The Card That Launched One Thousand Ships

by Coltrane

I. 

Somehow the card came to be in our house.  It materialized one day on the elevated hearth that framed our fireplace.  I doubt that we purchased it, as it was in a plastic angled display stand, and plastic angled display stands were beyond our young means.

I don’t remember the card’s origins, but one thing is for certain:  Its existence led to a spirited discussion between my brother and I as to whom it belonged to — so spirited in fact that my mother responded to the situation by taking the card away from both of us.  We never saw it again.  I’m sure that there’s a lesson in there someplace, but for the life of me I couldn’t tell you what it might be.

II.

When I was in high school I got my first office job.  It was functionally a government job.  “Motivated” was not one of the words you would associate with many of my coworkers.  One of the younger, particularly myopic guys collected baseball cards, studying card magazines while at work.  He didn’t collect them for fun though.  This was during the late ’80’s boom that saw baseball cards escalate wildly in value.  “You should really put some money into baseball cards”, he’d say.  “It’s like printing money”, he’d insist.  I didn’t see the point — it wasn’t fun, why bother?

Shortly after that conversation the government pulled the funding from our project and we all got laid off, effective in one month.  Most of the employees spent that last month looking forlorn and sending out resumes.  I went off to college with the money I’d saved working there.  The myopic guy wound up with no job and, years later, a pile of valueless cardboard.  I’d like to think there was a lesson in there someplace, but I’m not sure on that one either.

III.

I liked Fran Tarkenton when I was a kid.  Tarkenton was a little guy who was famous for his improvisational skills — “Fran The Scram.”  He eventually broke Johnny Unitas’ record for touchdowns and career passing yards.  It was my understanding that at the time some folks didn’t look too kindly upon Fran knocking Johnny off of the top spots in the record books.    Unitas was a Quarterback — tall, crew cut, and all business.  Fran’s image was that he was out there winging it, and according to Unitas fans that was not the proper way to play quarterback.  Even now, Tarkenton still ranks 4th in career touchdowns and 6th in career passing yards, despite the NFL only playing 14 games per year back then.

Who did he play like?  Probably the most similar modern quarterback to Tarkenton would be Doug Flutie.  Flutie got stuck playing in the CFL for much of his career, picking up a few Grey Cup championships in the process.  Jim Zorn would probably be another good comp as well, if he were a better quarterback than he really was.  Each of those guys was really mobile, but not so mobile as to detract from a quarterback’s real purpose in life — throwing the ball.

I’d guess that card is now worth about $20, wherever it is.