Beyond the Cardboard Episode 2

In all its Joe Sports Fan glory...

"Beyond the Cardboard" with Earl Sanderson (Episode 2) from JoeSportsFan.com on Vimeo.

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New Site: HHR's Gem Mint Ten

To help preserve the legacy of our cardboard heroes of yesteryear, HHR proudly announces the launch of "HHR's Gem Mint Ten."

And by "heroes" we mean 2 cent commons we have kept strictly for comedic purposes.

Remember, Kids

Only Steve Sax can prevent forest fires.

(I told you have have tons of crap. I've only begun to scratch the surface.)

I Don't Get It

Why does this guy get everyone all worked up? Is he really that bad?

I Must Break You

Dick Drago, best known for giving up the last of Hank Aaron's 755 career home runs, is sorely overlooked when ranking the best names in sports history.

Here he is, the pride of Bean Town.

Bonus points for having a pickle tickler that would put Harry Waxman to shame. Which leads us to believe he also was not afforded his just due in the by the AMI.

Got em, Got em, Need em, Got em, Need em

TSG shows off a collection we hope someday ends up in Joe Sports Fan's worthless card collection.

Three Huckabees For An Obama?

Here's the one that catches our eye.

No mention of the Governor's baseball past?

C'mon Topps!

For nearly four decades, Richardson, a prominent Democrat frequently mentioned as a possible presidential candidate, has maintained he was drafted as a pitcher in 1966 by the Kansas City Athletics.

But an Albuquerque Journal investigation found no record of Richardson being drafted by the A's, who have since moved to Oakland, or any other team. Informed by the newspaper of its findings, the governor acknowledged the error in a story published Thursday by the paper.

"After being notified of the situation (by Journal reporter Toby Smith) and after researching the matter ... I came to the conclusion that I was not drafted by the A's," Richardson said.

For the record, if anyone's looking to deal, I'm offering a Buddy Biancalana, Steve Jeltz and a Brook Jacoby for a gem mint 10 Kucinich.

Ren's Ten: Coaches & Execs' Cards

A few weeks back I did a Ren's Ten segment title "Cleaning out the Garage." I promised more editions featuring the collectibles I rescued from my parents disposal.

Today, I offer sports cards featuring players who ended up coaches or executives, and opine on whether or not their transition has been successful.

White-Collar Success

Player: Joe Dumars
Position: Pistons’ President of Basketball Operations.
Notes: 2002-03 NBA Executive of the Year; 2004 NBA World Championship
Card: 1994 Skybox "Showdown Series" #SS10

Player: Avery Johnson
Position: Mavs’ Head Coach
Notes: Fastest Coach to both 100 and 150 wins; 2006 NBA Coach of the Year; 2006-07 NBA Best Record (Playoff Upset by #8 Seed)
Card: 1993-94 Upper Deck #328

Player: Steve Largent
Position: President and CEO of the CTIA -The Wireless Association
Notes: While he failed in his bid at executive office, Governor of Oklahoma in 2002, it is hard to say that a former Hall of Fame athlete who went on to serve as a four-term Congressman and currently as president and CEO of a trade association could be billed as anything less than an successful executive.
Card: 1990 Score (Record Breakers) #592

Middle of the Road / TBD

Player: Mo Cheeks
Position: 76ers Head Coach
Notes: We will give him the benefit of the doubt considering he went from the Jailblazers to managing an ensemble constructed by the as-of-today unemployed Billy King. Not the two most envious NBA jobs in the world.
Card: 1992 NBA Hoops #2

Player: Joel Skinner
Position: Cleveland Indians' 3rd Base Coach
Notes: While it is easy to signal out Skinner as a failure due to his most recent gaffe in Game 7 of the 2007 American League Champion Series, Skinner looks to have a history as a minor league coaching stud:

• 1995: New York-Penn League Manager of the Year
• 1997: Carolina League Manager of the Year
  
• 1998 : USA Today Baseball Weekly's Minor League Manager of the Year
  
• 2000: Baseball America and The Sporting News Minor League Manager of the Year; International League Manager of the Year honors

Let's do something in the Bigs can we?
Card: 1989 Fleer #270

Player: Ozzie Guillen
Position: Chicago White Sox Manager
Notes: As known for his mouth and erratic behavior as for his leadership qualities, Ozzie did lead his team to the 2005 World Series title. That is however, his squad's only playoff appearance with him at the helm.
Card: 1988 Donruss #137

Player: Glenn "Doc" Rivers

Position: Boston Celtics' Head Coach
Notes: The 2000 NBA Coach of the Year with the Orlando Magic, Doc never really had the pieces or chemistry or continuity to make a strong run deep into the playoffs. This year, of course, being a notable exception.
Card: 1990 SkyBox #7

Player: John Paxson
Position: Chicago Bulls General Manager
Notes: While I want to throw him in the following batch, Paxson has made as many great moves, particularly in the draft, as he has boneheaded ones, particularly via trade. The teams, while loaded with talent, have yet to crack the upper echelon of the NBA, despite being perennially poised to in recent years, especially in the Leastern Conference.
Card: 1989 NBA Hoops #89.

Laughing Stocks

No, I am not Fred Gwynne

Player: Kevin McHale
Position: Minnesota TWolves' Vice President of Basketball Operations
Notes: We made no bones about it here at HHR. It's been sometime since the NBA interested us. We could rip into McHale, but it would probably end up looking like some rehashed Sports Guy template. But because we recognize what a boob KMac is, BOOYAH! We asked good buddy and our goto guy for NBA insight and humor, Benjamin L. Pray over at Stu Scott's Lazy Eye, to give us his thoughts...

Kevin McHale is a terrible talent evaluator: from 1996-2005, exactly TWO of his picks (out of 15) remain in the NBA: Wally Sczerbiak and Rasho Nesterovic. Of course, that total would be higher if he hadn't brokered a secret deal with Joe Smith and robbed his team of FOUR first round picks. McHale actually drafted both Ray Allen and Brandon Roy, but then traded them both away on draft day for inferior players (Marbury and Foye). McHale is supposedly a vaunted teacher of footwork and post-play, but how many Timberwolves have benefited from his tutelage? Kevin Garnett is essentially a small forward, favoring fade-aways and jumpers over trips to the free-throw line. Can you name a single productive center from McHale's tenure? Who has he helped blossom into a good player, other than KG (note: not Mike Olowokandi or Eddie Griffin)? Free agency has also been a disaster for McHale. Last year's savior Mike James lasted one season. Troy Hudson wasn't quite worth the 37 million Kevin gave him. Sam Cassell and Latrell Spreewell both performed well for a year, but Sam was swapped for the more expensive and less productive Marko Jaric while Spree wasn't resigned.Kevin McHale traded for Mark Blount and Ricky Davis. Kevin McHale allowed his team to begin training camp with 8 small forwards, leaving the point to Sebastian Telfair and Marko Jaric. Kevin McHale's only good decisions have been to cover up for his bad ones: buying out Troy Hudson, re-trading Davis and Blount, trading Trenton Hassell, Buying out Juwan Howard etc. How bad is Kevin McHale? His worst contract has been forced into playing this year, as McHale's roster is so bad, there is simply no one better than Mark Madsen to play minutes at Center. Ouch.

Cool as the other side of the pillow.

Card: 1991 NBA Hoops (All-Star) #255


Player: Isaiah Thomas
Position: New York Knicks Head Coach and President of Basketball Operations
Notes: Of everyone on this list, Zeke has spent the most time in the news as of late and is, by far, the most polarizing and criticized. So, the only tidbit I will rehash here on his post-playing career is this: One of Isaiah's nicknames as a player is listed as the "Baby-Faced Assassin."
Raptors, CBA, Pacers, Knicks, female co-workers, white ticket holders. Still appropriate.
Card: 1992 NBA Hoops (All-Star) #303

---

Interesting list here: Best General Managers In Sports
Obviously, I know nothing.

Those who can’t do, teach…

Joe Girardi has named his coaching staff for the 2008 season.

Hitting coach Kevin Long and first-base coach Tony Pena will return, while Dave Eiland has been promoted to pitching coach. Rob Thomson becomes the new bench coach, and both third-base coach Bobby Meacham and bullpen coach Mike Harkey -- both members of Girardi's 2006 Marlins' coaching staff -- have joined New York.

Is this a coaching staff or the JoeSportsFan worthless card All-Stars?

Von Hayes, choo got some spalinin' to do

"Von? Ed Werder, here. Can I get my mustache back?"

Ren's Ten: Cleaning Out the Garage

Having become a home owner, my parents have finally come clean on their word to throw out all my old crap unless I move it out in a timely manner. By old crap, they primarily mean my card collection.

After going through the first box of randomness (very few of my cards are in any particular order - something I have vowed to tackle with the relocation process), the following 10 were all found in the same container. It gave me an idea to periodically (ie as I go through them) put together topical lists of the cards I find.

This first list is comprised of former players who have gone on to become commentators in some capacity.

Section 1: Locals and Fringe Commentators

Player: Dave Gallagher
Station: Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia
Notes: While this is a stretch, Gally is probably somewhat well-known (and dare I say respected? - ok that's a stretch) in the Philadelphia sports area, and has contributed to Comcast Phillies coverage throughout the season. The native Trentonian fits right in with his Philadelphia/Southern Jersey drawl that is hard to ignore.
Card: 1991 Topps #349

Player: Mitch Williams
Station: Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia (Daily News Live, Postgame Live), WIP Morning Show (contributer)
Notes: Mitchy Poo recast himself as a straight-shooter in the Philadelphia market and regularly makes light of his infamous pitch to Joe Carter in Game 6 of the 1993 Series.
Card: 1992 Score (Dream Team insert) #892

Player: Mike Pagliarulo
Station: DugoutCentral.com
Notes: Hates Billy Beane.
Card: 1992 Fleer #216

Section 2: Big Boys

Player: Howie Long
Station: FOX (NFL)
Notes: Amazing that a former NFL lineman (and a good one at that) and actor (and a failed one at that) is the brains behind your football coverage.
Card: 1992 Score #299

Yes, that's Rony Rebound he's taking it to.

Player: Brad Daugherty
Station: ESPN (NASCAR Now, NASCAR Countdown)
Notes: Says HHR resident NASCAR expert Rusty: He's still learning, but he's decent. Even though he's a Tarheel, I try to ignore that fact since he doesn't report on basketball. It's NC, home of NASCAR, birthplace of NASCAR, so I'll allow it.
Card: 1992 NBA Hoops #38

Player: Eric Young
Station: ESPN (Baseball Tonight)
Notes: HHR are NOT big fans. Bring back the Patron Saint.
Card: 1991 Line Drive #548


Player: Merril Hoge
Station: ESPN (NFL), ESPN2 (College Football)
Notes: Snappy dresser, snappier commentator. Nice transition.
Card: 1990 Pro Set Collect-A-Books #NA

Player: Mark Gubicza
Station: FSN West (MLB Analyst)
Notes: Despite the card listing Phila, PA as his hometown, Wiki tells us he is another Trenton-native, which scores points with the HHR team. Not nearly as many points, however, as his mullet which in our humble opinion would make Barry Melrose weap.
Card: 1992 Pinnacle #102.

Player: Greg Anthony
Station: ESPN & ABC (NBA)
Notes: Another great transition. Insightful and intelligent. Forever working feverishly to get from under Grandmama's shadow.
Card: 1994 Upper Deck #292

Section 3: Because It's "Ren's Ten," not "Ren's Nine"

Player: The Splendid Splinter
Station: Paperback: The Science of Hitting
Notes: Something tells me the frozen head would be proud.
Card: 1991 Line Drive #348

Worthless - Football and Hockey Edition

One of our favorite features on one of the more amusing sites, Joe Sports Fan, offers his "The Worthless Card Awards - Football & Hockey Edition."

Click Banner to view...

Worthless

As you are aware, as youngsters Fat Willard and I had an almost religious zeal for baseball card collecting. Hell, I collected anything sports related I could get my hands on. I'm even the stupid idiot moron who spent money on crappy crap like this:



I guess I thought if I was good enough to wear t-shirts with Taz, Bugs and Daffy donned in my favorite sports team's apparel, I was good enough to shell out money for cards in the same vain.

Stupid, stupid, stupid idiot.

What's even worse is I CAN'T THROW THIS CRAP OUT.

In addition to baseball, football & basketball cards, I have totes and totes and totes of boxes of everything from Desert Storm cards to the A-Team, and maybe even worse than Upper Deck Looney Tunes, hockey. Yep, I even have those.

Any way, I found this site feature months ago, and still find myself going back and re-reading it regularly for a good laugh, not only because I have most of these cards (or ones just like them), but I remember when playing high school baseball we used to compete to see who could find the most obscure players and post their ridiculous cards around the locker room. (Click the banner for the link.)


Kudos to you, JoeSportsFan.

Go check out their site. Tons of funny sheet on there. Then again, you've probably already been there.

Finding Tommy (Part 2)

Click here to read Part 1 of the interview

Ever meet any players?
I met a lot of professional athletes when I was a kid, but not because I was with Beckett. During the summer my Dad would take me with him to Cardinals and St. Louis Blues practices. I'd shag pucks for the Blues and watch the Cardinals take batting practice while my Dad did his interviews for that night's story. I'd also occasionally go with my dad down to the locker rooms at old Busch Stadium or the old St. Louis Arena, where the Blues used to play before it was torn down.

There are two incidents where I met pro athletes that stand out in my mind. The first was when I was at Cardinals spring training in St. Petersburg, Florida. I was about ten years old. My Dad mentioned to Whitey Herzog, the legendary (at least in St. Louis) Cardinals manager, that I was in the stands watching batting practice.

I realize that people outside of St. Louis might not know much about the "White Rat", as Whitey was known, but let's just say he sometimes had a colorful way of expressing himself. Apparently, Whitey said something to my Dad along the lines of, "What the %$@# is he doing up there? Get his @%# in the dugout!" My dad is old school about journalistic ethics, was horrified at the idea. The next thing I know, Whitey is yelling at me to get down in the dugout. He then proceeded to get a ball and directed all the players to sign it. My dad was mortified. Good times.

The second athlete was Muhammad Ali. I don't want to get into it in great detail, but let me just say that even now he's the most powerful presence in any room. It was a great honor for me to meet someone who lived his life according to his beliefs and had such an impact on modern American history.

What did readers think about Kids Korner?
I never got a lot of direct feedback from the magazine because my Dad did all the talking, but the editors at Beckett loved it and couldn't wait to run it. Kids Korner generated more mail than almost any other column. The majority of people loved it, but every month they would get hate mail from adults that thought either a) it was a waste of space to have an article written by a kid or b) hated it because they thought they could write a better article.

Remember, this is before the Internet. So, some guy had to read my article and become so upset by it that he got a piece of paper, found a pen, wrote his thoughts down, found an envelope, addressed it, put a stamp on it, and then sent it to Beckett, a magazine about baseball cards. To complain about an article written by a ten-year-old. People are insane.

I remember that my Mom was horrified by this and told my Dad not to tell me about the hate mail, but he told me anyway. My reaction was that it was cool that I was getting hate mail.

Did you ever come face to face with someone who didn't like your writing?
I actually never had anyone tell me to my face that they hated Kids Korner. I'd like to think it's because most people liked the column, but maybe they were just being polite.

How long did it last?
I wrote for Beckett from December 1987 to January 1993, from the ages of nine till I was fourteen. I was not a monthly contributor. I think during that period I had about 23 articles published, though the bulk of them were probably written and published from 1988 to 1990. There are actually a couple of articles that never ran, sort of like “lost episodes.”

Did you stop writing or did they kill the column?
More than anything, I grew up. It's hard to write Kids Korner when you're fourteen. It's like the child actors when they aren't cute anymore.

Also, around the early 1990’s I started losing interest in collecting. It became too expensive, with all the limited edition cards and inserts. One pack of cards was a couple of bucks. Completing one full set of cards became a really expensive proposition. Kids could no longer just take their pocket money and buy a few packs of cards on their own. The greedy adults ruined it.

Anyone ever recognize you back then?
I never really had anyone recognize me because the picture that went with my articles in Beckett was possibly the worst headshot in the history of photography. It's embarrassing. To this day I wonder why we didn't send in a better picture.

(Editor’s Note: Sorry Tommy, we found the picture)

My friends and classmates in primary and high school all knew about it. I never really had anyone try to make fun of me for it, though. I didn't have people on the street recognize me but I was just a kid, so I didn't meet too many strangers.

As I got older, occasionally people would ask me after I had introduced myself, "Say, are you by chance the Tommy Wheatley that wrote for Beckett?" At that point I'd own up to it, and we'd chat for a bit about collecting or Beckett.

I did have one experience when I was in college that made me wonder, though. I lived with the same roommate for the last three years of university. During our first year together, we were talking one day and the subject of card collecting came up and I mentioned that I was really into it as a kid and that I even wrote for Beckett. My roommate, who was kind of a mysterious guy anyway, looked at me and said, "Oh, I know who you are."

After that I wondered if there weren't more guys like him out there that knew exactly who I was but didn't want to say anything about it when they met me. Collecting sports cards isn't exactly the coolest hobby to be admitting in college.

Why didn't you continue writing? You had an impressive resume by the age of 14.
I didn't stop writing; I just stopped doing it professionally. I've had a love of writing from at a young age. I was blessed to have excellent writing teachers when I was growing up. My father is still the best writer I know and he wasn't shy about telling me what I was doing wrong. No coddling there.

In high school I had a teacher named Tom Reck who was a fantastic writing teacher. I remember I got a C on my first paper in his class (almost everyone did, because we all sucked). I was a good student and I went home that night and threw a fit. My dad looked at my paper and the comments that Mr. Reck had written and said, "I don't disagree with anything he's written about your paper." This ticked me off even more.

I had an article published in a book called Fathers and Sons. I thought that was hysterical because the topic of the book was famous fathers and sons in sports. There were chapters on all these famous athletic families, and then a chapter on Tom and Tommy Wheatley. Hmmm, one of these things is not like the others...

I went to college at Truman State University, a liberal arts and sciences school in a small town in northeastern Missouri. There was a paper at Truman called The Monitor. A group of students founded it in the early 1990s after they watched Noam Chomsky's film “Manufacturing Consent", about how a small number of corporations controls a majority of media outlets, which limits the number of viewpoints in the marketplace. They thought our school should have more than one paper. I wrote extensively for The Monitor for about three years and was also an editor for one year.

Two articles I'm very proud included a story about a fistfight between a student and a professor, where I scooped the school paper and got an interview with both the professor and the student. The other article was about how Shell Oil was basically paying the military in Nigeria to wipe out villages of people so they could drill for oil. As a result of the efforts of many students on my campus, the local Shell station was forced to close its doors.

How did you get into DJing?
I was turned on to dance music during 1998, when groups like Prodigy, Chemical Brothers, Crystal Method, and numerous others broke into the mainstream in America. They were calling it "Electronica.” Thank god that name didn't stick. I started going to raves and became fascinated with the idea of DJing, that a person could take two records recorded at different speeds and keys by different people in different countries and mix them together so that the listener couldn't tell where one song began and one song ended.

The year after college I bought some turntables and started learning to mix records. Some of my friends were DJs and they were very helpful in teaching me how to do it properly. I became obsessed with it and would practice for hours a day, so it wasn't long before I was playing out at house parties. I wasn't really planning on it ever being more than just a hobby, though. It's really tough to break into any part of the music scene in America.

During my first three months in China I met another American named MJ. He was a club DJ and he told me about how he was getting flown around the country to do parties at different clubs. I thought that DJing would be more interesting than teaching English (you can only teach the "My name is ____. What's your name?" class so many times before your brain explodes), and also would be a good opportunity to explore the country. So, I started DJing on the weekends at a local bar, and eventually was able to quit teaching and DJ full time. I've been to over fifty cities in China to play records.

I play house music, and I only use vinyl. It's hard to say what style I play without sounding like a dance music elitist, but if I had to categorize it I'd call it "Chunky Electro Tech House." It's basically music that you'd dance to at a club.

Here's a link to a page with a couple of my mixes. It's all free.

What’s the craziest thing you've seen while DJing?
I had just finished at set at this club and a huge fight broke out. It spilled from the second tier VIP seating to the first tier, and then they brawled all the way across the club to the door. Guys were bleeding and hitting each other with these heavy metal barstools. It was wild. My girlfriend looked at me and said, "That's the best fight I've ever seen.”

Ever look back and cringe at the articles?
Honestly, I don't really feel that way, because the articles were pretty good. Remember, Kids Korner was a risky thing for a print magazine to try, any print magazine. Beckett was like the Bible for card collectors, so it was a big deal for them to hand over a page every month to a kid. These days, a column like Kids Korner might just appear online.

It was very ambitious on their part. I don't know if I've ever read a monthly column in any other magazine written by a grade school kid. Beckett wouldn't have run it for as long as they did if it was just a bad idea.

By contrast, after the first few Kids Korner articles were so well received, they created an article called "Teen Topics". This was a monthly column that was written by a different teenager every month. It didn't last very long. I think it was unsuccessful because they didn't have just one kid write it every month.

Sometimes, there would be a Kids Korner article and a Teen Topics article in the same issue. I used to remember always reading the Teen Topics article to see if it was better than my Kids Korner article. Typically, I always thought mine were better.

How did a Kids Korner article get written, from the concept to the finished article?
Looking back, this was the best part of my experience writing Kids Korner, because I did it all with my Dad. He was like the equivalent of a record producer in a studio.

We always wrote down potential ideas for stories. Sometimes the articles would be about some aspect of collecting and sometimes they would be about something I did, like being the batboy, having a baseball card trading party, and so on. I think the best articles were about something I did.

Whenever my we had a bunch of ideas ready and my Dad had free time we would write an article, sometimes even two. We would go up to my bedroom and my dad would sit on my bed with his laptop computer. I would shoot baskets on myNerf hoop and dictate to my Dad what I wanted to say. He'd type it in for me. After he typed something in, he would read it back to me to make sure it was how I wanted it. I do remember being very specific with what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it.

Then, after we'd written the whole thing, we'd go back through it and fix it up. My dad would say things like, "Ok, you've started the last three sentences with "I". Can you think of a different way to say this?" or "Do you want to talk about how you got the interview with this person or just go straight to the interview?"

The thing people really liked about Kids Korner was that it really sounded like a nine-year-old kid. My Dad pretty much left my words the way they were and just helped me fix the grammar and arrange my thoughts properly. He did a great job letting my voice come through in the articles.

The hardest part of any article was coming up with the first sentence. That used to frustrate me. We'd be all ready to start the article and it would take me twenty minutes to think of a good first line. After getting that first line, the rest of the article went pretty quickly. Sometimes, when I got on a roll, I'd be talking so fast my Dad would have to tell me to wait for him to catch up on typing it all.

Where are your cards now?
My cards are all packed in large purple Tupperware tubs in the basement of my parent's house. All the complete sets and boxes of commons are in those set boxes that you had to fold yourself. I also have stacks of three-ring binders with cards in them. It would be entertaining to look through those and see which cards I had selected as a kid to be worthy of binder status.

About how many do you have?
I have thousands of cards. The majority of them are from probably 1987 to 1991. Those were the years when my Dad and I were really heavy into collecting.

We have a whole lot of cards from 1987. My Dad just loved the 1987 Topps cards because they had a wood grain design that reminded him of the 1962 Topps cards he collected as a kid. I mean, he really got into those 1987 Topps cards. We bought so many packs that year that I think we completed about six full sets. My mom thought we were out of our minds.

Ever think of selling them?
I don't think about selling those cards because they just aren't worth that much. The cards from the 1980's were mass-produced, so they aren't very hard to come by. Now, if me how they miraculously shot up in value, I'd sell off some of those excess complete sets I have, but I'd still keep at least one complete set of everything I had. I think in the future those 1980's cards won't be worth much, but will make great gifts for a lot of young sons and daughters.

Finding Tommy

The pre-wife and I like to check out new construction in our area, just to get ideas for our own home. In one of the houses (they come decorated) they had a boy’s room with a baseball theme. The bookshelf was filled with Beckett Baseball Card Monthly, a magazine my friends and I read religiously growing up. The issues were from the late 1980’s. I nostalgically flipped through and came across a favorite column of mine. Kid’s Korner by Tommy Wheatley.

I called Ren to share my find. Wheatley became kind of a running joke between the two of us over the years. Whenever either of us would get published, or write an insightful or funny email or message board post, we’d congratulated each other by calling the other “a real Tommy Wheatley.”

The joke and the reminiscing over the magazines got me to thinking. “What the hell ever happened to Tommy Wheatley?” I imagined he was a writer somewhere, considering he was published in a major magazine as a pre-teen.

I decided to find out. (Good bless Google.) I came across an article written by Tom Wheatley for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. This made sense, remembering that Wheatley was a Cardinals fan and often wrote about them for Beckett. I emailed and explained who I was and that I’d be interested in speaking with him. I got a response a few hours later. It was his father. He was glad to hear from me, and glad to hear people remembered Tommy. He gave me his email and told me to get in touch with him. He told me to give him a couple days to respond though, because he doesn’t get to a computer very often in China.

And that’s were our interview begins.

How did you end up in China?

That's the big question, right after "What is the meaning of life, eh?"

I have lived in Nanjing, China for the last five years. One of my best friends in college studied Chinese, and he lived in China for two years after graduation. When he returned home he persuaded me to go back with him. I wasn't working at the time, had a bit of money saved up, and had never been out of the US (Even though I was 24). When I came to China for the first time in the fall of 2002 it blew me away. After three months I came back to the US. The economy was in the toilet and the Iraq war was about to begin. I decided to go back to China for just six more months as an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher. Six months in China became a year, then two, then three...

Ok, let’s start with the obvious. How did you get the Beckett gig?
I think every kid that read Beckett wondered about that. It was nothing more than good old fashioned nepotism. My father is a sports journalist and in the mid-1980’s he done some work for them. In 1987 they wanted to do a story about card collecting from a kid's point of view. My Dad mentioned that I was a collector, so they gave me a shot. I think they envisioned it as a one-time, cute, gimmicky thing

Did you get paid?
I did get paid. I won't say how much, but I was surely in a higher tax bracket than most other ten-year-olds. They even gave me a raise after a couple of years.

Any free perks?
I got to do a tour of the Beckett offices when my Dad and I went to Texas for vacation. I was excited to meet the people that ran the magazine, and it turned out that they were pretty excited to meet me after reading about my life for so many years.

During that trip I also took a tour of the Score/Sportflicks headquarters and received a limited edition Nolan Ryan card. One side of the card was Score, the other was Sportflicks.

What article are you most proud of?
That’s a tough question. I'd say the guys at the magazine would say one of the more popular articles was the one where three friends of mine and I had a table selling cards at a card show. We were ruthless capitalists.

My personal favorite was the article about my experience as a batboy for a St. Louis Cardinals game. I had interviewed Cardinals pitcher Joe Magraine before the game, who was nice enough to take the time to talk to me. During the game he hit a home run. The story ended with the line, "Batboys aren't allowed to cheer, but I was cheering in my heart."

What was the card selling story about?
The idea for the article came from the fact that there were a lot of baseball card trading shows on the weekends. We wanted to do an article about what you should do if you wanted to have a booth and sell your cards at a show. At first, we were going to interview
a guy named Bill Goodwin. He dealt in vintage, graded cards and is regarded as one of the top people in the card collecting industry.

That was the plan, but my when my Dad found out how cheap it was to rent a booth at one of these shows, he got the idea that maybe my friends and I should just do it ourselves and we would write about how it went. I recruited three other collector friends and we ended up doing it one weekend.

I think it cost $100 to rent the booth, so we each put up $25. Our booth looked really good because Bill had given me some broken display cases for free. My grandfather fixed them so it looked like a professional table. The professionalism ended with those nice cases.

I can only wonder what these adults thought when they walked up to our table, with our gleaming display cases and complete lack of business ethics. We were all about thirteen years old at the time and had zero clue what we were doing.

It didn't occur to me until we got there and set up our stuff that the three guys that chipped in with me to rent the booth were all my friends, but they weren't friends with each other. We all also had basically the same inventories of cards. This ended up making things...interesting.

If a customer was looking at one of my friend's cards, another one of my friends at the table who was selling the same card would jump in and undercut him on the price. Then the first guy, not wanting to lose his customer, would undercut his own original price. I remember that two of my friends really started gunning for each other's customers. It was insane.

Another guy at the table spent all of his money in the first ten minutes buying things from other tables and then didn't have money to make change. Naturally, none of us would help him make change because we were trying to take all the business for ourselves. He had to cut deals with his customers so that they could pay him in exact change.

My dad was there the whole time, but just to make sure no one tried to rip us off. He didn't interfere when we were shooting ourselves in the foot, and I wouldn't have either if I was him because frankly it was too funny. He did manage to keep some semblance of order, but every now and then he'd have to use the bathroom or go chat with someone he knew. He's be gone for five minutes and the table would descend into "Lord of the Flies—The Baseball Card Convention". He'd come back and we'd all be at each other's throats. Our table was a big hit at that show, not because of the quality or uniqueness of our merchandise, but just for the spectacle of it.

We all ended up blowing any money we made. I was the only one that finished in the black. My net profit was something like $13, which was pathetic because I actually sold a lot of cards. At first I thought I had lost some of the money I made, but then my Mom sat me down and we did a little accounting and I was able to see for myself where the money went. I remember thinking, "Wow, I did all that work for thirteen bucks. I'm an idiot." Looking back on it, it was a really good life lesson. It's also a great memory. I'm laughing right now just thinking about it.

Finding Tommy (Part 2)