The Day I Traded Wade Boggs

Fast forward to spring of 1990.  On a rainy April Saturday, the phone rings.  Its my cousin Michael.  He wants to trade baseball cards.  Michael is 13 and he's calling ME to come trade baseball cards.  Of course I grab my stash, a mismatched collection assembled in various rubber band-bound stacks filed away in old shoe boxes, and run across the street to his house.  Its convenient to have your cousins live directly across the street.  There were 4 of them and 4 of us, my 3 sisters and I, so whenever you wanted to play there was always someone around for a game of wiffle ball or Cops and Robbers.  But now Michael was in junior high and didn't spend too much time playing with 10 year olds anymore.  I was ecstatic.
 

We head into the den.  His collection - far more extensive than mine - is already laid out on the coffee table.  Now I was a Topps guy.  Sure I had a few Fleer or Donruss cards mixed in here and there, but for the most part I stuck with Topps.  To me, they were just more classic.  When you flipped over a Topps card, you knew what you were getting.  Two years earlier, I had purchased my first complete set: Topps '88.  It cost $20.  That set didn't make it to this session.  I already knew that once you had a complete set you can't split it up.  The rest were tucked away under my arm, and pale in comparison to what I saw before me.  Several binders full of doozies.  Boxes of full sets: '85 Topps, '87 Fleer, '82 Topps complete set!  He also had a shoe box full of Upper Decks.  Now I was seriously jealous.  Upper Decks!  The ones with the hologram baseball diamond on the front.  They went for at least $4 a pack.  I already knew these would be off limits.
 

We get down to business.  No real blockbusters expected.  There is a Dave Winfield for Danny Tartabull.  Tom Brunansky for Matt Nokes, but only if you throw in Spike Owen because then I'd have the whole team. (By the way, what is up with managers having their own baseball cards?  I never understood that.  To me, those were always the throw-away cards, like the Diamond Stat cards or the historical player cards they would throw in the pack.  What a gyp!)
 

Then he hits me with it.  "What about your '88 Wade Boggs?" he says.  I'm in over my head.  I try to think.  Be cool.  "Whatcha got?" I coolly respond.  That's it!  Stay focused!  He low balls me with a couple of mid-level guys.  I rebuff.  It's the standard repartee, but my heart is now racing.  I turn the Boggs card over.  The batting titles, the all star seasons.  The rain outside starts to pound against the windows a little harder.
 

"How 'bout Don Mattingly."
 

I look up.  This just got serious.  You have to remember, Boggs was never really a glamour guy in Boston.  He always hit for average, but never had any power.  He was now 3 years removed from his last batting title.  But Don Mattingly!  He had already become Donnie Baseball, hitting for power and average, looking totally smug and intimidating in his pinstripes.  I successfully reach for the card without my hand shaking.  I turn it over, comparing the stats.  .327 with 30 homers that year.  The chicken man vs. Donnie Baseball.  I flip them back over.  Both of them in their mustachioed glory staring back at me.  Do I do this?  Can I do this?  I feel a little like Harry Frazee (even though I had no idea who Harry Frazee was at that point), pen ready to sign the Babe over to the Yankees with a No, No, Nanette poster hanging larger than life on my office wall.  "I dunno...," I am able to stammer.
 

Michael grabs the card back.  "Look, this is a good deal," he spits back.  "Why'd you come over if you're not going to give up any cards?"
 

"Wait!" I reply, a little too childishly I think.  My cousin wouldn't screw me over, would he?  It did seem like a good deal.  Hated even then, there was always some sort of mystery to the Yankees.  Somehow they always seemed better, more glamorous.  They were the older cousins with the Upper Deck baseball cards (the ones with the hologram baseball diamond on the back), and I wanted one.
 

"OK, I'll trade."
 

I can't feel my legs.  Mattingly goes into the box with the others and I trod home, half excited half dejected, not sure if I just made a big mistake or not.  I take off my soggy sneakers and walk into the kitchen.
 

"How'd it go?" My mom is cleaning the stove and doesn't look up.
 

"Good," I sigh. "I got Don Mattingly! Traded Boggs for him."
 

She stops and looks at me.  "You did what?!  How could you trade Boggs?" The thing about my mom is that she's not a big sports fan but she knows enough.  She knows that Wade Boggs won four batting titles and that I bought pack after pack of gum-filled Topps baseball cards trying to find him.
 

My heart sinks. "I dunno...I thought it was a good deal."  I made a big mistake.  She tells me I should just call Michael back and tell him I changed my mind.  Changed my mind? I think.  My mom obviously had never been a little boy.  That's not the way these things worked.  Once you make a trade, that's it.  Done deal.  My cousin, with his Upper Decks and boxes upon boxes of baseball cards now had my '88 Wade Boggs and there was nothing I could do about it.
 

I shuffle upstairs to my bedroom and open up my shoe box, the one where Wade Boggs used to live.  Right on top is Don Mattingly staring smugly back at me, nary a trace of a smile on his lips, eyes squinting in the sunlight.