Sports as analogies for life, or what I thought about on the car ride over to a card show

Baseball is the most democratic of sports. Everyone has responsibility for their position. Everyone gets a turn at bat. The best hitters don't get to take turns away from teammates. Everyone gets a chance to contribute. Baseball is the world as it should be.

Basketball is poetry in motion. It's art, maybe more art than sport. It tests the physical limits of the human body. Not only that, but it is majestic the way the body can contort to do a slam dunk after running suicides back and forth across the court for forty minutes. Seriously, trying running back and forth across a basketball court and see how many times you can do it. Basketball is the world as it could be.

Hockey is brutality. It's all about momentum and violence. Your luck can change in a split second. Like life, hockey is deeply unfair. The best teams frequently don't win. You may be the best in the world at what you do, but the game just doesn't give a shit. It's usually better to be lucky that good. Hockey is the world as it is.

I collect those three sports because they complete the holy trinity of how I view life. With that in mind, I stopped by the Leaside Card Show somewhere in midtown Toronto on Sunday afternoon. It's a show that has been going on for a few years a couple of times a month. The last time I went was probably pre-Covid, as I haven't been to any card shows in years. I live in downtown Toronto, and you would think the big city would have all kinds of card shows or whatever, but it's not the case. Most of the shows take place in some suburb that's a pain in the ass to get to.

It was a pain in the ass getting to this one, too. Toronto had shutdown the busiest parts of Yonge and Bloor for the St. Patrick's Day Parade, and it was a total nightmare trying to escape downtown. All the traffic was getting bottlenecked on Spadina. Getting home was easy though, since the parade was over. But Wal-Mart was supposed to deliver my groceries, but they couldn't get through the parade and returned to the store. They still haven't sent my groceries. And they have my money. Grrrrrrrr.

The card show wasn't busy. The weather also sucked, and people might have had other plans for St. Paddy's. Like sleeping in on Sunday after drinking green beer on Saturday. Which is fine by me, because it made browsing the tables so much easier.

The core of these smaller card shows in Canada are old guys selling old hockey cards. Often you see the same dinged up old hockey cards being sold by the same dinged up old men. I'm a dinged up middle-aged man, with four soft corners. Pretty much everyone was friendly, though, and I shot the shit with quite a few different people.

I love old hockey cards, but I just wish these smaller Canadian shows had more variety. I guess that's what sells around here. There were lots of old O-Pee-Chee baseball cards, but few modern baseball cards. Some basketball and football, but not much. More old hockey magazines and buttons and stuff like that, compared to other sports cards. I did meet an American dealer who had nothing but baseball, which gave us a chance to talk ball. If I'm a Canadian that can talk baseball, I think that makes me bilingual. 

Here is what I picked up.

 These three cards I got off a dealer who I know a little for $10 apiece (these are Canadian dollars, in case the prices seem weird). I thought that was good deal, especially since the one-touch cases came with the cards. I'm slowly working on Hall of Famer hoopers from sets before 1990. I just really liked how the LeBron splash card looked. I enjoy shiny cards when the aesthetics are gorgeous, especially when they have bright colours. I'm not a big fan of shiny stuff that is colourless and drab.

 A couple of Blue Jays cards for $5. I have a few dozen Joe Carter cards. He's my favourite ballplayer. The Alomar is an acetate numbered to 75. The Flair is just a base common, but I really like the design of Flair cards. Fleer did such a good job with brands like Flair and Ultra back in the 90s. I also like acetate cards and they are another example of shiny cards I enjoy.

These three 1970 Topps were $10. The Torre and the Flood were actually $10, and the Danny Walton was free. Curt Flood is one of the most important athletes in pro sports history. He's really an important figure in American labour history, too. I find his life to be really fascinating and I'm happy to own my first Flood card.

 These are the cartoons on the back. Someone really needs to publish a coffee table book of baseball cardback cartoons. I'm surprised these little cartoons don't get more attention from vintage card collectors. Instead of reprinting baseball cards, Topps could reprint cards of baseball cardback cartoons only.

What kind of art do you think Curt Flood made?

 This is a 68-69 O-Pee-Chee Dave Keon. $15. It's badly off center, but this set is like 79 Topps baseball where there are a ton of miscut cards. Centering is a massive problem for that year, but I'm fine with it. Keon is one of the best Leafs ever, and besides the centering the card is otherwise lovely.

That's it. I thought I had a nice little multi sport haul. If I wasn't so ADHD or whatever I could probably pick one sport and focus my collection, but I have an appreciation for what each of these sports represents about life. So my money gets spread thin, and I learn to live with it.