Thanks, Mom, for not throwing out my baseball cards

LONDON : Like most moms, mine had many wonderful qualities. Among the feats that made her a standout: She never threw out my baseball cards.

I began collecting them around the age of 12 in the mid-1960s, picking up packs after school for a nickel each at a local drug store in West Orange, New Jersey, where I grew up. I can still smell the thin pink wafers of bubble gum that came inside each pack and contributed to countless cavities.

My cards were in better condition than those of most other kids in my neighborhood. That's because they would flip their cards in a game they played on a patio behind the house of one of my friends.

With a flip of the wrist, a kid would drop a card that would land either showing the ballplayer's image on the front or the back side with his statistics. If the next kid's card landed the same way, that kid won the opponent's card. If the cards didn't match, the first player won.

I was never a big fan of flipping – or, for that matter, sticking cards between the spokes of a bicycle wheel to generate a loud clicking sound. Both practices damaged them.

Unlike many of my friends, I also didn't just collect players on my favorite team – in my case, the Los Angeles Dodgers – and trade away the others. I collected all-stars, which meant being willing to keep players on teams I hated, like the New York Yankees.

As a result, I ended up with the cards of many players who went on to make the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York – including Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Hank Aaron, Roberto Clemente, Frank Robinson, Carl Yastrzemski and Stan Musial.

When I went off to college, my collection of more than 1,000 cards stayed behind in shoeboxes in my closet. I don't recall telling my mom