Paul Turner: If I only had kept those baseball cards featuring former Spokane Indians

Source: www.spokesman.com --- Wednesday, May 23, 2018
When it comes to our childhoods, we all would like a few do-overs. Here’s one of mine. I have lived in Spokane for 30 years, but I did not grow up here. Still, when I was a little boy, I had a connection to the Lilac City. And I didn’t even know it. You see, when I was a kid in the 1960s I had shoeboxes full of Baseball cards. We’re talking hundreds of cards, most smelling like the chalky chewing gum they came with. Some destined for the insatiable maw that was the bike spokes on my sturdy Huffy. That was not unusual. Several of my friends could have made the same claim. But here’s the thing. I had in my hands back then the makings of a small set of cards I would truly savor today. Baseball cards that mention Spokane. You see, on the backs of the cards you would find the player’s career statistics, often along with a stupefyingly dumb cartoon and a scintillating fun fact: “Frank enjoys hunting and fishing.” Those stats included what teams he had played for over the years, including his minor league assignments. For a number of the players in my shoeboxes, those careers included a year or so with the Spokane Indians. Of course, I paid zero attention to that. I was more interested in seeing if I could get Matt Tanksley to trade me his Willie McCovey card for a Gaylord Perry, Vada Pinson and a Felipe Alou. Now? I would love few things more than to have held onto all the cards for players who did stints in Spokane – practically any ...

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