I’m on the corner in front of Katterman’s Drug Store. They took one look and ran me out after I paid at the register, caked in dust and sweat from an afternoon on the diamond.
So now here I am. Debating.
Do I rip open this pack of Topps in the August swelter? Risk pissing Mom off even worse than I know she is? I’m late already. Why not take a look? Or do I hop back on my bike, sprint home, beg forgiveness, bolt up the stairs, and take refuge in the bathtub?
One foot on the pedal, I straddle the seat and… no. No! I gotta see who I got. The waxy wrap falls away. Funny, the bubblegum feels like cardboard, and the cards smell like bubblegum.
Tom Who? Why do they fill these packs with rookies?
Campaneris. Cuellar. Any Seattle Pilots? Yeah, nice. Barber. And – why this guy? I already got this guy. So what if he was NL Rookie of the Year. I mean, he pitches for the Mets. Yuck.
Last year, same thing happened. Not twice, but three times. Same card, I mean I like the guy and all but I was rooting for the Sox in the Series and it was like salt in the wound.
I know, I know… why ya gotta rub it in?
The bubblegum stick cracks and crumbles in my mouth. I shove the stack in my pocket and pedal for home.
But that scene wasn’t possibly 51 years ago last month. Was it? It had to be, like, just a couple days ago. Right?
The August I got two Tom Seavers was 1969. He was about to lead the so-what-they’re-horrible Mets to their Miracle. And the year I couldn’t get away from Lou Brock was ’68, after he and Bob Gibson and a cast of future Hall of Famers took down the Sox in seven games. Over and over, I unwrapped that pack at Katterman’s and there they were.
I’m a Yankee fan. With a soft spot for the Sox ’cause Dad bought me this. In 1968.
For fifty-plus years, I’ve heard those two names and suddenly I’m eleven years old, sweating and stinking and dripping infield dirt onto a stack of bubblegum cards, a nickel a pack at Katterman’s.
There’s a line in a Jerry Jeff Walker song, “One day I looked up, he was pushin’ eighty…” Are we ever aware of days as they pass? Or do we just look up one day and realize how much is in the rearview… and wonder how it got there?
Seaver’s name pops up on the news, and I’m back at Katterman’s. But this time I listen in disbelief… 75 years old? And he’s… dead? But, but, but… he was Rookie of the Year! Last year! And Brock, the 8-time stolen base leader who socked four hits in Game One …just a year before that? He’s dead? He was, what? He was eighty? Lou Brock was… eighty?
That sweet chalky coating, that faint hint of bubblegum, it’s all faded with the years. I still rub ’em, sniff ’em now and then. Gone. It’s all gone. Ballplayers play, they retire, they get old, they die. That’s how this works, I guess. But say those names, and it all comes back. Back to a sun-baked sidewalk and a sweaty kid on a bike.
RIP gentlemen. That rearview looks a lot better because you were there. I’m grateful.
Katterman’s: same building, same corner since 1965.
In northwest Ohio I was a Tigers fan and had Rocky Colavito, Norm Cash, Al Kaline, Frank Lary in the late 50s. It took until I was a college sophomore before it came to fruition, in the form of that wonderful 1968 season: add Denny McClain, Mickey Lolich, Bill Freehan.