The Healing Power of Baseball Cards

Anyone who knows me or who simply follows The Nicsperiment knows that "this hasn't been a great year for me" is an understatement. I kicked off 2025 moving back out to my rural home parish of Pointe Coupee, after my wife of 18 years unexpectantly asked me for a divorce. Admittedly, I would rather live out here than the city, and I tried to make the best of things, but just a few weeks into the year, at age 43, I had a stroke. Not just any "you should take better care of yourself stroke," but a one-in-a-billion "you just happened to sneeze exactly the wrong way at exactly the right time" stroke, and just a week after I ran my eighth marathon, and was likely in the best shape of my life. I lost the ability to swallow and all feeling in my left side, and apparently things could have been much worse. After clawing back through therapy that involved attempting to swallow, while a speech therapist electrocuted my throat, I have regained my swallowing ability to about 50% of what it once was, and I have at least started feeling sensations in my left side again, though they are atypical. I dreamed of running again, but couldn't do much with a feeding tube in my gut. 

Thankfully, that was finally removed several months ago, but around the same time, and for the first time in my life, I broke a bone--my right pinky toe--on a door jamb. I used to have illusions that I was unbreakable, but those are now quite dead, just like I nearly was a few months ago... Thinking bad things come in threes and the worst was over, I attempted a relaxing drive with my son down to the Louisiana coastal paradise of Grand Isle...and I'll just sum up the police report, backed by multiple witnesses: someone pulled out in front of me on the highway when I had the right of way, causing our cars to collide and spin off the highway into a large electrical pole, completely totaling my vehicle, and banging up my son and I pretty badly...the matter is still ongoing. To make matters worse, a couple months after the accident, I was working from home, when my cat jumped up near my computer. I went to lift my cat in the air, then felt incredible pain in my shoulder...my left shoulder that had been numb. While I was excited that I had some feeling in my shoulder again, I was not excited that that feeling was intense pain. After being diagnosed with whiplash, I have spent the last several months in physical therapy.
In all that insanity, I have gone back to work, started keeping my son with me again part of the time, and tried to return to a normal life. Amongst all that, I remembered a prayer I made at the start of the year. "Please give me some space, some time where I can relax, and help me to find something that isn't an obligation, where I can just sit and relax.." Well, a few months ago, I was out with my son, taking him to buy Pokémon cards, which has been his major interest for quite a while. He's seemed to want me to join in on the fun, and one of the times we were out, for the first time since I was in college in the early 00's, I decided to buy a couple of packs of baseball cards. I started with just a few packs of 2024 Topps Archives, enough to get me hooked. I started collecting the set, and then expanded my purview to the most recent set of Topps Heritage. I then pulled out my shoeboxes of old sports cards, which I finally brought over to my house from my parents' place, after leaving them there when I got married in 2006. 

Those boxes are full of magic. I reorganized them, found sets where I was chasing cards back in college at the incredible Willy Wonka-like Jason's Sports Cards on Sherwood Forest in Baton Rouge (RIP), and picked up any cards I was chasing back then, but didn't hit, on EBay (for cheap!). My good friend, Jordan (for fans of this site, my podcast co-host), even brought me his late brother Corey's box of sports cards. Corey passed away 20 years ago (the deathbed conversation I had with him, barely a month shy of my wedding, is one I will treasure always, even if he could no longer verbally communicate) and there was something strangely poetic about going through and organizing his cards for perhaps the first time anyone had in nearly 20 years, just like my own cards I'd rescued from my parents' house. This gave a beautiful sense of "where were we?" and a lovely point of connection from beyond the grave to my old friend. Thanks, Jordan.

I have had so much fun doing this. I even joined a website, TCGB, where I can inventory my cards and trade with other collectors, and my first trades have been a blast (my profile there if anyone wants to trade). The greatest part of all of this is that I can sit in my chair, with my cat, in the silence, or with something on in the background, and just organize and inventory my cards. It's exactly what I prayed for. I have to watch it because, while I thankfully have not had an addictive personality throughout my life, I do love to collect things, and there are so many cards to collect. Thus, I budget out a little hobby money every month, and I buy some cards. 

I'm still trying to complete my Archives and Heritage sets, most of which I am doing now through trading. There are a few old singles I'm still chasing. And...there are some sets I've missed in the last 20-plus years that I am interesting in looking at. Maybe I'll buy some old packs. I forgot just how much I enjoyed this timeless old hobby. The best part, though, is that now my son and I can collect together. It is truly rewarding looking for card drops and searching for packs of sets we are collecting. I even picked a football set to collect now that NFL is ramping up and MLB is winding down. Speaking of MLB--I haven't watched since the 2005 World Series. Now, I know rosters again, and I follow the scores of every game, every day, just like I used to--I'm even watching full games again (I'm excited about the playoffs--with no Louisiana squad, I essentially like every team). 

It's so fun. I missed the game almost as much as I missed collecting cards. I don't like the new "breaking" culture that has infiltrated card collecting, as well as the gambling aspects that have seemingly infiltrated all aspects of sports, but thankfully, I've been able to avoid those. 

I love card collecting. It's awesome!