Baseball Cards

Gratitude comes in many forms. Today it came in the form of a pack of baseball cards.

A Jackson Chourio... A Corbin Burnes... A Kyle Tucker...

The gratitude that I felt for these little pieces of cardboard was not that I got a Jackson Chourio rookie card that might be worth five dollars. It was the gratitude that this pack of cards brought me back to the summer of 12-year-old me. Me and my friend Brian playing whiffle ball and riding our bikes and swimming in Sand Pond.

We watched the baseball All Star game together and the next day we were Jim Rice and Don Mattingly while we stepped up to the plate in Brian's backyard. When we got some money for cutting a lawn we would jump on our bikes and ride to Cumberland Farms and pick up a pack of cards. I don't remember what we did with the gum. We may have chewed it for the five minutes it would last, or we may have just thrown it away.

What we did was look over our stash and see what we got. Any rookie cards? Any of our favorite players? We would look at the stats on the back and hope we got a cards that had one of the little cartoons on it. Summer seemed to last forever.

I sent Brian a picture of the baseball cards and felt the connection to him when he responded.  We live 3 plus hours away from each other now and see each other a handful of times a year.  How is it that these little pieces of cardboard can transport us back to where we were almost 40 years ago?

It was the best $6 I spent all summer.