Forgotten Treasures: The Washington Padres?
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I’m probably not giving anything away by acknowledging that all of my various sub-series of the newsletter are really just devices to let me write about the people or teams that I find interesting. For instance, while Forgotten Treasures is centered on the baseball-related items I find in my various jaunts through antique stores and junk shops, I generally don’t write about the actual objects. Instead I write about the player, or team, or particular game or series, that is called to mind by the things I found.
Today is no different, really, except that the subject of today’s find is actually a non-event. Why write about something that didn’t happen? Well, because in this case it’s a pretty interesting non-event, and it fits a much broader pattern established by the commissioner of baseball for most of my childhood, Bowie Kuhn.
First, the object that I found recently at an antique store in Springfield, Missouri:
I apologize for the odd angle, but this card was locked in a glass case and this was the best shot I could get. I also apologize for the fact that this dealer decided to put his price tag right across the smiling face of Hall of Fame first baseman Willie McCovey. None of the McCovey fans out there should take that as an insult to the man affectionately known as Stretch, though, because in this case that dealer knew what he was doing.
That’s because the real story of this card, and the real value of it, isn’t from the fact that it depicts McCovey, great as he was. It comes from the “Washington” and “Nat’l Lea.” banners at the top and bottom of the card, and the dealer really didn’t want to cover them up.
