Interstate Treasure

This last Friday and Saturday was the annual Wisconsin Baseball Coaches’ Association clinic in Madison. While I’m not coaching high school baseball this spring, in Wisconsin or otherwise, I made the trip down again with the coaches from River Falls. For one, I wanted to start spreading the world about the Beyond the Fence to a target market. More importantly, it’s a good time of the year to leave life behind for 48 hours and just talk about baseball and share some laughs with a bunch of dudes.

We left Madison to head home mid-morning on Saturday, and shortly into the drive we launched into a discussion on parenting. In the backseat, Joe, a 47-year old father of two daughters, was trying his best to impart the wisdom he’d gleaned in twenty-plus years of parenting for both driver Ryan, an early-30s father of three, and me, a 30-year old soon-to-be-father. It was out of the norm for the weekend to have such a serious discussion, and it was truly the first “serious” discussion I’d had with anyone about what it means to be called “Dad.” At times it was enlightening, at times it was encouraging, and other times it was completely and utterly terrifying.

After about a half hour of this, Ryan exclaimed, “%#%, I think that’s my exit, hold on.” He jerked the wheel to the right, we crossed two lanes of traffic, and went up and over the white lines that are supposed to indicate “You missed it” to make the exit lane.

However, he had, for some reason, thought we were at the I-90/I-94 split near Tomah. Instead, we were only at the place where I-39 splits to Wausau – the 90/94 exit wasn’t for at least another hour and a half. Ryan had made the drive from Madison to River Falls at least 250 times before in his life, so even he admitted that the mistake was clearly bizarre. We chalked it up to being lost in conversation and what happens when you lose focus on the fact that you’re driving.

“Well, there’s a gas station over there, anybody have to go?” He asked. No one did, but we considered it a good idea to have an excuse for our detour off the freeway and avoid having to stop later. We pulled up to a BP station near the little town of Caledonia, where a 30-foot tall cowboy statue stood guard over the parking lot.

As Ryan and I were waiting for Joe to take his turn at the john, we discovered, in the aisle of the convenience store nearest the bathroom, shelves filled with boxes baseball cards. If it was just normal baseball cards, that wouldn’t be anything unusual. But, these boxes of unopened packs of baseball cards, priced at just 75 cents each, weren’t new. They were from 1989-1991.

1989-1991 was right in my wheelhouse for collecting baseball cards, from second to fourth grade. I would sort them into teams on the floor, I’d put them in plastic sheet protectors, we’d trade them up and down the block.

“I’ll give you Floyd Bannister, Mark McLemore, and Mark Langston and Darryl Strawberry.”

“Deal.”

Ryan and I joked that we should pick up a few packs of cards, but it was just jokes. We turned back around to wait our turn. Suddenly, something inside me said, “Buy the cards.” It was a little like the voice in the movie Field of Dreams . . . “If you build it, he will come . . . Go the distance . . . Ease his pain.” I turned around and instinctively picked up four packs of cards, three 1989 Donruss and a 1991 Upper Deck package. I looked at Ryan and shrugged my shoulders before bringing them to the counter and setting them down. I opened my wallet. I had exactly three dollars. Not two, not four; exactly three. Shoot, sales tax, I thought. I began to dig for change as she rang them up. No way was I going to explain a $3.26 charge on my credit card to my wife and have to tell her it was for baseball cards.

“Three dollars,” the female clerk said.

“No tax?”

“Nope. Just three dollars.”

I handed it over.

When we got back on the road, Joe opened the first package, the Upper Deck cards. We played a game, something a bunch of obsessed, crusty old baseball coaches would do: Joe read us stats and facts, and Ryan and I had to guess the player’s name, sort of like Jeopardy. It was good stuff.

“My turn,” I said, taking the next package of cards. I opened it, 1989 Donruss, and started rifling through. I picked out one to save for last.

For the last player, I used this as the fact: “The one player that a 10-year outfielder in Minnesota always wanted to get and never did.”

There was only one card I always wanted when I was a kid. Every time I opened a package of cards, be they Topps, Fleer, Upper Deck, or in a box of cereal, it was just one player I hoped for. Never, ever in my childhood did I get it. Not once. Never could trade for it, either.

They thought for a moment. “Kirby Puckett,” Joe said quietly. I smiled.

“Kirby Puckett!” I exclaimed, holding it up. I explained to them how I always wanted a Kirby Puckett card, and never, ever got one. Now, FINALLY, at thirty years old, it’s come. We had a good laugh about it.

“Another game?” I asked.

“Sure,” Ryan answered.

I opened the next pack. I didn’t say anything for about a full minute.

“Well, ready?” Joe asked me.

I still didn’t say anything.

“Josh?”

I held the pack of cards in my hand. I slowly turned around in the seat and held them up. I hadn’t shuffled them yet.

“No way.”

The first card, right on top? Kirby Puckett.

This was now too strange. It was then that I remembered what we’d been talking about as Ryan had mysteriously jerked the wheel to exit at the gas station: fatherhood.

Am I just connecting some random events to help me with a life transition? Maybe.

Or . . . was this the last gift from the baseball gods before I become a dad? "Okay, Josh, here's one last taste of your childhood before it's time to grow up."

Did the gas station really exist? If I go back there, would it just be mist, or would there just be an empty, rubble-filled lot?

If you build it, he will come . . . Buy the Cards . . .

When it comes to writing books, there are infinitely more books about baseball than any other sport. What is it that makes the game so magical?

I can’t answer that question, what makes it so magical. But in the two 1989 Kirby Puckett cards sitting on the desk in my office right now, I sure have enough proof for me that it is magical.