The Beckett Blog

Just when we think we’ve seen it all, another tricky hobby situation pops up on our radar. We’ll reveal in a couple days how this true story ended.

You’re at a collectibles show in 2001. You just purchased on eBay a 1994 Upper Deck SP Alex Rodriguez for $90.

The card is cherry, and you submit your card for grading at the BGS booth. If it grades out like you think, you’ll quadruple your money. If it grades just a half grade better than you think, you’re sitting on a $5,000 card.

Two hours later, your A-Rod card comes back sealed in a top loader, not graded. “Recolored” is the verdict. A very, very close inspection with a 10x magnifying loupe shows the upper left corner has been touched with a dark felt tip marker.

There are three other grading companies and 150 exhibitors buying and selling in the room. You’re on eBay every night.

What would you do?

As reported in an earlier post by keeper of the blog, Pepper Hastings, winter returned to D-FW briefly yesterday, in the form of snow and sleet. We drove home on roads that looked like a giant white Slurpee.

Stuck in traffic, my mind wandered.  I went to a warmer place; a place filled with crystal blue skies, green grass, the sounds cracking bats and popping leather; and the sweet aroma of Cracker Jacks and popping corn. It’s the uniquely American Utopian place called Spring Training.

I love spring training baseball. If you have never been, you are missing an awesome experience. From a collecting standpoint, it’s a great chance to graph up. Not only are the players very accessible, additionally, you never know what legend or Hall-of-Famer you might encounter.  My first trip was as a college student and aspiring young broadcaster at Ouachita Baptist University in 1977. I wrote to the Texas Rangers requesting a press pass. To my surprise, I received credentials for two and headed from Arkadelphia Arkansas to Pompano Beach with my roommate Elmer Goble (yes, that’s his real name), a tape recorder, a Gulf Oil credit card and $50. We drove all night and slept most of the week in the car, since we had no hotel reservations or money for a hotel.  

Through the years my travels have taken me to about a dozen spring training complexes. These are some of my favorite memories. 

1. Standing behind the batting cage watching Thurman Munson, Cliff Johnson, Lou Pinella, Mickey Rivers and Graig Nettles take BP. And then, the completely different sound of the swing and the ball hitting the bat when Reggie Jackson uncoiled.
2. Between “interviews” on the field, using my cassette recorder, with Fergie Jenkins, Jim Sundberg, Mike Hargrove and others, ducking into the press lunch room for FREE roast beef sandwiches.
3. The elderly hot dog vendor, in Florida, who’s sales pitch was, “Hot Dogs for sale, I‘m coming into your section, if you have no objection!!”
4. Conducting a real interview with Padres’ manager Dick Williams about a young prospect, Tony Gwynn. I was PR director and broadcaster for the Amarillo Gold Sox at the time. Tony joined us for the finals five weeks of the season in 1981 and hit .462 as a first year minor leaguer. Williams said, “He is the best young hitter I have seen in a while. We are starting him in Hawaii (AAA), but he will be in the big leagues some time this year. He is a tremendous prospect.”  I believe he got that one right.
5. Spending a day at Dodgertown and thinking I have never seen a whiter white than the Dodger uniforms. At the game, we sat in the first row, near first base, and umpire Mike Reilly kept coming over between innings to talk baseball with us.
6. Arriving at the White Sox camp one morning and running into broadcaster Harry Carey. He had on his big black glasses and was wearing a white t-shirt and a pair of red madras Bermuda shorts that allowed sun to his legs that were whiter than even the Dodgers uniforms. . He cheerfully greeted us, “Gentlemen, gentlemen, it’s a beautiful day for baseball!”
7. At the Padres’ camp, pitcher Mark Thurmond, who had played in Amarillo the previous season, gave me his game glove from the previous year. It was a Mizuno with his named stitched down the thumb. I still have it, 25 years later.
8. A sad memory was arriving at the Padres’ camp minutes after Byron Ballard, a pitcher who I shared an apartment with, and one of the nicest guys in the world, had just been told he was being released. He raced past us in his car, without a word, completely devastated, out of baseball.
9. Watching Reggie Jackson and Yogi Berra hanging around the batting cage as Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Alfonso Soriano and that group were hitting. During a break, Yogi, walked around the infield picking up baseballs and loading them into the bucket. How many HOFers would do that with a big smile?
10. In 1977, walking down miles of Daytona Beach watching the spring break girls in bikinis. We had no chance with any of them. What was I going to say? “Hi, I’m Ted and this is my friend ELMER!” We set our own strikeout record that day.

 I  know you have memories as good or better than these, care to share?