Getting carded

Lot of us collected baseball cards when we were kids. We could play games like flipping them, or attach them to the frame of a bicycle with clothespins so that the bike would sound like a motorcycle as you pedaled away (about as much as grape cough syrup tastes like grapes, but anyway.)

And there were the true collectors, the ones who knew that an Al Pilarcik card from 1960 would someday be worth so much that a pocketful of them would put Sonny through college and pay for the down payment on a house. 

But then are people like Reese Osterberg. She is nine years of age, and she loves baseball (San Francisco Giants especially) and she loves her baseball cards. Loved them, I should say, because she and her family recently lost everything in the Creek Fire in Fresno, CA. And "everything" means everything from their house to Reese's 100-piece baseball card collection.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection spokesperson talked on the radio one day about Reese's sadness. Try to imagine being nine and having your entire world literally go up in smoke. If there was any way to bring up just a part of a little girl's world...would anyone care to help?

Kevin Ashford, a guy from San Jose, happened to be listening to the radio as the spokesperson spoke. Ashford is what you call a committed card collector, especially if you are alliterative. He had accumulated 25,000 cards and estimated their value as being $35,000 and $50,000.

The plan was to sell the cards on eBay, but then, he had a better idea. He contacted Reese's family. "When she told me that she used to sit with her binder of baseball cards in front of the TV watching baseball, I knew I had made the right decision," Ashford said. "Because that's exactly what I used to do as a kid."

His collection included complete team sets from the 1990s through today, and, as he put it, "They'll be all organized, they can thumb through these, and you know, have at it, and they're going to find some great cards in here, I already know that." 

Mine were tossed quite randomly into a shoebox in which Jack Purcells had been packed, and when my mother threw the box away, Baltimore County's Solid Waste Division committed them to the landfill, where even today they decrease and decompose.

But young Reese is happy. "It's just one thing after another that's been happening here during 2020, and I just want to make it a little easier for these kids, so that's why I'm doing it," Ashford said.

"It's been really tough because, just thinking of the cards I owned, just brings back memories and stuff," Osterberg said.

I collect a lot of things, and the pleasure I get from thumbing through my books and records and CDs and tapes and sports memorabilia is partly because I plan to leave it all to someone who will enjoy all of them long after I have shuffled off to Buffalo. Thank you, Mr Ashford. You did a great thing!