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As First Niagara Center is still dark and everything I think lately about the Bills I've already written, today I'm going off the board for a hundred, Jack.
You see, a whimsical and extravagant bid I made recently in a baseball card auction surprisingly to me ended up winning. I am scrambling to pay for this card which is both nervewracking and exciting. And when I'm not thinking about how to pay for the card I think of what it will be like to own it.
It all has me pondering how circumstances, many times random ones, determine who and what in life you love.
The card is 1952 Topps Baseball #312, Jackie Robinson, in close to mint condition. Robinson's importance as a sports figure and in American history of course mean a great deal to me and did play a role in my choosing to bid on this card, as did the card's artistic beauty. But I made no particular effort to seek out an expensive Robinson card; rather, it's mostly that I happened to be on that card's page when the strange impulse struck me to bid.
In short, I chose this card over a few dozen others in the same price range mostly because of luck.
This kind of thing happens so, so much in life, and it happens in important and beautiful ways.
I've been married eight years to a wonderful woman I would not know had I not agreed to meet two friends out at a specific bar on my birthday 10 years ago next week -- and even at that we might be strangers anyway if not for her wearing a certain clingy sweater.
We are adoptive parents of two. Stay with me on this: Had his birthmother's mother not liked Scrabble the way my wife and I did, I wouldn't know my own son. (Adoption journeys all have their own happy peculiarities. We made a profile that our agency distributed to women seeking to place their child. We mentioned Scrabble in ours, and it was noticed. Focusing on this particular thought tends to make me light-headed. Actually so does that sweater.)
In short, I chose this card over a few dozen others in the same price range mostly because of luck.
This kind of thing happens so, so much in life, and it happens in important and beautiful ways.
I've been married eight years to a wonderful woman I would not know had I not agreed to meet two friends out at a specific bar on my birthday 10 years ago next week -- and even at that we might be strangers anyway if not for her wearing a certain clingy sweater.
We are adoptive parents of two. Stay with me on this: Had his birthmother's mother not liked Scrabble the way my wife and I did, I wouldn't know my own son. (Adoption journeys all have their own happy peculiarities. We made a profile that our agency distributed to women seeking to place their child. We mentioned Scrabble in ours, and it was noticed. Focusing on this particular thought tends to make me light-headed. Actually so does that sweater.)
Ever think about why we love the sports teams we do? For most of us of course it's that they were the closest teams to us when we were born. For a society that prides itself on freedoms of choice and expression, most Americans for their sports loyalties use a caste system. Most of us don't so much choose to be Bills and Sabres fans as we are born into it.
Circumstances beyond our control.
Should it be this way?
It might be nice to sell our feelings for (if not about) the Bills or Sabres on eBay, to make a break. See if we can pick up a team like, say, the Texans. They don't seem to have that many fans so maybe you can get them at a good price.
But of course this kind of thinking won't fly. No one does it, no one respects it. In sports you get who you get. Maybe at its core this is why fantasy sports is so popular; deep down we know getting stuck with a certain existence from birth to death just isn't the American way.
Collecting is like fantasy sports. You can have who you want. My favorite thing about collecting is how well those choices reflect who I am as a person. For example: I am in awe of success and winning. I've never been a big winner, just like my teams, and I admire this drive and ability to win in others. Also, for better or worse I value thought and intellect well above feeling and emotion. Head over heart. Thirdly, I'm superficial -- I want to display things that stand apart and impress.
Add it all up: I have Super Bowl MVP-signed mini-helmets and lots of cards of players who were great before I was born. Also, glaringly, there is almost no Buffalo representation in my collection.
(Demonstrating this ironically is the one piece of Memorial Auditiorium memorabilia that I own. It's a sign that was used on the blue overhead scoreboard. It reads, "OILERS".)
When I look around and see some of the pieces I have on display -- a Brooks Robinson jersey, an RGIII helmet, a Ray Lamontagne poster -- I think of how my collection, like the people in my life, came to be mine through largely random events. I have a friend that knows Brooks Robinson. Another friend had access to Robert Griffin, who starred at Baylor, my wife's school. I learned of Lamontagne from "American Idol", a show I've since sworn off.
Most of my collection doesn't perfectly reflect my interests or taste, which I'm always observing and honing, but it was available to me for the right price and in the end I guess it comes close enough. Just like my car, and my house, and dare I stretch the point to say it, my loving wife. (If I ever need to defend saying this about how she and I are different I'm going with how she's a vegetarian and has compassion for others.)
Before buying this monster card I always admired Jackie Robinson, a man before my time, but never loved him. I love him now.