His baseball card was in the first pack of baseball cards that my mom bought me at the quick check on Rt.88 in Point Pleasant in the year of 1987. My favorite color was green and the team he played for became my favorite team to root for. That team wore green uniforms with yellow trim and that team was the Oakland Athletics hailing from the Bay Are of Oakland , California. His name was Mark McGwire. And for the last 24 years i have cheered for him, defended him, and spent my money on some of the very tools he used to carve his niche into the baseball record books. The first time i met him was in 1990. My father knew the head of security at Yankee Stadium. And on a sunny Sunday afternoon in September of 1990, my father's friend who was at the time, the head of security at Yankee Stadium, Arranged a meeting between a 7 year old baseball fan and a then 26 year old American League All Star First baseman, Mark McGwire. Every Year Since then, I made a voyage to Yankee Stadium to see Mark when he would come into town to play the Yankees. I was a member of his now defunct fan club in the early 90's, and every year i would to see him play, i would call out to him "Mark, the fanclub member from NJ", and every year he would over and sign a autograph for me. I was a fan of his when he hit 42 Home Runs in 1992, but finished second to Juan Gonzalez's 43. I was a fan of his in 93, and 94, when back and heel injuries ended 2 of his seasons in a row. I was a fan when he was almost kept out of baseball because injuries. And of course i was a fan in 1998 when my all time favorite player saved baseball by bringing millions and millions of fans back to the stadium in the epic HR chase of 1998. In 2001 my childhood officially ended. I graduated high school and Mark McGwire retired from the game of baseball. When that happened i bought less and less baseball cards over those sad months. But in 2002 even though he was retired, his first ever certified autographed baseball cards were inserted into packs of baseball cards by Upper Deck. This was cool because while he played and while he was the biggest name in sports, he never had a certified baseball card. it was in those cards that his most expensive and best baseball card was produced. In 1999 Upper Deck started producing cards of the member of Baseballs 500 HR Club. Along with the cards, embetted into the card was a piece of one of the players baseball bats that they had used at some point in their career. There would be 350 copies of the card, but as a paralell version, they would produce autographed versions that were numbered out of the players jersey number. Mark McGwire wore number 25. Therefore there would be 25 signed copy's of the most desired Mark McGwire card ever produced. As a lifetime McGwire fan, this was theeeee card i had to own. I wont' get into specifics but 4.5 years after it was released in 2002, i was lucky enough to aquire one.
here is my copy.
In March, of 2005 McGwire was crucified on Capitol Hill for his use of Steroids and his refusal to go into details of his use. As a result, much of his memorabilia took a hit in terms of value and demand. But for some people's curse, this became my heaven. I was able to obtain high end signed baseball cards, Game Used Baseball Bats, Game Used Cleats, Game Used Batting Gloves, etc. that i never would have been able to afford yet have the opportunity to buy if his image was not damaged. For people that bought his memorabilia to sell and to make a profit, those were the people that took the biggest loss. For True Die hard fans like myself, this was heaven, as my collection grew into something i never could have imagined. At the current moment as I write this i have in my Mark McGwire collection, over 275+ Autographs that include 6 of baseball bats that he used during his career including the greatest kind of mcgwire memorabilia you can own, a HR Notated Bat. I obtained it from a man who got the bat from one of mcgwire's former teammates. It was used to hit Career HR #576 on August 21,2001. This is the cream of the crop when it comes to game used mcgwire bats.
Although i will not be able to sell the collection for what it once would have sold for, i can still make a nice amount of return. But because of the hit he took in the public persona, a true fan was able to build a mighty collection out of 20+ years of fan loyalty and love of the game.