The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams - By Lawrence Block Page 0,42

years is enough time to spend in the book business?”

“I would think that would be enough for anybody.”

“Okay,” he said. “Here’s the deal. I’ll renew your lease for thirty years at $875 a month. How does that sound to you?”

“Too good to be true. What’s the catch?”

“Baseball cards.”

“Baseball cards?”

“Better than coins and stamps. Better than French Impressionists. Better than Manhattan real estate, and a whole lot better than the New York Stock Exchange.”

“Even better than women mystery writers?”

“You know it. Oh, it’s volatile. You have to know what you’re doing. Buy garbage, and ten years from now all you’ve got is old garbage. Buy speculative stuff and you can make a killing or get killed, depending which way the wind blows. Say you had a big position in Bo Jackson rookie cards. Then he sustains what looks to be a career-ending injury. Where are you?”

“Where?”

“Up the well-known creek, Bernie, without the proverbial paddle. Bo’s got the charisma, but he needs five or ten years in the bigs to put up the kind of numbers that will make him a superstar in the card market. Or say you bought Nolan Ryan during what was supposed to be his last season. Instead he decides to hang around for one more year, and while he’s at it he throws another no-hitter. That wouldn’t hurt the value of your portfolio, would it?”

“I guess not.”

“Then there are the blue chips,” he said. “Safer than T-bonds and a whole lot more profitable. Babe Ruth. Mickey Mantle. Joe DiMaggio. Or my own personal favorite, Ted Williams.”

“You couldn’t have seen him play,” I said. “Unless you’re a lot older than you look.”

“No, he was before my time. But I don’t have to see him swing a bat. All I need to do is look at his numbers. He was the last man ever to hit over .400 in major league ball.” He followed this factoid with a blur of statistics—career batting and slugging averages, home runs, runs batted in, all the way to intentional walks. If you need to know this, check a baseball encyclopedia. “Teddy Baseball,” he said reverently. “The Splendid Splinter. We’ll never see his like again.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

“He spent four years in the service, you know. During the Second World War. Think what it cost him.”

“Think what it cost England.”

“Four of the prime years of his playing career. Imagine what his numbers would look like if he’d been swinging away in Fenway Park all that time instead of serving his country. But it shows you the kind of a guy he was.”

“A patriot?”

“A sap. But that’s all water over the bridge, or under the dam, or wherever it goes.”

“Up the creek,” I suggested.

“Whatever. If he’d had those years, well…”

“I guess his cards would be worth more.”

“His cards are seriously underpriced,” he said flatly. “They go for a fraction of Mantle’s cards, and for my money Williams was twice the ballplayer. Mantle’s rookie card from the 1952 Topps set will cost you thirty thousand dollars in near-mint condition. All right, let’s look at the Splendid Splinter’s rookie card from the 1939 Play Ball set. Thirteen years older, and an infinitely scarcer set, and you can pick that card up in top condition for under five grand. But don’t get me started.”

“I won’t.”

“I collected baseball cards as a kid.”

“So did I, until my mother threw them out.”

“Mine knew better than to touch any of my possessions. Well, I grew up, I went into business, I put the cards away and forgot about them. Eventually I got married and we had a kid. Meanwhile my sister Edna got married.”

“To Martin Gilmartin.”

“When my kid was old enough to be interested, I gave him my old baseball cards to play with. I mentioned this to Marty, and it turned out he was a big collector himself. And that’s when I found out about the investment potential of these cards.”

“So you took them away from your kid.”

“I borrowed a book from Marty,” he said, “and I checked the lad’s cards, and not too surprisingly there was nothing rare or valuable in the lot. They were in terrible condition, Scotch tape on some of them, others all beat up and scuffed and folded. But there was one, if it hadn’t been in such bad condition, it would have been worth fifty bucks.”

“Wow.”

“What could I have paid for it? It seems to me you used to get a whole pack for a quarter, and that included the gum.