I Am Disappointed With the Youth of Today

 

This whole blog is the fault of little league as a concept.

I did my 6 or so years in little league, made a name for myself as a power hitter as an 8/9 year old and, once I realized how tantalizingly difficult it was to hit 12/13-year-old pitching, I became a late-lineup contact/bunt supplier. I was mostly in it for the fraternity, the social bonds, as I clearly wasn't much of an athlete. I knew I wouldn't get disciplined to death by some coach, as the coach, more often than not, was my dad. 

The perk of that was at the end of the year, he'd give all his players a pack of baseball cards as a going away gift, to keep abreast of the game ahead. These packs of 2007 Topps would be my gateway into the hobby, and an addiction that's persisted to this day.

I've kept around my old little league field because my family coaches a Challenger Baseball League, and has for 15-odd years, at the same field. So I go on back to the place where I struggled to hit it past third and get to help absolute units with autism or down syndrome or whatnot completely annihilate baseballs. It's fantastic, and I assure you, a lot of these guys are legitimate athletes with genuine talent that just happen to need help with some things here and there. 

So yesterday was the first game of the season, and I get there early to help set up, and since the little league also occupies the fields, you see remnants of other coaches and regimes in the supply area. As we were unlocking the storage closet, I saw a large rubbermaid tub filled with cheap sunglasses flanked by a wax wrapper.

1993 Fleer, Atlantic Edition. Like a hunter sniffing the footprints. Cards have been this way.

In the storage room, on the old desk with various pens and supplies and things was a cardboard container filled with about 40 or so little individual bags filled with baseball cards. Despite the Fleer wrapper, there were no 90s or junk wax oddities, as everything in these baskets was from the past year, and a coach likely strung 'em together last fall to give to his travel team athletes. 

Around here was when I, and my dad, figured out that the little league had been claiming, and taking home, helmets reserved for challenger athletes. So I thought, if they're gonna leaf through our stuff...and if these baseball cards are gonna be sitting here...

Here's where I mention that this isn't the first time some coach has left cards around there. A couple years ago there were some random 2019 Bowman singles, including rookies of Adolis Garcia and Pete Alonso. Some morally-minded person would call this theft. The way these cards were strewn out in this box yesterday, they weren't being well kept, and you could just feel this dirt grit to a lot of them. 

This wasn't robbery. This was a rehoming. I was giving these cards a good home, where nobody would throw dirt on them or leave them in a box at a little league field again. 

The majority of this was from 2022 Update, a set I bought tantalizingly few cards from anyhow. There was only one outlier, that being the 2022 A&G Jack Suwinski card that heads the post. Nothing from 2023, as, again, this must have been last fall. 

I reckon this wasn't everything that landed in these packs. There weren't any inserts, there weren't any Philadelphia Phillies, and there was certainly no sign of Julio Rodriguez or Bobby Witt or any of the big money cards. Though, as evidenced by Pujols, they weren't all picked clean.

These boxes, which I didn't completely ransack as there were a lot of Henry Ramoses and Stephan Ridingses that I had no interested in, were predominantly filled with rookies. I think this coach must have known that rookies were what the kids wanted, and could hold onto. But there were a lot of veterans too, and these two, which, like most of these, were new to me, had some of the more inspired photography of Topps' recent eras.

All of these were needs for me. Bassitt, Ruf and Cutch have already moved on, but these are at least good portraits of them. Joc's City Connect uni is pretty cool there.

And yes, there were some rookies there that I had some interest in. As this was last fall, Bryce Elder had yet to become a big figure in the Braves' rotation, so these kids must not have had a use for him. Useful for me, for sure.

These three aren't even on these teams anymore. Sears is more of a loyalty pick than anything. But Siri and Gore are gonna be big, and have already posted excellent numbers this year. 

Whole page of rookies. Some of these aren't in great shape, admittedly Duran's has a bent corner, which isn't ideal, but these were still useful. 

Most surprisingly, there was an OMG rookie card still left in here, that of Nick Lodolo. There was a Hunter Greene as well, but I already pulled two of those last year. Lodolo is sharp, and he'll probably have the longer career of the two. If the kids aren't gonna want a genuinely good rookie card, I guess I'll take it.

As I went about the day of Challenger games, I couldn't help but notice a few of the empty plastic bags that I'd seen in the storage room lying around on the field, or a corner of a pack flittering in the breeze. I thought about how grateful I was 15 years back to get packs of cards, and how I tried to trade with my teammates and value the star cards, and now I see that the kids of today either want the really ritzy stuff from cards or they don't care. Julio or bust. And so to see the unorganized, occasionally dinged mess that I sifted through was disheartening, but not surprising. Not every kid growing up now has that collecting gene, I guess, and not every kid sees the hobby like I've grown to see it.

Still, if they're not gonna value the occasional cards, I guess collectors like me will have to.