Tim Barto: The Great Jackie Robinson Caper

By TIM BARTO

Fall, 1989: an episode of The Wonder Years just finished. Kevin and his buddy Paul were having friendship troubles, stemming from a baseball card trade gone wrong. My phone rings.

“Hello?”

“Give me back my Jackie Robinson baseball card!” Click. It was my friend, Drew (formerly Andy). We joined the Marines together and were best men in each other’s weddings, but the episode triggered a bad memory from when we were kids. The abrupt call brought a smile to my face.

Back in the 1970s, baseball cards were purchased by young boys who collected them for fun. We were thrilled to see photos of our baseball heroes on small sheets of bubble-gum-scented cardboard with statistics and cartoons on the backsides. We arranged them by teams or years of issue, or positions, or in order of greatness, and we stored them in shoeboxes. We wrapped them in bundles, secured with rubber bands, and used clothespins to attach them to our bicycle frames so they would make a flicking sound when the rotating spokes contacted them. I tacked and stapled my favorite players’ cards to my bedroom wall.

It never dawned on us that they would someday be worth any more than the penny per card that we paid for them.

My friends and I traded cards with vigor, ever seeking to add our favorite players to our collections in exchange for as little as possible. And that is how I ended up cheating my half-best friend out of an authentic Jackie Robinson card.

Andy was one-half of my best friends; Steve, who we called Gertch, was the other half. They were quite different, but we all loved baseball. It was hard to get much past Gertch because he read the same baseball books I read, so he knew the history of the game. Andy, not so much. He read the daily box scores and standings and knew the present stats in depth and by heart, but he but didn’t, at that time, know much about the game prior to 1970, which turned out to be pretty unfortunate for him.  

Andy had recently spent some time visiting one of his yet-to-be-incarcerated cousins who decided he was now too old and too cool to be collecting baseball cards, so Andy inherited several dozen pre-1970 cards. I, of course, was insanely jealous when he told me about this unexpected and totally unfair windfall. With impure intent, I requested a card trading session.

My friends and I had card trading down to an orderly and business-like process. We sifted through each other’s cards and set aside those in which we were interested. Once we had a stack of a half dozen or more, we laid them out next to each other and commenced haggling, taking back those players we could not do without, or demanding two or more cards for an All Star. It was while I was in the midst of this process that I came across an actual Jackie Robinson baseball card. I recently read the story of how Branch Rickey and he conspired to break the color barrier in 1947, and how Robinson was as good a baseball player as he was a courageous man.

Now, right in front of me was an authentic Jackie Robinson baseball card. It was pretty beaten up. The edges were frayed and there was a large crease running from top to bottom, but it was an honest-to-God Jackie Robinson card. Knowing Andy’s propensity for the here and now, I put the card in my row and bit my lip as my friend sorted through my stack of Phillies’ cards. He had, despite never venturing further west than Lake Tahoe, taken to rooting for Pennsylvania teams.  

First, it was the Clemente-Stargell Pirates of the early 70s, then he got hooked on the up-and-coming Philadelphia Phillies, a franchise that had never won a world championship in their 80 years of existence. Andy was grabbing a half dozen Phillie cards he didn’t yet have. I laid out a handful of cards that, save one, shall forever remain in obscurity.

My heart was pounding as we set to looking over our chosen lines of battle, but I had not said anything or let on in any way that one of the legends of the game was on the trading block.

“Here’re my six. These for your six?” I felt a slight tinge of guilt as I began to realize that Andy had no idea who Jackie Robinson was, but the tinge lasted no more than a breath.

“Okay,” he said as he scooped up the six additions to his collection. 

My hands shook as I reached for Jackie and the anonymous five. This was too good to be true. Andy would come to his senses and realize he overlooked an American hero . . . right? Nope. He started talking digging through my box for the next round of trading.

“Do you know who you just traded to me?” I asked, half out of shock and half out of sheer gloating and meanness. Andy just shrugged. I held up the holy grail of baseball cards to him and smugly informed him, “This is Jackie Robinson.”

Another shrug from Andy.

“The first black player in the Major Leagues.”

Andy was busying himself looking for more Phillies.  

“He’s in the Hall of Fame.” I was starting to get annoyed now. Andy should know this, dammit. Any baseball fan should know this. Any American should know who this man was.  

“I don’t care,” said Andy with genuine sincerity and without even looking up.  

That did it. Any sense of guilt was now assuaged by the uncaring attitude. It took away some of my sense of victory, but also made me realize this card was meant to be in the hands of someone who appreciated the history of the game. Someone like me.  My trickery was indeed justified.

After Andy left my house I called out to my Dad and big brother Rick. “Dad, Rick – look what I got!” I had to share this coup.

“Whatchya got, Sport?” asked Dad.  

“You won’t believe this,” I said, as I placed the card on the kitchen table where they were both sitting and reading the paper.  

“I’ll be damned. How’d you get a bubble gum card of Jackie Robinson?” Dad asked. It drove me nuts that he called baseball cards “bubble gum” cards, but that was beside the point right now.  

“What? Where’d you get that?” Rick was now interested.  

“From Andy. I traded him for it?”

“What did it cost you?”

“Six Phillies I never heard of.” Dad chuckled. Rick looked jealous.  

“You ripped him off,” said my brother. “Didn’t he know who he was?”

“I don’t think so. I tried to tell him who Jackie Robinson was, but he acted like he didn’t care.”

“You should give it back,” offered my brother, more out of jealousy than righteousness.

“The hell he should,” retorted my Dad. “If Andy didn’t know who Jackie Robinson was then he had no right to this card. Don’t you dare give this back. Jackie Robinson’s part of history; he and Branch Rickey.”

“That’s who I’m named after,” said Rick.

“You’re named after Jackie Robinson?”

“No, you crockhead” (one of Dad’s favorite names for someone who says something dumb), “Branch Rickey. That’s why we spelled Rick’s fully name R-I-C-K-E-Y.”  

“Really? I didn’t know that,” I replied as Rick beamed.

“He was a brave man. Without Branch Rickey there would not have been Jackie Robinson. He’s from Ohio, too. Like all three of us.” Dad never passed up a chance to promote the land of our birth. “You might not want to staple that one to your wall, Tim.  It looks a little ragged. Keep it in a safe place.”

“Andy’s going to be mad when he finally realizes what he traded away,” said Rick, making me smile.

“Good night.” I headed up to bed. Once under the covers, I held that card up to my reading lamp, turning it over, reading every word printed on it, and coming to the realization it was mine.

That card remained in my possession until a few months after Drew’s phone call, when I sold my entire collection to raise enough money to buy my wife’s engagement ring; forever proving my unquestioned love for her.

Tim Barto is vice president of Alaska Family Council and overly romantic about baseball. Don’t tell his wife this, but on occasion he longs to hold that Jackie Robinson card up to the reading lamp.

Tim Barto: A veteran’s baseball experience retold