Downsizing My Memories

This is Part I of a two-part article about saying goodbye to my first sports collection.

This past Thanksgiving was a first. Unlike every previous Turkey Day, this was the first one I celebrated outside of New England, the region where I grew up. For the first time in my life, I spent Thanksgiving in warm, sunny Sarasota, Florida where my parents moved to their new home. 

After two decades of residing in Connecticut, it was time my parents fulfilled Jerry Seinfeld’s quip about how tri-state area Jews, once they hit 65 years old, are lawfully required to move to Florida. 

I was excited for my Thanksgiving visit, an extensive two-week stay of quality family time consisting of golf and pickle ball in the mornings and board games in the evening. But amidst this unusually relaxed, relatively-carefree holiday atmosphere, I was unprepared for this premeditated agenda my parents had in store - an ancillary reason they were happy to see me. 

During their year-long process of moving out of their Connecticut house, my parents had been kind enough to by bring my childhood “stuff” down to their new house. It’s common for parents to insist their younger children remove their own belongings before they move houses, so I appreciated their gesture. Yet quickly upon my arrival to Florida, I realized they brought down my clothes, books, and tchotchkes not as a way to preserve my childhood, but so that I could finally get rid of them myself.

My parents had downsized their living situation and now I had to downsize my past. 

I’m not a hoarder by any means, but my tendency to augment the significance of physical objects has led to safekeeping items which rational people would call clutter. Fortunately, I’d been improving at ridding random past relics - especially if they no longer serve a daily function. 

The first group of items my parents asked me to get rid of were my clothes. This was relatively easy, because the majority of my old wardrobe no longer served me. Baggy linen pants I once casually wore on a Kibbutz or polychromatic sweatpants with a big hole in the crotch were of no use. Then there were t-shirts from my thinner, pseudo-Brooklyn-hipster days that no longer fit my thicker torso. All in all, I took 15 minutes to sift through the keepers  - which constituted around 20% of the initial apparel. For the other 80%, I channeled Marie Kondo and thanked them for their service. 

Next were books. Books were harder to filter, because each one provided a sense of catharsis. In my early 20s, I learned that the books you choose to read are a window into your identity and provide a compass for your vocation.  From this pile in front of me, I saw a myriad of dense college psychology textbooks stacked atop more digestible pop psych hardcovers, thinner paperbacks about screenwriting and filmmaking, and a bevy of books about sports and society. 

These topics formed a connective web which manifested into what I should be doing - something combining psychology, sports, storytelling…

Sifting through these books took about five hours - with several pauses upon rediscovering and turning pages of old favorites.  Alas books, especially textbooks, take up more space than I thought so my parents allowed me to save only half the books to be kept at their house. The other half was put aside in a separate pile to be donated to the local Sarasota library. 

I had reluctantly knocked off the downsizing of my clothing and books, two domains which illustrated an evolution of taste, interest, and identity. In both instances I had managed to stave off the melancholy that comes with nostalgia. I could not say the same about the last matter to get rid of -  my sports paraphernalia.

This paraphernalia wasn’t in the form of jerseys, pennants, and autographed baseballs; Nothing one could find at a Sports Collectibles or Vintage Store.

I’m talking about paper - old, brittle, slightly deteriorating paper  - and lots of it. 

Awaiting me in my bedroom were three mid-sized cardboard boxes containing over one hundred newspaper sports sections, loose newspaper articles, team programs and yearbooks, ticket stubs, and photos of athletes. 

These boxes comprised a cherished collection, twenty five years in the making. 

Starting in elementary school, I collected newspaper articles about games I attended the day before. I’d cut out the article and hand the cutout to my dad to put in a cardboard box. While some of these articles recapped personal landmark games, like my first basketball game or first playoff game, the majority just covered insignificant regular season games. 

The majority of these clippings were of games played in New York, but several were from local newspapers from other cities. 

Throughout middle school and high school, my family went on road trips to visit baseball stadiums. It was our cute way of seeing America, driving from metropolis to metropolis to witness their social epicenter - the ballpark. These road trips took us to a dozen baseball stadiums via multiple pit stops - which is why somewhere in one of these cardboard boxes is a twenty year old issue of the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, Toronto Star, and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. 

I’m ready to dive into these boxes to find those newspapers and rehash the memories from the other newspapers, when my dad reminds me I need to get rid of these newspapers. 

I hadn’t seen this collection in several years so I wasn’t ready to clean these out just yet.

“I need a few days,” I said, reuniting with this collection I hadn’t even perused in seven years. “This will take time.”

My collection review could have been more efficient with a different approach. If I perused through them like, let’s say, a milk crate of vinyls, I could have thumbed through quickly, pulled out one I found interesting, skimmed the print, and put it back in the crate.

Except my meticulous rereading each article was akin to removing each vinyl out of its sleeve, playing each one on the turntable front to back, until no track was left unheard.

When I read these articles, I was transported not just to the games’ highlights, but to my thoughts as a spectator in the stands. 

New York Post - April 16, 2002

An early season game between the Mets and Braves. In the bottom of the 7th, the Mets were down five runs. It was late so my dad wanted to drive home, but I wanted to stay until the end. He told me we could stay if the Mets tied up the game. They scored 5 runs in the frame and we stayed to watch the Mets win in extras. 

New York Times - July 22, 2001

A father-son weekend trip to Veterans Stadium to watch the visiting Mets play the Phillies. The game’s highlight was light-hitting Mets shortstop Rey Ordońez hit a rare home run. I was jumping for joy in our relatively empty row, but I couldn’t celebrate with my dad, who I had left the seats to find me funnel cake. 

I have a knack for remembering my state of mind during these games, watching the action unfold. And enduring these games pre-adolescent, my thoughts were more focused on the on-field play, who did what and which team won. But twenty years later as a mature adult, I can look at these games through a wider lens and see the statistics and results are less consequential relative to real world dilemmas. 

For example, in that Mets comeback, I have more empathy for my dad as his reasons for leaving early could be too arcane for an eleven year old’s consideration. Did he have an important presentation in the morning? Did he have to fire someone at work? 

I look back at the Rey Ordońez/funnel cake game played July 22, 2001. I put in perspective how this was only six weeks before New York City and the world would change forever. 

In my twenties, I continued saving newspaper articles, but now I was collecting more than game recaps. I gained perspective that sports wasn’t just a way to evaluate greatness in an individual and an organization - it also transcended worldly topics like politics, economics, and religion. 

The first newspaper I saved that wasn’t a game was in July 2010 - the New York Times front page of George Steinbrenner’s death. As much as I hate the Yankees, I know that my hatred is rooted in their ability to win by building a stable empire - this all began with Steinbrenner.  

Two years later, I collected several NY Post back pages capturing Linsanity - the three week stretch where Jeremy Lin obliterated the Harvard-Asian athlete stereotype and became the most hyped athlete in the world. This was 2012, back when you could write the headline “AMASIAN” and not get canceled. 

Also, these are just the newspapers!

I find myself rummaging through another cardboard box with more paperbound collectables - scorecards, programs, yearbooks (it’s hard not to read that in a stadium vendor’s barking voice).

Holding these early 2000s programs from either Mets Opening Days or games at other stadiums, I skim the opening pages of local advertisements, make my way past the centerfold scorecard, and land on the Player and Coaches Profile section. 

I flip through each individual player's page, giving me the basic information - DOB, Birthplace, High School, College. Underneath that info is the small synopsis or fun fact about their career, followed by their photo. Depending on their position, they're either holding a bat or glove, yet all of them are smiling ear-to-ear. I feel this smile emanate off the page, conveying their gratitude for getting paid to play a children’s game and hope for a prosperous career. Many of these players are younger than I am now, but at this moment we both know how their career has turned out. 

In the yearbook of the 2000 Boston Red Sox, a veteran relief pitcher Bryce Florie throws a pitch without any premonition his career will end via a line drive to his head (I was at the game). I find the 2001 Montreal Expos program - when an up-n-coming Vladimir Guerrero graced the cover, only just beginning to table set his Hall of Fame career.

After getting lost in the thoughts of “where are they now” and “what could have been” regarding these players, I find it difficult to reground myself. 

Staring back at me are headlines, articles, and photographs illustrating puzzle pieces of my childhood, the one that shaped my sports-adoring identity. I’m shocked how the innocuous act of cutting out these articles and saving them with my dad gave me more warmth than most material gifts I received.  

Although I hadn’t seen any of these newspapers in years, I still valued them as first instances of collecting art and scripture of sports. These games and articles through which they were preserved are the stepping stones which lead me to the fan I’m now today. 

Ultimately, I’m snapped out of this hypnosis as my dad steps back into the room. 

“Adam, it’s been a week. It’s now time to get rid of all this”.

Part II coming next.