This piece from the NY Times has all of the trappings of baseball literature: religious overtones, myth, legend, dedication, magic, and loss. Focus on one of these themes and discuss what role it plays in not only this article but in baseball as we've learned about thus far. Be brief.
**Our visitor Howard Fine will be bringing in some cards next week, so keep this article in mind during Howard's visit.
Another great week of postings. Thanks for your work and insight.
This story reminds me of my youth as a baseball lover. I, like most kids, played baseball at a younger age. My dad would always tell me how he used to collect cards, just as the author of this article did. He would trade cards with his friends, and “flick” cards off a wall as a game to try to gain even more cards. Baseball collecting was a part of his youth, and his nostalgic reminiscence that he would always feel when talking about it made me feel the same way. One thing that he would always focus on was all of the amazing players he would get. The legends. The greats. He still has tons of cards, from Willie Mays to Nolan Ryan. And whenever these legends would be discovered in a pack he bought at the store, he would bring them home, overjoyed with his luck to come across such a valuable card. The legends in baseball allow kids like my father love the game. It allows us, as fans, to believe in “super-humans”, who may also be our heroes at the same time. The idea that there are people that are so unbelievably good at baseball is what gives it such pleasure to be a part of. It gives hope and dreams to all the little boys that maybe, they could be that good one day, and be on a baseball card.
ReplyDeleteUpon finishing this article, the first thing that came to my mind was the moment in 42 when Jackie Robinson gave the baseball to the young boy at the train station. At the end of the movie, we see the boy again. This time though, he is hitting a rock with a stick and we find out that he eventually becomes a major league baseball player. Like the way collecting baseball cards was a sign of admiration for players, getting the ball from Jackie was another sign of admiration. Furthermore, I think the baseball cards represented a sign of magic for young boys all across America. Having a valuable card such as the Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card signified hope and magic because of how people look up to him - he was "the symbol of everything good about baseball". No matter who the he is or what team he plays for, there will always be a player who represents that era and hope in baseball in the eyes of kids all over America. One day they might even have the opportunity to have a baseball card of their own.
ReplyDeleteThis story connects to baseball through the word of dedication. This man who was once a child was so dedicated to having the complete set of cards that he had 2,500 sprawled around the house. He made trade after trade, buy after buy and continually reorganized his findings. He was a boy dedicated to a life of baseball cards. This connects to baseball today with the dedication and determination every single professional baseball player must have for the game. Each player has played thousands of baseball games in his life, always trying to become better and better. This connects to the story through the fact that the boy was always trying to find that next card, the next elusive piece to his set. Also, for the more recent topics that we have discussed in class, it was the dedication to the love of the game and hope that one day all black could play in professional baseball that possessed Jackie Robinson to continue playing baseball through all the adversity and hate he endured. Overall very tough story just like the boy who lost the elusive Ken Griffey Jr. card.
ReplyDeleteGrace Donahoe:
ReplyDeleteThis story has a prominent theme of loss. Once I had finished reading it, I was instantly reminded of the book, "Pictures at an Exhibition" by Sarah Houghteling that we read freshman year. In this story, Max Berenzon develops a special connection to each painting and is distraught whenever he has to part with one. Just like Max, Burgess feels a profound loss when he gives up "The Card." For him, this is not just about a baseball card, but about the memories and the emotions that the card holds. This card represents the memories of second grade when he "would spend countless hours in [his] backyard in South Albany futilely trying to emulate its[Griffey Jr.'s swing's] beauty and grace" (Burgess). This reminds me of my experience with baseball. Every game I keep score and write little notes about that day at the park in the margin. Going back and looking at those scorecards is like reading a little snippet of a memoir. I do not keep the scorecard to remember the individual plays of the game, but rather to remember important things that happened that day.
Sandy Schenker:
ReplyDeleteThis story, my love of baseball, and all of baseball in general has the major theme of legends, greats, and myths. As a kid, I loved baseball more than anything, I played it, I watched it, and I breathed it. Millions of Americans do the same thing. Kids throughout the country look up to the best player in their cities as gods. For me, my god as a child was Barry Bonds. Whenever I went to the game as a child, I would always optimistically think that anything was possible as long as Barry could bat. We would be down by 10 with 2 outs in the ninth and Barry had just batted, but I would refuse to go because I thought all we needed was 8 singles, then Barry could hit a walk-off home run. I loved Barry the way millions of kids love their baseball heroes. Although Barry hitting a walk-off home run in that situation was nearly impossible, I did not view Barry as a mortal, and I was sure he could somehow make the next 8 people get on base. The best baseball players are viewed as more than men by kids, they are legends who as long as they are living and playing anything can happen. This belief though is not true for every player. Kids believe in one player as a god, and then view the rest as just regular people surrounding their hero's. Every kid wants a connection to their god, and for the author this baseball card was to be his connection. Millions of kids, including myself, wanted to collect baseball cards to get a closer connection to our heroes, and will try anything to get that one special card that will achieve in bringing us closer to our heroes, the Ken Griffey Junior card was this for the author.
This piece is full of an honest love and dedication to the game of baseball. Burgess already has a 25,000 card set but it would never be enough until it was a complete set. What is most interesting to me is that he could cheat. He could ask for a factory set for Christmas and finally have a complete collection but that is not what it was about for him. It was about the pursuit and the accomplishment on his own. This connects to why he loved Griffey, "he was the symbol of everything good about baseball before bigger ballparks, bigger contracts and bigger biceps"(Burgess). Griffey was just a good player, who worked hard, content with his own ability. Burgess and Griffey share this common sense of dedication and hard work that is often lost in today's baseball culture.
ReplyDeleteThe theme that stood out to me the most in this piece was dedication, of both the card collector and the player he idolized. Joseph Burgess had a fixation with the one card that would, in his mind, make his 25,000-card collection complete, and when it serendipitously appeared in his life it appeared as if his dedication to his hobby had paid off. When it was taken away from him he still held onto the hope that one day he would find that card, “The Card”, again. That kind of dedication is something that is echoed throughout the world of baseball. Baseball players, like Ken Griffey Jr. of “The Card”, dedicate their lives to their sport. They come back from injury, they constantly are on the move during the season, and they play until they can’t play anymore. Before modern baseball, players could play for decades and as we read about, they played hundreds of games every year. Baseball requires commitment from both the players and the fans, whether it is the star pitcher, the passionate fan, or the card collector forever searching for the pièce de résistance of his lifelong passion.
ReplyDeleteI find that the dedication that Burgess put toward completing his baseball card collection is truly inspiring. As a kid I had the same love that Burgess had for his collection, but mine were Yu-Gi-Oh cards.However, I never had the same discipline that Joseph had for himself when it came to acquiring cards. I found that this dedication that Burgess had was similar to the story of how hard A-Rod worked to become such a great baseball player, only to then end up not staying true to himself and cheating. It's also interesting how Burgess refers to Griffey as "the symbol of everything good about baseball" and the reader can refer to Joseph in a similar way. He represented everything good about a collector and loyal fan. But eventually not only let himself down but his idol as well.
ReplyDeleteBurgees does a great job at describing the myth of players like Ken Griffey Jr. All true baseball fans have our one favorite player. For Burgees it was Ken Griffey and for me it has always been Jose Reyes. However, it’s not the stats that causes us to love them, it’s the aura of them. We love them for who they are and what they represent. We love the players that bring flamboyance and showmanship to the game and Griffey represented just that. Even though Griffey was an amazing player it wasn’t his stats that made kids like Burgees love him, it was his attitude. Griffey was just cool with his backwards hat, his gold erring and his amazing moments of athleticism. This swag is what had kids all over the country trying to emulate him. This is why we love baseball because it isn’t just about the stats or what we see in the win column. It’s about the legend and stories of amazing players that we look at as legends. Griffey exemplifies the same showmanship as legends like Babe Ruth, Satchel Paige and Derek Jeter. It’s not their numbers that cause us to love them it’s their larger than life personalities that cause us to love them or in Jeter’s case hate them.
ReplyDelete-Luc
More than anything else. this article does a superb job of highlighting the notion that baseball is its own culture, and certainly has its own religion. The "baseball gods" were something that my brothers and I constantly prayed too, hoping as well to unearth a special rookie card, or in actual game the mythical walk-off. The baseball gods were not particularly charitable in this story, as they took away The Card as soon as they had given it. But they had, and have to, for if they didn't we would not love baseball. Baseball the only sport where failing the strong majority of the time can be coined successful, and that is what makes it exciting and unique; the myths of baseball are only extraordinary because of exactly how depressing the ordinary is.
ReplyDeleteWhat I love about this article is that not only does it relate to many memories that come up not only in my life about collecting cards but most likely every other kid in the world at some point, but it captures the magic that appears in baseball; the magic that makes you say "it's too good to be true." When focusing on the magic that happens in reality in baseball, I remember all the times that players make unbelievable plays. Ones like the perfect game that Matt Cain pitched or the World Series that the Giants won, ending their championship drought. It is those plays that bring the magic to the game that the author was writing about. Some things just come out of no where and surprise everyone.
ReplyDeleteI like how this article highlights the idea that every person can have a different type of obsession with baseball. When I was younger, I was less fascinated by baseball cards as I was by learning about specific players. I spent several years trying to learn everything I could about Benito Santiago. I collected his jerseys and bobble-heads and made sure that I was up to date on all of his latest plays. For a while, I was too young to understand that baseball players could be traded after a number of years. As the author expressed his disappointment when Ken Griffey Jr. had to miss a game with a broken wrist, I was reminded of the first game I attended after Santiago had been traded to the Kansas City Royals. The trade came as an absolute shock and his absence made me feel as if had lost my connection with the Giants. I continued to follow Santiago’s career up until he was released from the New York Mets in 2005. As the author mentions in the piece, there was a certain sense of dedication that could not be lost. I appreciate how his story helps the reader understand the level of devotion that fans feel toward different areas of the game.
ReplyDeleteWhat I found interesting about this story of "The Card" was how dedicated to collecting the cards but staying true to his self-definition of cheating and his desire to collect the cards the right way. It would not have been hard to keep the card, possibly lying and saying that he already lost it, but due to his religious background at Catholic school, he not only thought that it was right to return the card, but also had the faith — one of the strongest teachings in catholicism — that the card would be returned to him in one way or another if he did the right thing. When I read this story and began writing, I thought of A-Rod right away and how they both had similar extreme goals, A-Rod to be the best, and Burgess to collect all of the cards, but how Rodrigues would stop at nothing to get it and Burgess thought that playing by the rules was the only way success could actually be achieved. Burgess was dedicated to collecting his cards, but in a fair way, whereas some baseball players nowadays lose that desire to compete fairly and think that progress is success, no matter how it is achieved.
ReplyDeleteThis article takes me back to my own days of collecting baseball cards. I really into it for a few years as a kid and I accumulated huge binders full of various cards, often with players who I didn't even know previously. The cards of older players were often the stuff of legend to me, and I would imagine their style of play and I would analyze their stats and give them various rankings. Watching them on TV didn't even matter because I could imagine the way they played. This idea of legend and imagination holds true throughout baseball, as a game and a pastime.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading the piece one theme I noticed is how dedicated and attached the character was to the card. It reminds me of normal baseball in general. How fans are so attached to their favorite players and how fans are so dedicated to their teams. After reading how important it was for this kid to have that card, it made me think back to how I used to be so attached to my favorite baseball cards which included JT Snow and Barry Bonds, and also how dedicated I am to supporting my team, the Giants. This piece reminded me of the loyalty dedication, enthusiasm and attachment that baseball brings to its fans and its players.
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ReplyDeleteLooking through the lenses of dedication and loss, the story about this certain elusive Ken Griffey Jr. card had many connections to baseball in the pre-integration era. As for the writer of the article, he had spent years of baseball card collecting and dedicating time to his beloved hobby to finally, by chance, end up on the one thing he had been searching for for so long. And then it was gone within a day. This reminded me a lot of 42 because negro players like Robinson had the same amount of passion (I don't want to make any sweeping generalizations) for the game as those in the MLB and all it took, in Robinson's case, was one lucky day that all of the sudden he would be considered to play in the big leagues. He was successful, but at first there certainly was no telling so. He could have emotionally broken down at any moment or not have even been at the skill level required to play for the Dodgers and could have been dropped instantly, just like the author lost his card.
ReplyDeleteI think this article plays on baseball's theme of instantaneous miracles. The author randomly stumbles upon the card of all cards, and loses it in an equally miraculous fashion. This parallels the crazily random bursts of play in baseball leading to a team's success or failure. We see similar structure in the other baseball poems we've read for homework, mirroring Baseball's sporadic shifts from calm to eventful.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed this article because I loved the nostalgia that was present throughout the piece. He remembers his baseball cards as almost his first job, or hobby, one of the first things that actually had substance in his life. When I was younger I would go to the cards and comics store all the time. I loved it there because I felt cool amongst my brother and his friends who were always buying baseball cards. Although I usually went for the pokemon cards, my brother and his friends stocked up on the baseball cards and would quickly go home to trade them. I would always buy a pack, just so I could get in on the fun and the stick of gum, but the boys' enthusiasm as they ripped open the plastic seal was something else. Like Joseph Burgess baseball cards were what they grew up on, and something that would forever be a staple in their youth.
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