I assumed I would never see it again. And then, suddenly, my first-ever Green Bay Packers football card – which I had procured when I was 4 – was back in my hands.
It’s not in good shape; I marveled at its shine and colors when I was a child, but I didn’t know who that Bart Starr fellow was, even though I watched football every Sunday with my Dad. Ken Stabler and Joe Namath were my guys in those days.
And so, the card went into my toy box, where the edges wore down over time, and it developed a crease across the bottom left corner. But when I started getting more seriously interested in collecting sports cards, around age 10 or 11, I dug the card up and added it to my collection.
Then, when I was 12, I met a new kid at my school named Greg. We became pretty fast friends and, as middle-schoolers sometimes do, we put together what to us was a blockbuster trade in the neighborhood of the Packers’ Micah Parsons deal last year: All of my football cards for all of his baseball cards.
We rode our bikes to meet at a convenience store to make the swap. I was already a Packers fan and had begun developing my appreciation for Starr – who was at the time Green Bay’s head coach – but I completely forgot the card was in there when we made the trade. So off it went.
Fast forward literally 48 years. That new kid became my closest friend, and we were having our usual weekend session of beers and conversation recently with our respective dogs. He had mentioned a few times in recent times that he had been sorting through his football cards. He had kept those cards I had traded him in a lockbox over the decades.
And one day it dawned on me that maybe, just maybe, that sentimental memory that holds possibly my first step toward Packers fandom, was still in there. So I asked him. And he later texted me a picture of it – I recognized the crease immediately. The card isn’t worth much as a collector’s item, but it’s a bonafide 1970 Topps glossy insert, part of a subset designed to stand out from the regular series. And it was the first Green Bay Packers connection of my life.
After high school, Greg joined the U.S. Air Force. Over his 20 years of service, he had lived in Missouri, Texas, Oklahoma (twice) and even Germany, moving back to the Louisville area some 25 years ago. I can’t believe I nearly forgot I had ever owned the card, but every few years I would think about it and wonder if it still existed somewhere, maybe in some kid’s toy box collecting new creases.
And without a second thought, Greg happily gave the card back to me – a football card I literally pulled from a pack that some relative (probably my grandmother) picked up for me at the grocery store.
(An aside: Greg’s running joke was that I had ripped him off in the trade, so when we got to high school, I bought a collection from a friend. That collection included a 1971 Terry Bradshaw rookie card – Greg’s favorite player as a kid – and I gave him that as a make-good so he would stop complaining. All those baseball cards he handed over are long since gone, but he still has that Bradshaw, and it’s now worth hundreds of dollars. Bastard.)
That Starr would later become my all-time favorite Packer is not lost on me. Was it that bright, beautiful card that initially hooked me? Or was it that, when I started playing on a youth league team called the Packers, I then started paying close attention to what the actual Green Bay Packers were doing?
In fifth grade, I remember buying a book at school (yes, for you old-timers, it was the Scholastic Book Club) called “Great Quarterbacks of the NFL,” and Bart was the subject of the final chapter in the book. It described his kind, respectful demeanor and his leadership, and that reminded me of my father and grandfather. I know for a fact that played a role in my now owning three Starr jerseys and a replica Super Bowl I ring, along with other collectibles I probably don’t need.
Whatever it was, I am incredibly grateful my best friend not only saved that card for nearly half a century, but also gladly gave it back to me. Maybe that Terry Bradshaw rookie was a good move, after all.