The problem with a dream becoming a reality is that, once it does, it’s no longer a dream.
I think I read that somewhere once.
Or maybe I wrote it somewhere once.
Six of one.
The point is that I’ve never heard anybody use the expression “the harsh light of dreams”.
Reality, of course, is Vulcan.
It deals only in cold hard facts.
Shows no emotion.
Live long and prosper.
While you live with it.
I’m not talking, by the way, about dreams coming true, necessarily, (like becoming the doctor we’ve dreamed about being all our lives, or better yet that our parents have dreamed about us becoming all their lives) although I think the principle applies, no matter the semantics.
And the more I think about it, the more I realize that I’m probably not talking about dreams at all.
I’m talking about illusions.
Easily confused.
Very, very thin line.
I was inspired to wander down this particular rabbit hole of reflection when I came across this story on SI.com this morning.
CHICAGO (AP) -- A 1909 Honus Wagner baseball card was sold for $1.62 million at a memorabilia auction in Chicago, a sports auction company said Saturday.
The record price for a baseball card is $2.8 million -- paid in 2007 for a near-mint condition Wagner card released in 1909 by the American Tobacco Company.
John Rogers, 35, of North Little Rock, Ark., said his winning bid for the T206 Wagner card is the realization of a decades-long dream.
"I call this the holy grail of baseball cards," Rogers said in a phone interview. "I've looked at a number of other specimens, sat in a few other Wagner auctions. But this is the one that makes collecting worth while."
Rogers has collected baseball cards since he was 6. When he was in the second grade, he said he cut out a copy of a Wagner card and carried it around in his pocket.
"Since I was 8 years old, I've hoped and dreamed that one day I'd be able to get one," Rogers said.
Bidders at the Friday night auction also spent $42,000 on Ken Griffey, Jr.'s 600th home run ball and $240,000 for a 1938 Lou Gehrig Yankees road jersey, said Doug Allen, Mastro Auctions chief operating officer.
The T206 cards are from a series issued between 1909 and 1911. Allen said the card was in excellent condition, and said the next highest bid, $1.3 million, was placed on behalf of a client who wished to remain anonymous.
Wagner's card was among the first of hundreds of cards of major league players produced by the American Tobacco Co. and included in packages of cigarettes.
Unlike other players, however, Wagner quickly demanded that his card be withdrawn. Theories vary as to why, with one being that he didn't believe American Tobacco paid him enough.
A nonsmoker, the Pittsburgh shortstop was arguably the second-greatest baseball player of his era, behind Ty Cobb. Wagner hit .344 during his rookie year of 1897, and batted over .300 for 17 consecutive seasons, winning eight National League batting titles.
One of the first five players inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, Wagner retired in 1917 with more hits, runs, RBIs, doubles, triples and steals than any NL player.
There are fewer than 100 Wagner baseball cards in existence, said Julie Stoklosa, a spokeswoman for Mastro Auctions, and less than ten are in excellent condition.
Allen said even the lowest graded Wagner baseball cards can fetch more than $150,000.
If you read my pieces here on any regular basis, I imagine that you might be bracing yourself for my little rant about a world where somebody has a million and a half bucks to drop on a baseball card when kids are starving in West Virginia.
It’s a fair point.
But not the point.
Not today anyway.
What I’m thinking is how much kids are missing out on today because they’re not getting the full “dream about someday being your favorite sports star” experience.
At least not the experience I got.
When I was nine years old, I dreamed about being Mickey Mantle.
I used to go to sleep at night in my number 7 jersey, my MM autographed Louisville Slugger by my side, scrunched down under the covers until well past curfew, a flashlight powered by four Eveready D batteries and a stack of well thumbed baseball cards to catalog again and again.
And again.
The bat thing got old pretty quick, actually.
Even a nine year old can make adjustments to a dream to avoid splinters in unpleasant numbers.
But the jersey stayed until it was in shreds.
The cards were shuffled and re shuffled and then re-filed.
And the dream was alive each and every night.
Even though Mickey Mantle was a drunk.
I didn’t care.
Because I didn’t know.
Just like I didn’t know that Babe Ruth was a womanizing, beer guzzling overeater.
Or Ty Cobb was a hateful, spiteful, cruel son of a bitch.
It didn’t matter to me. Because I didn’t know these things.
There was no Fox News Channel.
There was no ESPN.
There was no TMZ.com
There was no Entertainment Tonight.
There was nobody waiting to tease me to tune in tomorrow for details on the latest human failing of my hero.
Or heroes.
And the baseball cards that I collected and cherished were little snapshots of the hope that I didn’t even realize I had.
The hope that I would realize my own potential and someday be on some card held in the hand of another little kid who was dreaming of what could be.
Kids still dream.
They just deserve to do it under the covers, illuminated by four Eveready D’s.
Not by the harsh light.
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