In addition to building sets and collecting Red Sox cards, I collect cards of two players, Mike Greenwell, who was my favorite player growing up, and Kason Gabbard. Now, Gabbard may seem like an odd choice of players to collect. After all, he’s not exactly a star player and he doesn’t even play for my team anymore (f&$!#ing Eric Gagne). But there’s a story behind Gabbard that keeps me loyal to him despite these facts.
Two and a half years ago my wife was pregnant with our second child - a boy. We were purposely avoiding common names (if it was in the top 25 of common names we weren't even considering it) and were struggling to find a name that we liked. We had actually thought of naming him Anakin, but changed our minds after everyone laughed at us and told us that everyone would refer to him as “Star Wars boy”.
As an aside, did you know that George Lucas made up the name Anakin? Look it up on any of the baby name websites. It sounds so normal (compared with Obi Wan or Qui Gon) that I just assumed it was a name he’d just picked up and used in his movies.
About two months before my wife’s due date we were visiting at my parent's house. The Red Sox were on ESPN and Kason Gabbard was making his ML debut against the Seattle Mariners. He was pitching well and I jokingly said to my wife, “we could name him Kason.” I assumed that my wife would give me one of her, “don’t be a dumb-ass” looks and that would be the end of it. Imagine my surprise when she instead told me that she liked it. Good thing too. Two days later she went into premature labor and our son Casen was born (he’s a healthy, normal terrible two now, for those wondering).
This week’s Monster card is just the second Gabbard card I’ve added to my collection (my player collections have been a lower priority of late). It comes from a relatively obscure minor league issue produced by the DAV (Disabled American Veterans). For general info on this multi-team set, check out this post by Cards in the Attic. Considering that it isn't produced by any of the "major" manufacturers, the design of this card isn't half bad. In fact, I like this design more than some of those by Topps and Upper Deck from this year (Artifacts, and CoSigners for example).
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1 comment:
Nice story. I think you made the right choice in Casen rather than Anakin (Ha, Star Wars Boy!). A lot of people in Boston were pissed when he was included in the Gagne trade, but he hasn't quite panned out pitching in the heat and tiny Texas ballpark.
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