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Lenny Green iKluzewski, and Johnny Klippstein? That’s three for one.”“Nah, I already got twelve of Klippstein—but give me your Lenny Green andit’s a deal.”It was never, “I’ll give you five dollars for your Willie Mays.” The rate of exhange was measured in Busbys and Greens, not dollars and cents.There were other ways to acquire more cards. You could, of course, buy them at the store—five cards and a stick of gum (which nobody ever chewed) for a nickel. But as a rule, people didn’t buy that many cards, maybe a dollar’s worth all season. Amuch more popular way was flipping. Three or four kids would line up and try to flip their cards as close as they cou’d to a convenient wall or step. A “leaner” was unbeatable. Flipping was an enjoyable way to spend recess, but even the most accomplished flipper would onlysucceed in adding numbers of nearly worthless cards to his shoe box. Nobody would dare flip anybody “good”, only their doubles and triples and Yankees.For most people, baseball cards belong to childhood. To the members of the ASCCA, however, card collecting is not kid stuff. One weekend last month, they held a show in New York, at a union hall onEighth Street.A visitor cherishing fond memories of his own baseball card collecting days might have had high hopes about such a show. The room would be filled with eccentric old men talking in wistful tones about the time they saw the Babe and Gehrig hit back-to-back homers. The old-timers would proudly show off pictures of their heroes which they could never bring themselves to throw away. That visitor had a few surprises in store.The first came at the door, where peoplewere told, “It costs a dollar-fifty to go in.” Well, even purists have to pay for the hall. But even more shocking was the merchandise laid out on the first table. There were no baseball cards at all. Instead, there were piles of old magazines for sale: more or less moth-eaten copies of Collier’s, Esquire, Look, and The Saturday Evening Post. Next to the magazines was a stack of old sheet music. You could pick up a copy of “There’s Yes, Yes In Your Eyes,” (words and music by Cliff Friend and Joseph H. Santly)—for a song.Another man’s specialty was old movies. His table was filled with commercially-made copies of 8x10 glossies portraying The Stars in Famous Scenes. Hanging on the wall behind him were reprints of old movie posters (the ones available in almost every book store and greeting card shop). He even had a tray of photos of rock stars. But no baseball cards.(continued on c6)Johnny Klippstein?”By TOM ICHNIOWSKIA game in which grown men wear knickers and colorful little caps is clearly not a game of the present. It is no wonder that baseball attracts more than its share of trivia nuts and nostalgia freaks, people completely at home in the past. One group connected with baseball who are more than a little nutty and freaky than even the die-hard fan are the members of the ASCCA—the American Sports Card Collectors Association. These men are crazy about baseball cards.Thinking about baseball cards automatically brings back memories of childhood. To a six-year-old boy in Baltimore in the late fities, to pull an example out of the air, Eisenhower was a nice old man who was bald and Castro was a strange man in an army suit who had a beard. Much more familiar than Ike and Castro were people like Gus Triandos, Gene Woodling, Bob Boyd, Arnie Por-tocarrero, and Hal “Skinny” Brown—the 1958 Baltimore Orioles. These were heroes the boy could see everyday up close—after all, they were right there in the shoe box on his dresser. And, besides, they had real value. The kid who owned an Oriole was a very popular person in the six-year-old Baltimore community. Friends kept coming up to him, asking if he wanted to trade.A typical exchange:“What do you want for your Jim Busby?”“What you got?”“How about Mickey Mantle, TedTom Ichniowski is a senior in the College and a member of the Spectator sports staff.
Newspaper Details
New York Columbia Spectator
New York, New York, US
Thu, Oct 11, 1973
Page 3
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
NY, USA 04 Dec 2019
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