Ferkovich: Why I’ll never sell my Mark Fidrych rookie card
From SABR member Scott Ferkovich at Detroit Athletic Co. on May 31, 2014:
As a kid growing up in Michigan as a Detroit Tigers fan in the 1970’s, a Mark Fidrych rookie card was my holy grail of baseball collectibles.
Of course, we are talking about his 1977 Topps baseball card (#265 in the set). Topps had a monopoly on the industry back then. Sure, there were other companies, such as Hostess and Kellogg’s, which produced their own sets, but they were just minor players. Admittedly, I always was partial to the “Kellogg’s 3-D Superstars,” with their psychedelic space-age look. The sweet smell of Frosted Flakes seemed to linger on them for several weeks. Some of Kellogg’s player choices, however, were suspect. Mario Guerrero? A superstar?
I was nine years old in the summer of ’77, and Mark Fidrych had very quickly become my favorite player. The great irony is that I’d never really seen him pitch all that much. I didn’t follow baseball at all in 1976, Fidrych’s only great season. But the next year, I made friends with some of the neighborhood kids who were card collectors, and they got me started on the hobby as well. By the time I first heard about Fidrych in 1977, his career was mostly finished, although it wasn’t obvious at the time.
Read the full article here: http://blog.detroitathletic.com/2014/05/31/ill-never-sell-mark-fidrych-rookie-card/
Originally published: June 2, 2014. Last Updated: June 2, 2014.