Claremore Daily Progress

Sports Columnists

Related Photos

January 20, 2010

THIS N THAT — One card

By Larry Larkin, Sports Correspondent

January 20, 2010 — The law of Supply and Demand can come into effect at most any time. Somebody has something and somebody else wants it. I had my first experience on this matter as an 11-year-old kid. In my case the “want” was a baseball card.

In my neighborhood there were five of us who “ran” together during the school year and over the summer. When we played football or baseball we were sometimes joined by two older brothers. Even with the additional two we all got along. There were no problems or jealously. It was just the opposite in fact. If one of us came up with a new challenge, the rest was ready to join in.

The time all five of us climbed on one bicycle and tried to ride down a hill is just one of the feats we attempted.

The point is at school or at the nearby city park or at scout meetings it was the five of us.

At the time of my tale the only Major League baseball teams west of the Mississippi River was the popular St. Louis Cardinals and the losing Kansas City Athletics.

Two of the guys saved baseball cards that year. One of the guys was named Larry Wayne Ford. His mother’s maiden name was Jackson. His favorite ball players were Whitey Ford of the New York Yankees and Larry Jackson of the Cardinals. Both were pitchers. Larry Wayne would brag he had two uncles playing in the Big Leagues.

Of course he was lying and the rest of us knew he was. Even so he made it sound good.

My main interest at the drug store then was comic books. Movie cowboys or TV cowboy shows, it didn’t matter. The year was 1958 and the Yankees, my favorite team, were headed back to the World Series.

I decided owning baseball cards would be fun. I put the comics on hold. It was too late in the summer to buy new cards at the store, but Larry Wayne had lost interest in his cards.

That year the Topps Crewing Gum company printed a set containing 494 cards. A card and a piece of pink gum cost one cent. Larry Wayne had purchased just over 450 different cards.

Knowing I might be interested, he offered to sell the cards to me for $2. The gum was long gone.

For a kid receiving a weekly 50 cents allowance, this was an important business deal. Even so I accepted.

Now it was Gregory and me with the cards. He didn’t have all that many, but he did have one I was missing. As luck would have it, the card pictured a Yankee. He wasn’t a big star, but I needI had to get it. This is where the “Supply and Demand” comes in.

Greg was willing to sell it to me for only 50 cents.

Wait a minute. This didn’t sound right. I had just obtained 450 cards for $2 and now another whole allowance was needed for one card.

Somewhere today I know Greg is a very successful business executive. He wouldn’t budge on his price. So I brought it.

I later spent countless hours with those cards and the thousands that followed. Even so I never came across that one card without thinking about the two quarters I paid for it.

Recently on the internet an entire set of ‘58 cards was priced at $3,850.

A few years ago I sold all my cards at auction for a faction of that total.

The money aside, I wish I had that one card back. If so I would ask this year’s featured speaker at Claremore’s “Fields of Dreams” banquet to autograph it for me.

You see, that 50-cent card was Yankee second baseman Bobby Richardson.

Text Only
Sports Columnists
  • Sooner fans love a party, but what else?

    I don’t have a clue what the correct number is, but for a long time I’ve been telling people that Autumn Saturdays in Norman come with almost 90,000 people huddled around Owen Field and maybe that many again hanging out beyond the stadium’s walls.

    Maybe I’m way off. Maybe every one of them walks into the stadium for the kick. What do I know? I’m 50 stories up in the press box.

    I exaggerate.

    A little.

    February 8, 2012

  • DAHLBERG: Brady will get another chance at legacy

    Tom Brady was one of the last ones out of the shower, perhaps hoping some extra hot water would help take the sting out of a crushing Super Bowl loss. In a nearly deserted New England Patriots locker room, he sat wearily pulling on his boots, the pained look on his face never changing.
    A few moments earlier, Joe Montana had walked down the hallway just outside, but there would be no meeting of Super Bowl greats. Nor would Brady join Montana in another way, as a four-time NFL champion - something he seemed destined to be at one point in the fourth quarter.
    This was not a night when legacies would be debated. That will have to wait for another time, another place, another Super Bowl. For the second time in the last five Super Bowls, Brady had come up oh-so-short, beaten late once again by the New York Giants and another quarterback starting to make a pretty good name for himself, too.
    Brady wasn't going to come out and say it, but he was blaming himself. Had to, because he had the ball in his hand to win the game with 57 seconds left and couldn't deliver the long touchdown drive that Patriots fans and even his teammates thought would be forthcoming.

    February 6, 2012

  • HORNING: 'Too early to tell who will impact Sooners'

    I have this line kicking around in my head. I want to share it, but not use it. I want to say something profound about Oklahoma’s national signing day experience without becoming part of the national signing day hype machine.

    Here it is:

    Consider the Sooners 1-0 heading into next season.

    It’s awful, really.

    Also, true.

    Not much longer than a month ago, OU had a small and likely very effective verbally committed 2012 recruiting class. It was high on quality but low on quantity.

    Wednesday, a positively beaming Bob Stoops introduced the class high above Owen Field. The class he unveiled was high on quality and quantity: 26 in all, six of them already enrolled.

    February 2, 2012

  • DAHLBERG: From cancer to Super Bowl for Herzlich

    The player on the screen was a 6-foot-4, 246-pound bundle of fury, flying across the field in search of another target to attack. Mark Herzlich watched himself over and over again, slamming into opponents, busting up plays and generally creating havoc for the Boston College defense.
    The video he made in a college class kept him going as he sat for hours at a time for the chemotherapy he prayed would make his cancer go away.

    February 2, 2012

  • LITKE: 'Tell me he doesn't look like Mr. Ed'

    We already know why they play the game.
    The real question is why they still talk about it all week, since the last time a player or coach said anything memorable during the run-up to the Super Bowl was 1999. That's when Falcons cornerback Ray Buchanan and Broncos tight end Shannon Sharpe had this exchange:
    "Shannon looks like a horse,'' Buchanan fired first, quickly warming to the task. "I'll tell you, that's an ugly dude. You can't tell me he doesn't look like Mr. Ed.''

    February 2, 2012

  • DAHLBERG: Tebow's time has already come and gone

    It was fun in a way the NFL often isn't, a midseason diversion that sent fans into a frenzy in Denver and prompted people around the country to drop to a knee. Even if you didn't believe in Tim Tebow, it was hard to take your eyes off him as he found ways to win despite passes that fluttered about like balloons on a windy day.
    That it wasn't pretty hardly mattered. Somehow, some way, Tebow got the Denver Broncos an invitation to the playoffs for the first time in six years - something that seemed unimaginable after the team sputtered to a 1-4 start.
    Now he's got to do something even more unimaginable. Find a way to regroup after finishing the season in a funk and beat the banged-up but still intimidating Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday in Denver.

    January 5, 2012

  • Tim-Ritter.jpg American Legion drops ball on state tourneys

    Word out of Pryor from the American Legion Baseball Commissioner George Stump is the 2A and 3A state tournaments have been cancelled due to lack of participation in the western part of Oklahoma.

    June 30, 2011 1 Photo

  • ‘One of a Kind’

    When it comes to sports team names the city of Claremore has a pair of mascots that do not fall under the common scope of handles.

    June 25, 2011

  • Gridiron Memories

    Some 60 years ago a young entertainer out of the backwoods of North Carolina recorded an extended play comedy record album.  His name was Andy Griffith.

    December 4, 2010

  • Big 12 fans deserve a vote

    Has it really come down to money and TV networks when it comes to deciding the fate of conference realignments?

    June 12, 2010