This is a story about a new kind of sports activism.
Back in 2001, the story of young Greg "Toe" Nash was gaining a lot of attention among gullible sports junkies, which is to say that he was all the rage in Daniel Lauve's Texas apartment. At first, Toe Nash sounded a lot like Sidd Finch, the Mets' barefoot Zen fireballer whom George Plimpton created for Sports Illustrated as an April Fools joke. (If you haven't read the story of Sidd Finch, then stop whatever you're doing and read it.) But Toe Nash, as revealed by Peter Gammons, was for real. He was a 6'6", 215-pound Little League phenom who had quit school and disappeared into the cane fields of Louisiana. When some scouts came to look at him, he hit monster homers from both sides of the plate and showcased his 95 mph fastball and drop-off-the-table curve. Once scouts from other teams had seen him, they spread the word that they had seen the next Babe Ruth. His talents were so good that his seventh-grade education and fear of civilization were seen as minor problems to be worked out.
Also in 2001, a newly-elected George W. Bush lowered the bottom marginal tax rate, giving me an extra $300 to play with. For some reason, I found myself in a place I hadn't been in several years: a baseball card shop, talking with the owner about her encounters with Stan Musial, Ozzie Smith, Willie McGee, and others. I decided to spend some of my rebate money on some baseball cards: $25 on an Albert Pujols rookie card, $1 on a Stan Musial/Mark McGwire card (the woman asked me if I was buying the card because of McGwire, and I said, "No, Musial," which prompted her trip down memory lane), and a few dollars on a Tampa Bay Devil Rays Toe Nash rookie card.
The Toe Nash card found its place at the bottom of some box and stayed there until the next year, when Toe's name came up once again. This time, he was arrested for aggravated rape of a 15-year-old girl. He pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of sex with a minor and spent eight months in prison. When I learned of the seriousness and credibility of the charges, I tore the baseball card in half and threw it in the trash.*
There was something very gratifying about disposing of that card. You've gotta understand that for a certain type of guy from a certain era (which has unfortunately passed), the baseball card is like a player's identity captured on cardboard. As funny as it may sound, when I threw away that card, I felt like I was erasing Toe Nash from baseball history.
As nice as that one act was, it was still just a single, solitary act. I wonder what would happen if a) many people had done what I did and b) the player for whom the "message" was intended actually received the message.
Imagine a prominent player, let's say Rafael Palmeiro, arriving at the clubhouse to find a huge sack of mail right next to his locker. He opens it, and out spill a few thousand cards bearing his image, sent in by thousands of fans who don't like the feeling they get in the pit of their stomach when they see Raffy's cards next to those of players they still respect and admire.
For a certain type of sports fan, I think this is a very powerful image. As an adult, I can accept that we speak logically about what Palmeiro did wrong and how MLB should respond, but that doesn't satisfy the 9-year-old in me. That kid can still tell you exactly what Raffy's 1987 Topps "Future Stars" card looks like (even though I haven't seen it in a few years and can't dig it up right now--it's in storage) and has an emotional reaction to the steroid controversy that's not satisfied by 10-game suspensions.
I'm proposing a very public, impactful, and cathartic form of sports activism. Every time a player is shown to have used steroids, he has his baseball cards returned to him from every fan who can't stand possessing them. And if I'm a young player a few lockers down from Rafael Palmeiro, that sight would send a much stronger message than anything I would see from Major League Baseball, or from the players' union, or in the media.
*Having gone back and looked at the current version of the Toe Nash story, I wonder whether I was justified in tearing up the baseball card. Nash claims that he and the girl had consensual sex, and the girl has established a record of inventing rape charges. Hopefully Nash, who was dropped by the Devil Rays, picked up by the Reds, and dropped by the Reds after an arrest for assault, can turn things around, though his baseball life is almost certainly over.
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