1968 Topps Rod Carew: Been Caught Stealing

Rod Carew famously stole home seven times in 1969. My mother, who grew up in North Dakota a die-hard Twins fan, would often recall this fact whenever baseball players of old were brought up in conversation.

My mother’s love of sports rubbed off on me and I found myself intoxicated with the world of sports cards. However, my obsession quickly grew into a budding addiction. I always had to have more. I didn’t realize the hold it had on me until it was too late. When I was twelve years old, I tried my own hand at theft but found it best left to the pros.

Unlike Carew in ‘69, I got caught stealing from a card shop while visiting relatives in North Dakota.

Busted.

I’ll never forget the shiver that went up my spine when I thought, for a brief second, I had made a clean getaway, only to then hear a voice boom: “Hold it, son! You just shoplifted!” I was frozen in panic. I knew what it meant. Serious trouble. Mostly from my stepfather, a harsh and unforgiving disciplinarian. I was already wondering how bad the punishment would be once I returned home to California that summer.

Family Ties

Aunt Ann had taken me and my cousin to the mall that afternoon. Ann always seemed a little out of place in North Dakota. A Tennessee girl with sun-kissed tan skin, her Southern accent and Southern hospitality created a warm and nurturing environment for 2 sports-obsessed twelve-year-olds eager to prove their worth.

My cousin, Andrew, was an encyclopedia of baseball knowledge. He could already speculate on the Hall of Fame resumes of current players and provide in-depth analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of most teams in the MLB. It was with baseball cards however, where you could really show off your sports knowledge.

The local card shop held all the goodies that we only dreamt of being able to get our hands on. But our ability to get the cards we wanted was not the same. Andrew had a lot more cards than me. Andrew had a lot more than me, period. That was part of the reason I was up there visiting.

Andrew’s father, my mom’s older brother, had sold his first company and was on the pathway to success in the mid-nineties while my family struggled to make ends meet in California. Mother stayed at home to raise and homeschool four children while my stepfather bore the sole responsibility of providing for the six of us.  

In the summers starting in 1995, my aunt and uncle started flying me up to North Dakota to spend time with their family. At first, I was scared out of my mind to board a plane and fly from Los Angeles to Minneapolis alone, at age 11, but that was just the beginning of the excitement.

Once I was in their home I felt immediately comfortable. Ann treated me like one of her 3 kids. She was trying to make me dentist appointments when she found out I hadn’t been in a few years. She was incredibly attentive to the needs of children, and part of that came from her work at the adoption agency where she specialized in placing adopted children into homes.

Growing up, I often compared myself to Andrew. It was inevitable as we got older that whenever we saw each other again we had to stand back-to-back first thing to see who was taller. Andrew was only two months older, but he was always taller than me. Sometimes only by a hair, sometimes by a good five inches when we were fifteen (I was a late bloomer).

He was a runner with excellent genes, a crazy fast metabolism, and endless energy. I was pudgy, introverted, and somewhat odd. His father was making a name for himself in the business world. My father and I were estranged after he and my mother divorced when I was five. I was the oldest child, he was the youngest. Our perspectives were slightly different due to these factors.

The economic playing fields certainly weren’t level. Maybe that was why I wanted to steal those cards so badly that day. I didn’t understand why somebody like Andrew could have that much while I had so little. It just didn’t seem fair. The upper-middle-class life seemed so far out of reach for my family.

I loved those cards too, and my collection was stellar for my age but lacked any real jewels. I had mostly base cards from sets like 1994 Upper Deck Basketball. Andrew had a vintage 1955 Topps Jackie Robinson in a screw-down case.

Despite the underlying jealousy, Andrew and I were the best of friends for those weeks we spent together in the summers from 1995 – 2005. We loved playing basketball all day in the driveway. Coming back inside only to grab Fruit Roll-Ups and Quaker Oat bars. Then in the evenings, watching The Simpsons, Star Wars, playing Super Nintendo, all the great things from the 90s. The best decade ever, no question.

Caught Stealing

Back to that painful day in 1996: when Ann arrived back to find what had happened, I do not remember an ounce of anger from her. She did not scold me once. She knew something else was going on, and so they handled it delicately. They did phone my parents back home and tell them what happened.

We never spoke about it again. Andrew, the king of bringing up old nostalgia, and even painful, embarrassing moments from our shared childhood times never spoke about it either.

We still loved collecting regardless of that incident. My stepfather even showed mercy on me and eventually let me keep my card collection after first saying I had to get rid of all my cards as punishment. I had done a great job of showing remorse because it was genuine.

But I hated myself for a long time for what I did that day. It was a painful memory that haunted my dreams. Why would I steal a $3 pack of cards with $20 in my wallet?

I internalized everything instead of looking at the reactions of the adults around me.

“Here I am, 12 years old and already a hoodlum. A menace to society.”  

But why was Ann not mad at me?

Holding The Cards

25 years later In 2021, I had found myself back into sports cards so much that during that time I was running my own card-related business as my sole source of income. Andrew and I had a phone convo, and we were talking about my card business and suddenly we recalled his old baseball card collection, still kept safely in his basement in the house he grew up in.

I excitedly tell him: “Dude! We need to grade all of your childhood valuable cards!” So that summer in 2021, I visited Fargo and Andrew brings his collection over, and we pour through all the cards just like we did when we were 12. It was amazing.

“Oh look! A Kobe rookie! That’s gonna be worth a little bit, it’s only Collector’s Choice which was the value brand Upper Deck, but if it gets a 9 Mint grade, it’ll do well enough for the grading cost” I tell him.

It was even more fun to look at these cards now that I knew how to properly assess conditions and values. There’s a 1968 Topps Rod Carew in that pile of course, not the true rookie, because Andrew didn’t have a ton of money to spend, so he often bought 2nd year cards of HOF players. (Hmm, maybe Andrew wasn’t so rich he could afford every card he wanted either, maybe there’s always a bigger fish.)

Sadly, a lot of the cards were in poor condition for things we didn’t notice too much back then. Poor centering, paper loss, pinholes, vintage baseball grading is tricky. Nonetheless, I agreed to take about 200 cards back home with me to Washington state, and spend the next few months processing which ones to grade and preserve.

When I left our family lake home in Minnesota that day, July 2021, I said goodbye to Aunt Ann as usual, but this time something felt different. A shameful feeling came over me. I realized that I had taken Aunt Ann for granted in a lot of ways. She had always shown me care and love and compassion, especially on my worst day. Yet, I had always thanked my uncle for everything he did for me, which was simply not right.

In that moment, I realized I had not made it known to Ann how much I appreciated her. So, I said to her as I was leaving: “You know, sometimes I only tell Howard how much you guys mean to me and how grateful I am to have you, but I realize now that I have been wrong to not to include you in that, so I want you to know that I am very grateful for you too, everything I say to him applies to you as well”. She smiled at me warmly.

In July 2023, I returned to the family lake house again for the biennial 4^th of July family gathering. One afternoon, I told Howard and Andrew: “Hey I brought something, come check it out.” Then I handed my cousin the PSA slabs. Graded versions of these relics of beautiful childhood memories.

The three of us stood there looking at the same cards that Andrew and I had first fawned over as kids, so many years ago. Howard was amazed to find out that I had discovered an authentic 1927 Goose Gossage 10 of Clubs hidden behind another card we had never noticed before.

The 1968 Rod Carew #80 was a special highlight, earning a grade of PSA 5, not bad for the year and the centering being so poor.

Something Missing

There was one notable element missing from that moment of family bonding.

Ann.

She had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of stomach cancer in August 2022. Just weeks later, it had spread throughout her body. They performed emergency surgery to remove a basketball-sized tumor from her stomach. Just a day after the surgery, Ann was smiling and asking how everybody else was doing, and she and my uncle celebrated their 50^th Anniversary in a hospital room.

Things grew more desperate by the holidays and by Christmas 2022, Ann had moved into home hospice care. In January 2023, she passed away.

I flew in for the funeral and our family stood in the frigid, negative 20-degree weather and buried Ann. She somehow didn’t lose the brightness in her face, even in death.

She did not die without knowing how much she was appreciated. I saw to that by sending a letter right before her death. It recalled a funny time when 11-year-old me had tried to convince her that a muskrat could kill a fully grown deer. It was a family story repeated every time we gathered together. “Remember that time Derek told Ann that a muskrat could kill a deer!”

Ann had no idea what to think when I told her this in a deadpan manner. She wasn’t expecting that kind of quirkiness from an 11-year-old. But I wasn’t expecting that level of attention from an adult. That is why she was special. She cared to even listen to whatever it was I was rambling on about that particular day. Even an absurd tale about the killing power of obscure rodents.

So I brought up the muskrat incident one last time, to highlight how much of an effect that moment had on me, when I realized my words could have an impact, even on adults.

I will never be able to repay them for everything they did for me. I can only reflect that love onto others, in the same way it was reflected onto me. Like Rod Carew swiping home plate, it was their home I wanted to steal that day, not the physical home, but their concept of togetherness. The magic of family. They had something special and it was that feeling I wanted to have more than any card.

Even though I didn’t get to call that place home, for a few weeks every summer, I couldn’t tell the difference, and that meant everything.

Dedicated to Aunt Ann. We miss you down here.

Love you always, and watch out for the muskrats.

– DR Finley