Rickey Henderson's 1980 Topps Rookie Card and the Enduring Joy of Collecting and Fandom

When I was four years old, my father began buying me complete sets of baseball cards, beginning with the 1980 Topps set. If the goal was to instill in little Nathan a deep and abiding love of baseball and baseball cards it worked spectacularly. 

As a child, those complete sets from first Topps and then Donruss and Fleer were among my most cherished possessions. I have no idea what happened to them, whether I ended up selling them to some unscrupulous baseball card store or whether they ended up a casualty of my nomadic family moving constantly, never quite setting down roots anywhere. 

All I know is that they were my treasure, my fortune, my father’s gift to me as a baseball-obsessed boy and then at a certain point they just sort of disappeared, the way every good thing about my childhood eventually did.

I was an obsessive sports fan growing up the same way that I am pretty much an obsessive fan of everything other than sports today. I spent my allowance on packs of baseball cards, precociously fetishizing every exhilarating aspect of the experience. 

Oh, but it used to give me an almost sensual feeling of bliss to open a pack of baseball, football or basketball card in search of a sought-after rookie card or superstar card! It didn’t matter that the gum that came in packs was dusty, flavorless and as hard as a diamond: I popped that gross stick of sugar and chemicals in my mouth all the same. 

It was all about the thrill of the chase, the joy of the hunt, the possibility that any humble old pack of cards could contain something special, something enduring, something you would want to give your children as an inheritance. 

There was a time in my life when I would happily spend five hours waiting in line if it meant that I could breathe the same as air as someone like Carlton Fisk, Bo Jackson or Frank Thomas and have them spend three seconds of their blessed life scribbling their signature on a 8 x 10 glossy, cover of Beckett’s or official major league baseball. 

When I think back about that beautiful, beautiful 1980s Topps complete set one card stands out high above all others: Rickey Henderson’s rookie card.

Henderson isn’t just one of baseball’s all-time greats; he’s one of its greatest characters as well. He had incredible natural gifts of speed and power but he was also extraordinary smart and savvy and aggressive in how he played the game. 

At 5’10, Henderson was short for a baseball player and when he got into his signature crouch his strike zone was damn near non-existent. Henderson was an extraordinarily patient hitter so he walked more than anyone else in the history of baseball.

Henderson was also a great power hitter, with more leadoff home runs than anyone else, but during his almost unbelievably impressive career he was also baseball’s all-time greatest base-runner. 

Henderson didn’t just set the all-time record for career stolen bases with 1408; he snagged almost five hundred stolen bases more than the runner-up, Lou Brock, whose 938 career stolen bases look positively paltry compared to Henderson. 

Like Michael Jordan and Carlton Fisk, two of my other childhood heroes, Henderson had a need to compete that bordered on pathological. 

At 45, after achieving pretty much everything a baseball player possibly could, Henderson was so intent on remaining a professional baseball player that he signed on with the Newark Bears of the Atlantic League when he wasn’t picked up by a major league team. 

I was right in thinking that the 1980 Rickey Henderson Topps card was a special card for a special player. So even after I stopped collecting sports cards after losing my virginity and discovering marijuana at 19, that magical baseball card still held a place of distinction in my memory. 

So when I saw that Topps was commissioning pop artists, rappers, jewelers and various other creative sorts to radically re-imagine and re-design classic baseball cards from its archives I was all kinds of intrigued, even if I couldn’t bring myself to spend twenty dollars on one of these limited-edition cards, no matter how nifty. 

Then I saw that Toppps was offering signed and numbered limited edition 13 by 18 prints of these cards for an almost distressingly, suspiciously affordable price as a Memorial Day weekend deal. 

I bought two different variations on the 1980 Rickey Henderson Topps rookie card: one from jeweler/artist Ben Baller that is steeped in a funky street aesthetic that combines the flash of Baller’s day job with the grit of Oakland at night and the other from Ben Taylor, who has done work for Phish and Mondo and Marvel and opts for a spacier, more retro take on the classic card. 

And the best part is that they’re so perversely cheap that I would be losing money NOT buying them. 

I don’t collect baseball cards anymore. I haven’t for a quarter century, or roughly as long as Rickey Henderson played major league ball like no one before or since. 

Thankfully I do collect pop art so I am overjoyed to have Rickey Henderson back in my collection in a form even greater and more enduring than literally the best baseball card of my entire childhood. 

Welcome back, my good man. Now please do stay a while!

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