You lied to me, Tim Salmon

I trusted you. You were rookie of the year. I had your cards. Yours like so many others. You had promise, altheticism, poise. You were going to be one of the greats. Someday I would sell your card for untold millions. The 1991 Tim Salmon rookie cards from the Donruss Elite set would be the new Honus Wagner card. But no. No. You turned out to be just another above-average ballplayer whose baseball cards would be more valuable as toilet paper if they weren't so damn stiff and uncomfortable on the anus.

Career stats:

AVG: .282
HR: 299
RBI: 1016

Nothing to sneeze at, to be sure. But he never hit more that 35 homers in a season, didn't quite crack 300 HRs for his career and generally was never a superstar. In fact, he never made the all-star team. He has the unique distinction of having the most career HRs of any player never selected to the all-star team.

But I digress. I don't really care about Tim Salmon or his baseball statistics. I care that he represents a lot of wasted time, effort and money on my part as a child. My parents have been cleaning out storage a lot (we moved around a fair bit as a kid, and storage just accumulates) recently and my mother keeps bringing me old collecting cards. I have basketball and baseball cards mostly (and a few comic cards, X-Men et. al. but I'll refrain from talking about those to save myself the psychic pain of reliving the wedgies I got for collecting comic cards) and NONE of them are worth anything. Grant Hill?? Yeah, that turned out well. JALEN ROSE? Do cards increase in value when the players become asshole ESPN commentaters? They DON'T?? I'm SHOCKED. Tim Salmon is the epitome of this. I have so many Tim Salmon, John Kruk etc. cards that will never be worth shit. Why? Because they're the idiots who decided NOT to do steroids when everyone else was. (NOTE: I have no idea whether they did steroids. I assume they actually did because everyone did in baseball.)

So I have this vast baseball card collection that is worthless. It just takes up space. And yet I can't discard it because I still hold fast to the delusion that some idiot might one day pay be $600,000 for a near-mint Roberto Alomar card.

SECRET WEALTHY, ECCENTRIC COLLECTOR: I'm secretly fabulously wealthy and eccentric.

ME: I can see that.

SECRET WEALTHY, ECCENTRIC COLLECTOR: I need a Danny Tartabull Topps 1984 rookie card to complete my collection. Money is no object.

ME: I have that card.

SECRET WEALTHY, ECCENTRIC COLLECTOR: I will pay you one billion dollars for it.

ME: Okay.

SECRET WEALTHY, ECCENTRIC COLLECTOR: Mwahahahaha. At last! The 1984 set is complete. You fool! You have unwittingly set into motion events that will result in the apocaly--

ME: Thanks.

/Closes door
//Rubs billion dollar check all over body

I have a vivid imagination.