WILL CLARK AND THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE IMPOSSIBLE

(Text translated from the original Spanish version from the book "Dime que no fue así, Joe")

Money isn't everything, but it seems capable of everything: it doesn't buy happiness but imitates it quite well. Money seems to acknowledge the parameters of existence. Salvador Dalí would say: "How could I not like dollars if they're something mystical and magical?"

Baseball card collecting is not an exception to the reaches of the power of money. Not long ago, a baseball card from the early 20th century featuring shortstop Honus Wagner was appraised and sold for around a million dollars. What would Honus think if he knew that an image of himself on mere cardboard generated more income than the total salaries he earned in his over twenty-year career in the Major Leagues?

As a child, I collected baseball cards, but I never thought of the possibility of enriching myself that way. For a middle-class kid from a small, purely baseball-loving town, owning an image of the great warriors with cap and glove was something else: a passport to the land of magic.

If the Jews had the Wailing Wall, the devotees of Guadalupe had the Tepeyac hill, the Muslims had the black stone of the Kaaba, and the Catalans had the Camp Nou, why wouldn't we children also worship a baseball card? Every man requires the senseless act to maintain, in the long run, the dose of collective sanity.

A baseball card was taken as an emblem of the children's tribe or the possessing individual, allowing for various assumptions. The sacred sense of a baseball card couldn't be doubted. Whoever owned the image assumed the personality and skills of the current ballplayer. For example, Doc Gooden's card granted the right to adopt the rank of a grandmaster and pitch as a starter in organized games at any time, Fernando Valenzuela's card guaranteed a status of national hero, surpassing the overrated stone-faced Benito Juárez, and the rookie Mark McGwire's card ensured the honor of being the fourth batter of the team. Of course, no one wanted to be anchored to the same role, and there were rules for trading (and stealing) baseball cards. However, among us, one particular card had acquired a value beyond all dimension for a very simple reason: no one had ever seen it.

I'm referring to the baseball card of William Nuschler Clark, Jr., better known as Will Clark, the talented first baseman for the San Francisco Giants.

Will Clark, the man with the perfect swing, the Natural, who was second in the '85 draft. Will Clark, who in that same year, in his first Minor League turn, sent a ball pitched by Fernando Valenzuela over the fence. Will Clark, who a year later in the Major Leagues, in his first turn, did the same with the sacred cow of strikeouts, the express from Refugio, Texas, Nolan Ryan. Will Clark, who in the first game of the '89 Championship Series hit a solo home run in the third inning off Greg Maddux of the Cubs. Will Clark, who an inning later, with the bases loaded, struck fear into the Cubs and caused catcher Joe Girardi to go talk to Greg Maddux to advise him on how to pitch. Will Clark, who clearly read Joe Girardi's lips telling Greg Maddux: "High and inside fastball." Will Clark, who hit another home run, this time with the bases loaded. Will Clark, who caused catchers and pitchers to use their gloves to cover their lips before speaking to each other since then. Will Clark, who in the fifth game of the series against the Cubs, with the score tied 1-1 in the eighth inning and men on base, sent the Giants to the World Series by hitting a single to center field after surviving batting fouls for several minutes with a two-strike count against star closer Mitch Williams, the wild thing.

But despite our drooling over the syllables of his name, for us, it was an impossible task to obtain Will Clark's baseball card because the card packages (with gum included) were not sold in our city. It was the era of worn-out patriotic speeches, price controls, and economic closure, all before veering sharply to the other extreme: the wild capitalism of globalization. Usually, we ordered the card packages from acquaintances or relatives traveling to the United States.

But one day, at the vanished Videocentro on the Culiacán Malecón, I discovered something transcendent, something that justified my existence on its own: they were selling baseball card packages on the black market.

They cost ten pesos (ten thousand of the old ones). Being an attentive student in mathematics, I didn't delay in weaving my strategy: I would tell my schoolmates that a relative was traveling to the United States and that if they wanted card packages, they would cost twelve pesos; that way, if I managed to get five orders, the sixth would be free for me. And that's how I ended up buying not six but twelve card packages. Profit isn't inhumane, perhaps it's the most human thing.

The problem in the end was different. How to choose two out of those twelve packages? If I chose wrong and Will Clark appeared in any of the others, I'd never forgive myself.

Dilemmas must be resolved according to one's own human condition: I opened all twelve packages.

I don't remember in which one, but there it was: Will Clark in his lordly pose, purely baseball, awaiting his turn at bat, with black grease streaks drawn under his eyes.

The contact with the sacred isn't exempt from consequences. The self is no longer the self; it is the other, the unattainable, or in terms of a contemporary adult reader of Maxim, GQ, and Men’s Health magazines: sex before sex. That's how I felt, just like that.

After the epiphany, I proceeded to carefully seal the packages with tape. The task was delicate considering a small detail: one of the recipients was the son of a local gangster. Innocent maneuver? Naïve? Reckless?

I don't know. Here I am, 20 years later, and the Will Clark baseball card is still here too.