Going Yard--Sale, that is

Baseball Widow just finished a crazy week of cleaning out the attic, sorting through junk, and selling it at a yard sale.

Somewhere buried in the rubble, Baseball Hubby stumbled across his old collection of baseball cards. He collected from about 1988-1992, and we were surprised at some of the cards we found:
--Rookie Randy Johnson, about 15 years away from a perfect game
--Baseball Widow favorites Harold Reynolds and John Kruk
--A middle-aged Julio Franco
--Mike Maddux and Greg Maddux, looking like twins--identically poised in the windup with that patented Maddux tongue sticking out of the corner of the mouth. (Incidentally, Baseball Widow adopts much the same appearance when playing piano.)

Perhaps the most surprising thing about examining the collection was the sheer amount of players that we simply don't remember. Hubby had carefully placed his "favorites" in a couple of three ring binders, and he didn't even remember half of those--not to mention the hundreds of loose cards thrown in a cardboard box.

Often it seems like Major League Baseball is a game of superstars, of millionaire celebrities destined for greatness. But the lineups are comprised mostly by the work-horses or those with flash-in-the-pan moments--guys you don't remember ten years later, but who were there just the same. They're the home runs or the strikeouts or the hits allowed by the great pitchers that you do remember. In fact, without them, the greats couldn't be greats, for greatness consists of dominating the average.

So here's to you, Ken Oberkfell. . . you played for the Braves for four seasons in the late eighties and hit 16 of your career 29 home runs for my favorite team. I'm sure I watched you play, but I have no idea who you were. A 3.5 inch piece of cardboard, Baseball-Reference.com, and some clippings in your mom's attic are all that remain to tell your story. Well, at least you got more of Baseball Widow's column space than Randy Johnson's perfect game.