If you were an avid card collector in the 90’s, there were baseball cards and then there was THE baseball card. The Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card was the most sought-after card of my childhood, and to this day I’ve never acquired one. This card mostly sold for over $100 (which at the time seemed enough to retire early on) and was always the first card we’d look up in the new Beckett magazine to see if the value went up or down…

Even at the age of 8, I was too sophisticated for the humor of Buzz Beamer. I knew sports. I knew almost every stat on the back of 1991’s Topps Basketball set. I could recite the Atlanta Braves starting lineup forwards and backwards. Very serious stuff. I was slightly disappointed when my grandparents opted for the children’s version of the popular sports magazine. Every month my Sports Illustrated for Kids would show up in the mail. When you’re 8, is there nothing more exhilarating than receiving something in the mail – even if it ended in the term “for Kids”? I would pretend that I didn’t care about Buzz’s latest adventures. His comic was always the last page; the corny final stamp of each month’s edition…