The Baseball Card

Thanksgiving dinner was coming to a close. Near the kitchen sink were recently demolished plates of turkey, mash potatoes, and stringbean salad in the home of one Mary Leeton. Mary, the matriarch of two grown children and four grandchildren was getting help from the oldest of the grandkids in rinsing and shuttling her good dishware neatly into the dishwasher. Happy to have the help but even happier to spend a few quality moments with them, Mrs. Leeton is in her glory. As this transpires in the kitchen, her two adult children, Trey and Taylor, move into her small but cozy living room. Preparing for the anticipated array of scrumptious pies that his mother has prepared, Trey immediately looks for the television remote.

" Hey Ma, where is the remote?" Trey hastily looks around the pockets of the comfortable center couch to no avail. "Nevermind, found it." Trey quickly turns on the television to see the early game of a slate of day long football games is nearing halftime. This is as familiar as it gets as he remembers watching football in years gone by every Thanksgiving since he could remember. As the commentators break down the action on the field, Mrs. Leeton cheerily enters the room.

" Here is a piece of cherry AND apple pie dear." She hands the delicious blend of the two pies to Trey on a very warm plate, the flavors touching and slightly melting together. "Thanks Ma, looks fantastic!" Trey exclaims, with a tinge of gratitude and appreciation for his mother. He briefly acknowledges in his thoughts just what a great mother and grandmother she truly is and leans back to devour the pie.

"Ma, what are the kids up to?" Barely had those words left his mouth when he realized Mrs. Leeton did not need to answer. He could hear his two daughters and his niece setting up a board game to play on the cleared off dining room table, miraculously leaving their cell phones to the side to briefly have some old school fun. Trey gets up and glances into the dining room, happy to see the girls interacting in a real way instead of tunneling down into cyberspace via Snapchat or TikTok stories.

Back in the living room Trey's sister Taylor has taken possession of the rocking chair in the corner of the room and is intently feeding her six month old youngest child while also chatting away on her phone via speaker to a fellow soccer mom as they devise transportation and team snacks for their daughter's Saturday game after Thanksgiving. Trey and Taylor were two years apart in age and while very close growing up, life's demands and the crooked hand of fate had recently seen them move to different states with wholly different lives. Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the annual family summer trip to Dewey Beach, Delaware were the only time the siblings saw each other these days. Sometimes even those times seem to be in jeopardy as the kids activities and career obligations drew them away from each other more and more. Their kids had a much different relationship than what Trey and Taylor had with their cousins growing up. They had lived just three doors down from their cousins, playing endlessly through the long summer days or riding the same school bus through the school year. This was before social media, where attention was paid in full to every detail of each other's lives but there was also a mystery to things that was left not filmed or photographed on a cell phone. He was grateful that his daughters were close to their cousin in a 21st century way, at least. Texting, Facetiming, and following each other on a variety of social media platforms, keeping up with each other without actually being present in each other's lives. The wonders of technology had become both a gateway and a cage for everyone, including himself.

Glancing at the television once more as the halftime festivities grinded away, Trey daydreamed back to Thanksgiving pasts, before the birth of his daughters, before his marriage to their mother, now ex wife, to when Taylor and himself were preteens. Their father, who had died a few years back, was then young and vibrant. Not tragically sick the last few years of his life. He loved Thanksgiving, he had made the holiday such a big event. It was instilled into the family but was still not quite the same.

Suddenly Trey is in a nostalgic mood and wanders down the hallway past the kitchen that leads to the second floor of the house. Trey aimlessly wanders up the stairs as everyone downstairs is busily involved in their holiday activities and hardly notices his absence. On the left hand side of the second floor are two doors. The far left door is a guest room, with one directly across from it that serves the same purpose. To the immediate left was a smaller room that was rarely entered these days. It was Mrs. Leeton's "junk" room, endearingly named by the family for the numerous items she had kept or collected over the years. It was mainly filled with long forgotten items piled haphazardly in various corners of the small space. Random artifacts and old memorabilia from the Leeton family of past years. Trey looked at it as priceless memories that lay hidden among the mundane piles of odd and somewhat useless keepsakes. Trey had not visited this particular room for several years now and no one else had for that matter. On a few family visits to the house he had meant to organize the disheveled room and fully examine childhood treasures but never seemed to have the time. He wanted to give the room some dignity and purpose but procrastination always got the better of him. This time, however, he was finally going to do it. To take the time to do it. As he stands in the middle of this crowded room it fills him with a sense of both wistfulness and melancholy. Memories seem to pour out of every corner of the room. Piles of old photo albums clinging to each other in one pile, like holding on to some memory feared of being gobbled up and lost forever. Half opened boxes of used toys and teddy bears once intensely loved but sadly abandoned and forgotten. Funny, a room like this exists in almost every household. Tangible items soaked in families living lives in a moment, those memories imprinted magically onto these inanimate objects and pictures. They "will" themselves to carry on without any guarantee of purpose or notice. A collection of often unrelated and random relics that string together to tell the story of a family, a person, a time. Almost a living entity. A slideshow of days long gone by.

Trey starts to pick at some of the piles. An old poster of a young Jim Morrison of the rock group The Doors, that he proudly adorned in his high school bedroom until it was replaced by something else once his musical tastes changed. The 60s rock giving way to the English pop of the 80s. The fickle whims of youth. Trey smiles wryly at the well worn poster, now creased in several places and torn at the bottom right hand side. As his curiosity mounts he digs further into one one the boxes, looking for more jewels of his youth. Most things are broken or worn, an old Six Million Dollar Man action figure card board box without the Lee Major action figure, long ago lost or thrown out. Ticket stubs to Disney World, when the family went just after he finished 8th grade. Here was an old picture of him playing tennis, crumpled and yellowed somewhat, obviously taken well before digital technology when focus of the picture was an adventure and not caring much if it was perfect. Quickly flipping it over the back of the picture has "Summer '77" in faded black ink. The personal documentation of the picture makes it seem that much more authentic. Trey flips through a few more unimportant or uninteresting papers bound together but then his eyes widen as he comes upon an old baseball card stuck in between the non descript pile. His heart almost stops for a moment as time falls away in a flash, tumbling backward like falling off the edge of a swimming pool into the cold waters below.

He looks once more. In his right hand is the 1971 Bobby Murcer Topps Baseball Card, frayed slightly in the upper left and right corners of the card but miraculously the picture still vibrant after all the years. It was suddenly like he was looking at the card for the first time, just like when he was a wide eyed eight year old. For a fleeting moment he captured that unbridled, youthful joy he had gazing upon his childhood hero that very first time. He flips the card over to see the smooth green back that contained the statistics and description of one Bobby Ray Murcer, the talented centerfielder of the New York Yankees of the early 70s. Trey's whole life at that time revolved around baseball and school, with school a distant second. He would memorize batting averages of all the major leaguers printed in the Sunday papers, then spend the rest of that Sunday practicing their batting stances for hours on end. He would meticulously play out scenarios by himself, as both hitter and pitcher, devising made up rivalries playing in front of wildly cheering crowds, pretending and hoping one day he would be one of them. Hoping one day he would be good enough to be on The Baseball Card, like his favorite player Bobby Murcer. He brings the card closer. The combination of the cardboard smell of the card combined with the slight hint of sweetness of the pink gum that was always packaged with the card was unforgettable. A sensation of his youth. Opening a pack of newly bought cards, hoping for that star player not yet captured in your collection, or getting another card of your favorite player, or completing a whole set. This was a joy that would be hard to match at any time later in life, when things were more complicated and did not quite resonate as when you were eight years old. Each pack provided a new chance, a greater day, that encapsulated all the dreams an eight year old dreamed to fulfill. A simpler time of big dreams. Trey thought to himself that his kids had access to everything, the internet at their fingertips. Everything available all the time, only a click away. But then again easier was not always better. They would lose out on the quality of patience and savoring a moment not promised but hoped for. The Murcer Card was once upon a time the crown jewel of his possessions. Proudly showing it off to his friends, his Dad, anyone who would listen. Prompting stories from his Dad and Uncle about THEIR baseball heroes as passionate as Trey felt about Bobby Murcer and his contemporaries. Time and Dreams were in endless supply for him in those days as was "Youth" and "Baseball Seasons."

But a funny thing happened. Time did change. So did the seasons. The baseball cards once held so dearly gave way to puberty and suddenly girls and music seemed much more important. The magic seemed to be muted. An intense love, for a sweet time, put in a box for only future reflection or quite sadly, no reflection at all.

Trey looks down at the black trimmed card one last time. It almost looks back in regal defiance knowing its importance at one time. He is filled with gratitude that he remembers the feeling the baseball card once gave him. Gone in a flash. Just like life.

For a moment Trey decides to pick up the card, take it downstairs and tell his daughters and family the memories of his youth, dreams of the past, and the importance of living in the moment with great joy but just as quickly he decides to keep the moment to himself, to keep the stories for another day. This baseball card, this 2 1/2 by 3 inch piece of cardboard had packed all the hopes and dreams of an eight year old boy who loved it. Forty years later it still and would always do so.