Waxing poetic

Hey parents -- want to know why your teens are so ridden with angst these days?

Sure, I'm guessing part of the problem has to do with an increasing amount of stressors, along with the ever-growing importance of materialism and the upkeeping of the status quo.

But mostly, it's because today's baseball cards suck.

Have you taken a look at them lately? It's a tragedy. The worse they are, the more expensive they get. Truth be told, baseball cards have been on a steady downhill slide since 1989.

Why 1989? That's the year Upper Deck debuted. But before discussing that, let's bring us up to date on the story of baseball cards through the 1980s.

Until that point, there were four major card companies -- Topps, Fleer, Donruss and Score. They came in wax packs, and usually you could buy at least two packs for a dollar. Usually the wax would dull the top card of the deck, because the cards were plain cardboard.

The inserts (irregular cards or non-cards) had a function. My personal favorite inserts happened to be the puzzle pieces in the Donruss packs -- buy yourself enough of them, and you, sir or ma'am, have just earned yourself a handsome puzzle of Carl Yazstremski.

Other packs had the gum that would splinter inside your mouth and embed itself in your gums like shrapnel (a compliment, oddly enough), and Score had hologram trivia cards that would teach you more than any grade-school history books.

The actual insert cards weren't a stretch either. Score's "Cooperstown Collection" and Donruss' "Diamond Kings" comprised two of the premier inserts at the time.

The "Cooperstown Collection," a favorite of mine, featured future Hall of Famers. On the other hand, the "Diamond Kings" collection jumped all over the map in a far more inconsistent fashion.

"Diamond Kings" had the no-brainers (Roger Clemens, Robin Yount), guys who looked good at the time (Dwight Gooden, Mike Greenwell), and then once in awhile there would be a complete head-scratcher like Craig Worthington.

(Yes, Craig Worthington. Please give me credit when you throw out his name when naming obscure ballplayers when you're bored...or am I the only one that does this?)

And Topps -- poor Topps -- they had the checklists. Getting one of those in a pack is like getting a "Rules of Poker" card in a hand of Texas Hold 'Em. Yet, looking back on it now, they have a kind of old-fashioned antique charm, like rotary phones. Or cholera.

All that being said, that was the state of the union before Upper Deck became the Air Jordans of the baseball card world in 1989. Not only did collectors clamor to get their hands on them, but because of that, other manufacturers realized that they could raise the price of their cards.

The price of a pack (then, a dollar) is just one of the disturbing trends that Upper Deck set. With their glossy coating, Upper Deck cards looked too nice to bend. A Rance Mullinks Upper Deck card looked like it belonged more in a glass case than in between bike spokes.

Yet another setback to the card industry came in the form of printing the calculated odds for receiving a "rare" insert. This, combined with the price of the packs and the look of the cards gave Upper Deck an immediately high value with no appreciation necessary, which everybody knew about. That pretty much put an end to trading as we knew it -- at least any that didn't involve a portfolio of cards' past performances as the last 10 issues of Beckett Monthly.

As good as Upper Deck looked on the front, though, they failed miserably on the back in my eyes. The cards listed only the most recent five years of a player's career -- a major departure from the norm.

The other card companies would list all the years no matter how small of a font to which they needed to resort. If the player didn't have that many years of pro ball under his belt, the cards would list the minor league numbers. If that wasn't enough, they'd include trivia or a bio to round it out.

This brought an added joy of getting a card of a HOFer late in the game. The card may have the player past his prime, but at least you have his own personal almanac on the backside.

Upper Deck tore this away from us and replaced it with an inconsequential photo. Later, Fleer Ultra shortened this down to one year with career numbers. Babe Ruth his only six homers in his last year of ball -- can you imagine how little that would tell anybody about his career? Before you know it, they'll probably shorten it down to one number, and you'll have to guess what it means.

The decline of the baseball card isn't all Upper Deck's fault. After all, the card companies all followed suit, and now you're lucky if you can get four packs with a $10 bill.

Now it has even reached the point where you can buy cards online. Actually, to be correct, you buy the idea of having a card -- the actual card is worth less. It's a stock market now, and we're trading card futures.

So where do we go from here? Well, if cards mirror the game in any way, perhaps we'll have a sabermetric brand.

Think of the possibilities -- aside from the usual numbers, they'd throw in OPS, Runs Created, Secondary Average and Win Shares. And if they had room left on the card, they could throw in the formulas. Perhaps there could be a special Moneyball inserts -- along with the numbers, you'd get Oakland A's GM Billy Beane's curse-laden analysis of the player.

Until that point comes, however, there seems to be no end in sight to the slippery slope baseball cards have fallen down. But that's progress for you. I think Bob Dylan said it best...

"Your sons and your daughters Are beyond your command Your old road is rapidly again'. Pick the stale gum shards Out of the lining of your cheek For the times they are a-changin'."