Baseball cards bring us back to the past

• Matt Suoja

Matt Suoja

Talk about it

A friend of mine recently showed me some old baseball cards that he had stored away.

Some of the players’ names I had never heard of, while a few names stood out.

Like Rogers Hornsby, the Hall of Fame second baseman for the St. Louis Cardinals. I heard the name before and knew he was in the Hall of Fame, but that’s about it. After looking at it, I decided to do some research.

I was a little surprised to find out that he had a career .358 batting average which is second on the all-time list behind Ty Cobb (he batted an amazing .366 clip for his career).

On an interesting side note, I discovered that Kirby Puckett was 53rd (.318) with only four active players in front of him: Albert Pujols, Ichiro Suzuki, Todd Helton and Vladimir Guerrero.

After encountering these old cards, later in the week I looked at some my old ones (well to me anyway).

Then I encountered a name that most have probably forgotten: Pedro Munoz.

That’s a blast from the past.

The Puerto Rican played for the Twins for six seasons including the 1991 World Series championship team. He eventually finished his career with the Oakland Athletics. I am not 100 percent sure, but I think I met him before at a TwinsFest at the Metrodome (an annual event where fans can meet the players and buy sports memorabilia). At that fest, I do somewhat recall meeting a much younger Ron Gardenhire, who was the third base coach at the time.

Strange how my stream of baseball consciousness works: from Hornsby to Gardenhire.

All of this was done by just a little piece of cardboard with a player’s picture and name on it.

Next week I will delve into the world of sports cards today. The industry is more or less turning into a lottery where a lucky few find a huge score they can sell on eBay for thousands (possibly tens of thousands) of dollars without even thinking about what history the card holds.

Matt Suoja is a reporter with the Lake County News Chronicle. E-mails can be sent to msuoja@lcnewschronicle.com.

Tags: two harbors, sports, matt suoja, baseball cards