First off, Local Quipster sends us a story indicating Upper Deck and Michael Eisner’s group are hot on the idea of buying Topps. We have to take issue with the idea that Upper Deck and Topps are both “iconic baseball card makers that have sold sports memorabilia to generations of fans young and old.” More like: Topps is that, and Upper Deck, while gorgeous for a few years, ruined collecting. There, fixed.

As you’ve probably heard already, Batgirl is no longer. Sad, indeed. We’ll keep her on the blog roll as a tribute. (Notice, too, the “main” section over there on the right. We just passed Hank Aaron!)
And finally, Will over at Deadspin has a thoughtful post about Tom Verducci that gives us an excuse to re-print something we wrote for the Newspaper of the Twin Cities around this time last year about baseball, growing up, giving up the game, and dads. Excuse the navel-gazing. Sometimes we can’t help it. Here you go:

It’s like opening a door into the past, my companion said, and she was right. The door of the dugout where I played my last two seasons of meaningful baseball swung open wide, and it felt a little like I had never left.

Before this, we had taken advantage of a suddenly short walk from my father’s new house to the old ballfield in my hometown of Grand Forks, N.D. A curiosity lingered, having not seen the stadium for at least a decade, but we weren’t sure how close we would get. A fence guards the perimeter, and heavy chains with locks secure the gates.

As we pondered wedging through a foot-wide gap between gate doors, a man appeared with a key. He unlocked the front and said sure, it was just fine to have a look around.

Maybe it was meant to be. Maybe this was a good idea.

- - -

The idea in question had roots in a nagging question that had extended into my professional life. Every summer, as things slow down, I have a notion to do a story about the psychological impact on athletes when they give up a sport. What does it mean for someone — regardless of whether they played in high school or professionally — to reach the point when they can go no further?

And conversely, could the answers help explain why so many of us gather late at night reliving past glories, or give insight into the minds of those like Brett Favre and Roger Clemens, who seem incapable of giving up?

But as happens more often than we care to admit, the questions we have of others are really questions we have of ourselves.

So there we were at the ballpark. No expert opinions, just memories.

- - -

One of the strongest memories is telling my dad I wasn’t going to play anymore. After years of youth baseball and two seasons of American Legion ball — there was no high school team at the time — the writing was on the wall. It was probably around this time of year — around Father’s Day - and I remember him hiding the disappointment well.

This weekend, when I talked of this idea about athletes giving up their sport, he said, “But you didn’t have to give it up.”

A small part of him still thinks I could be in the major leagues right now. He remembers the tireless kid with the sparkling glove, not the slow-to-grow teen who couldn’t, as the years went on, cut it at the plate.

Maybe it’s more fun to remember it the first way.

Maybe part of the difficulty of giving something up is feeling like you’re letting somebody down. Could be parents. Could be teammates. Could be yourself. It’s all the same.

- - -

We took a stroll through the outfield. It turns out the team I used to play for no longer exists, but my high school has a team and was the state champion this year. The man with the key is the coach.

Maybe some of the state champs from my old high school — or even some recent graduates here in the Twin Cities — will make a similar trip in a dozen or so years. Some free advice: There is no magic threshold like the one in “Field of Dreams,” where you get one more at-bat. You think about good times. You think about how everything looks a little smaller. Mostly, you think about how much has changed. Sometimes, you form opinions like this:

The biggest impact of giving up a sport comes from trading a love — a game — for something cold and unknown. The best word for it is reality. Even though I knew it was time to let go when I did, the cliche is true: You don’t realize how much you miss something until it’s gone. You can simulate the experience, but it’s never quite the same.

The big secret to getting over the psychological hurdle: Finding something else to love like a kid loves baseball. That means something pure and something that is your own. Maybe those who struggle with it haven’t yet found that replacement.

For me, opening the dugout door into the present, there was this thought: That love now has to do with ideas and sports and trying to make sense of them by writing things down.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 24th, 2007 at 11:43 am and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.