appetite for Sugar Corn Pops was quenched forever.

But not his appetite for baseball cards. Soon, plucking a single card from a box of cereal was not enough. In 1979 just about every convenience store in the city carried boxes of those wax paper packs of cards, which also included a stick of bubble gum.

He began making regular trips to the 7-Eleven, buying as many packs as he could as often as he could. He'd race home, dump the packs on his bed, and rip them open. The thrill of sorting through the cards and finding his favorite players was addictive.

He'd take his duplicates to school and trade with his friends during recess. ("Come on, Joey, here's four Tucker Ashfords for your Kent Tekulve!")

When he got his first job sacking groceries at Giant Eagle during high school, he spent his first dollar on the wax packs. He loved sacking groceries for the young stay-at-home moms: they were pretty and tipped great. Those tips turned into baseball cards quicker than Pops Stargell could turn on a hanging breaking ball.

While attending Pitt, the demands of college life -- both academically and socially -- put a damper on his beloved hobby. Plus, it often came down to a bowl of Ramen or a pack of cards. Hunger beat hobby every time.

When he began his career at the Ellwood City Ledger, Clank was focused on his journalism career. And feeding himself. Still, by the time he met his future wife, he had amassed nearly 50,000 baseball cards, including complete sets from every year from 1979 to 1999.

Then Greg was born, and Clank's passion was rekindled. He began buying complete sets for Greg's birthday every year. One day the kid would appreciate it.

Now that day had come, but something unfathomable had happened: Greg was not interested in "pieces of cardboard."

#

Baseball cards have come a long way from those first wax packs that Clank ripped open as a wide-eyed eight-year-old in 1979. The 3D cards that had Clank scarfing down copious amounts of Sugar Corn Pops every day were about as fancy as baseball card got. But now you can find cards autographed by the player, or embedded with slivers of his game-used jersey or a shard of his bat, or even a spoonful of dirt from the diamond he played on.

Today, baseball cards feature intricate designs like the "parallel" cards, which are duplicates with different borders (black, gold, red, platinum, etc.), or reflective coatings, or die-cut edges.

And, of course, there's the highly sought after rookie cards: Clank just read that one lucky collector sold a 2020 Topps Series 1 Bo Bichette Turkey Red Chrome Superfractor Rookie Card for $3,000.

Imagine finding that in your corn pops.

If Clank was being honest he'd admit that it's a hobby that should have died out long ago, the equivalent of Atari's Home Run video game with stick figures versus the realism of PlayStation's MLB The Show '20.

Not to mention the decline of the sport itself with attendance slowly dripping away, prompting a series of changes to speed up the pace of game.

Clank bemoaned the fact that younger fans seem more interested in non-stop action, neon lights, and blaring hip hop music than the beauty of a game without a clock, played in a park, and in a relaxed setting that encouraged conversation among the spectators.

Clank shoved those thoughts aside as he brought out a few boxes of Topps Series 1, each one containing 24 packs. Each pack included nine to 16 cards, depending on whether a hit card was included.

Armed with nearly 1,200 cards, Clank knew exactly how he'd get Greg hooked on his hobby.

He gently opened the first metallic foil pack by carefully pulling the wrapper seal apart at the bottom. He coaxed the cards out and began separating the stars from the scrubs, paying particular attention to any hits.

His wife was no help when it came to convincing Greg of the thrill of collecting baseball cards. She thought the activity was only slightly less tedious than actually sitting through a four-hour game on TV watching players spit, grab their crotches, and generally behave disgustingly.

But she never experienced the thrill of the rip, the anticipation of finding a diamond in the rough. The sheer joy of opening a pack and finding your favorite player or even better, a card worth hundreds of dollars. Or thousands of dollars.

The Holy Grail of the hobby had long been the Honus Wagner T206, which sold for $3.12 million a few years ago. Next on the list is the 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle, which recently sold for $2.8 million.

Now the 2009 Bowman Chrome Draft Prospects Superfractor Mike Trout ($3.9 million) reigns supreme.

Clank had no illusions of pulling anything like that from one of these boxes. But he did pull a few eye-poppers. Nothing to retire on, but certainly enough to grab the attention of an eight-year-old video game addict.

 Once he had the cards sorted, he was ready to reassemble them into "new" packs, each of them stuffed with superstars, rookie cards and brilliantly colored parallels. And two special packs each contained either an autograph card or a relic card.

 The reassembly didn't need to be perfect because Clank knew Greg would rip open the packs and flip through the cards with the speed of a Blackjack dealer on the Vegas Strip.

Clank grabbed a handful of the best packs and tossed them on the table in the TV room, where he knew Greg would end up eventually. He'd see the glittering foil with the Polar Bear's image staring back at him and wouldn't be able to resist to break into them.

"Wow! Dad, come check this out!"

Sitting in the living room reading a Reacher novel, Clank grinned. That didn't take long.

"What's wrong?"

"Look what I found. It's a Mike Trout card. Looks pretty cool."

"Let me take a look," Clank said as he reached for the card. "Oh yeah, very cool. Mike Trout. And that's the 1965 Topps design. Look at Topps going retro. Love it. I remember collecting some of those when I was your age."

"Think it's worth anything?"

"Let's check."

Clank pulled up the Beckett Price Guide website, the bible of baseball card pricing.

"Holy cow! Look at this."

Greg hurried over and looked at the website, which showed the 2020 Topps Series 1 Mike Trout Auto 1965 TC #5 valued at $670.

Greg's eyes widened and Clank instantly read his mind: where's the next pack.