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Baseball has always been a part of Tom Stephens life. He’s 70-years-old now, but he thinks back fondly on those neighborhood games at a Lincoln park when he was just a boy…
"If you hit the ball, it would roll down the street for like three blocks, we’d have somebody down there chasing it," Tom said. "But that’s what we did."
And when those games would end, Tom would spend his nickels on packs of baseball cards, chewing the stick of bubble gum that came with them, while hoping the cards included one of his favorite big league players, like Roberto Clemente or Nellie Fox.
"Every birthday party, we always knew what to buy. Buy baseball cards and give them away. And then they’d open them up. We’d start trading them and just started collecting. Started doing that in 1959."
As the birthdays passed, Tom’s baseball card collection grew.
"Well, I think it was over 3,000," he said. "I kind of stopped when I discovered girls and that was more fun than baseball cards."
The cards sat in a suitcase in Tom’s basement until he graduated high school. That’s when Tom thought he was about to get drafted and sent to fight in Vietnam. With an uncertain future ahead, he decided to get rid of some of his stuff in the basement, including those baseball cards. That’s when he spotted Joel Dawson, a young boy in the neighborhood.
"They lived two blocks around the corner and he just happened to be coming by," Tom said. "And I guess I’d go, 'Hey you want … I’m going to throw these things away. Do you want them?' And of course he said, 'Yeah, I’ll take them.'"
Tom ended up serving stateside during the Vietnam War. After he was done with his service, he got married and started a family. He worked several jobs through the years. And he never forgot about those baseball cards.
"My friends would always go, 'I’ve heard about these stupid baseball cards for years.' And my wife, 'Geez. Get over it.,” Tom said. "It’s kind of like losing a long lost friend. One of those type of things. And then finally they came back."
Forty-nine years after Tom had given his 3,000-plus baseball card collection to that little neighborhood boy, the doorbell rang and he answered to find that boy -- who was now a man -- on his front porch.
"And he said, 'Well, I’m Joel Dawson.' And I said, 'Well, I recognized you, you know.' And he says, 'I’ve got something for you.' And I went, 'My baseball cards?' And he said, 'Yes.'”
Joel, who now lives in Breckenridge, Colorado, says he doesn’t remember getting the cards from Tom, but years later, when he was back visiting his parents, Joel’s mom asked him if he was ever going to take that collection.
"And I said, 'What collection?' She said, 'Well, those cards that belonged to Tom Stephens are out in the garage.' And I went out and looked at them. Yeah, I’ll take them. And I got home and started looking through them and there’s cards there of Mickey Mantle and Lou Gehrig and I thought, wow, I really got something here."
But Joel isn’t a big baseball fan.
"I’ve never collected a baseball card in my life," he said.
So the cards sat on a shelf in his garage for several more decades.
"I don’t know, The last four or five years," Joel said, "I’ve always thought, when I go back to Lincoln, I should take those cards with me and give them back to Tom because they’re not my cards. I’ve babysat them for the 30 years, but they were his cards."
Those cards are no longer in a basement or on a dusty garage shelf. Tom has put each one in a clear plastic cover and organized them in big binders, catalogued by league and team. The collection is probably worth several thousand dollars, but Joel said he never considered selling them. Tom said he wouldn’t have blamed him if he did.
"I said, 'You should have sold them.' He said, 'Nah.' He just didn’t feel right about it," Tom said. "You know, maybe if I’d have had them during lean times, maybe I would’ve sold them. So it’s good that he kept them for me, because I’ll never sell them."
The baseball card collection also renewed a friendship between Tom and Joel. They’ve shared many memories and laughs about the old neighborhood since meeting again.
"As much as anything it was just fun seeing Tom again.," Joel said. "It’s always fun to reacquaint, to get back in touch with somebody."
Tom shares that sentiment, toward both Joel and that old baseball card collection.
"Well, like I said, it’s like running into an old friend that you haven’t seen I such a long time," Tom said.
So now Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Lou Gehrig, Yogi Berra and the rest of those big leaguers from an era long-since past are once again safe at home.
Watch this video segment on Tom Stephens' baseball card collection from our Nebraska Stories program on Nebraska Public Media.