Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Ben Grieve on baseball cards

The 1998 American League Rookie of the Year, outfielder Ben Grieve played nine seasons in the major leagues, mostly for Oakland and Tampa Bay. In 976 career games he hit .269 with 118 HR and 492 RBI. He kindly answered my questions about baseball cards.

"My favorite cards are all the ones in my Minor League uniforms. They remind me that although I was a very high draft pick, I still had to prove myself to get the call to the Big Leagues. I did collect cards when I was young and still have them all. I have all the best guys from the 80's. It's a shame though that so many of them aren't worth what I thought they would be back then due to steroids. I have a ton of rookie cards from the likes of Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Juan Gonzalez, etc. Too bad things played out the way they did. However, I do also have many Tony Gwynn, Wade Boggs, Rickey Henderson, Ken Griffey Jr. Rookies as well.
My favorite memory of card collecting was going to a card convention in Arlington and spending my allowance on a Tony Gwynn Topps Rookie card ($5 at the time). I got home and there were 2 extra of the same card hidden behind it. I felt a little guilty but was so excited to have 3 for the price of one. Maybe responding to your blog offsets my bad baseball card Karma!"


Thanks!

2 comments:

  1. Nice! Ben Grieve is a great name from the not-so-distant past.

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  2. Man oh man... did I spend way too much money on Grieve. I probably paid top dollar on 20+ of his autographs back in the late 90's. Just another reminder to myself that collecting for entertainment is 100 times better than collecting for investment purposes.

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