Keith Comstock.
Keith freakin’ Comstock.
This dude, a former pitcher for a variety of teams in the 1980’s, was the bane of my existence as a kid collecting baseball cards in 1988 and 1989. For a guy who appeared in 33 career games for the San Diego Padres from 1987 to 1988, the baseball card companies seemed to have produced millions of his cards. And, as an 8 and 9-year-old collector – I seemed to have gotten every one of those damn things.
I forgot about my irrational hatred for that guy until last night, when I decided to break open some of the 12,000 or so sports cards I had collected in the late '80s and early '90s. My wife and I had decided to do some "fall cleaning" and I had decided that it was perhaps time to rid myself of these, most of which were commons.
Then, I cracked open a few of the boxes and flipped through them. And wouldn’t you know it, there was Comstock in that crappy Padres jersey and '80s mustache looking back at me.
Actually, there were so many mustaches. So many. Fred Manrique’s is still a favorite.
Anyway, I sorted through some of them looking for particular teams to pick out and give to some people as gags, and memories came flooding back.
It was riding my bike to the drug store on 76th Avenue in Tinley Park, Ill. with 50 cents in my pocket for a pack of Topps or Donruss and tearing it open in the hopes of finding a Cup card or a Diamond Kings or Rated Rookie. I loved all cards back then (except for Comstock) and couldn’t get enough of them.
It was a fun thing to do with friends, and my dad got in on the act, too, buying me various team sets and taking me to card shows.
A few other memories:
- Breaking the 1989 Upper Deck New York Mets team set to trade the Gregg Jeffries rookie to a kid for an autographed Cal Ripken, Jr. 1987 Topps card. Felt it was worth it even as a 9-year-old. Obviously, I was amazingly smart, even back then.
- My dad taking me to these local card shows in Tinley and Orland Park, and meeting some spindly new White Sox player named Sammy Sosa. I’ll never forget this. He wore sunglasses, a Hawaiian shirt, khaki shorts and sandals and never once looked up as he signed my 1989 Score card and a baseball. The signature was beautiful. I loved it. My dad forever hated him because Sosa’s handler said "Don’t talk to him." The old man uttered "I always knew he was an (expletive)" more than a few times when it all blew up on Sosa in the late 90’s and early 2000's.
- My little league baseball coach breaking open a brand new box and handing each of us a pack after a good game.
I smiled a lot, cursed Keith Comstock a few times as well, before I closed them up and put them back in the closet.
I’m not quite ready for them to go just yet.
Jim Owczarski is an award-winning sports journalist and comes to Milwaukee by way of the Chicago Sun-Times Media Network.
A three-year Wisconsin resident who has considered Milwaukee a second home for the better part of seven years, he brings to the market experience covering nearly all major and college sports.
To this point in his career, he has been awarded six national Associated Press Sports Editors awards for investigative reporting, feature writing, breaking news and projects. He is also a four-time nominee for the prestigious Peter J. Lisagor Awards for Exemplary Journalism, presented by the Chicago Headline Club, and is a two-time winner for Best Sports Story. He has also won numerous other Illinois Press Association, Illinois Associated Press and Northern Illinois Newspaper Association awards.
Jim's career started in earnest as a North Central College (Naperville, Ill.) senior in 2002 when he received a Richter Fellowship to cover the Chicago White Sox in spring training. He was hired by the Naperville Sun in 2003 and moved on to the Aurora Beacon News in 2007 before joining OnMilwaukee.com.
In that time, he has covered the events, news and personalities that make up the PGA Tour, LPGA Tour, Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the National Hockey League, NCAA football, baseball and men's and women's basketball as well as boxing, mixed martial arts and various U.S. Olympic teams.
Golf aficionados who venture into Illinois have also read Jim in GOLF Chicago Magazine as well as the Chicago District Golfer and Illinois Golfer magazines.
