Evan Longoria’s locker is crowded.
Hanging from a rack are t-shirts and shorts, sweat-wicking warmup tops and Diamondbacks jerseys in white, black, purple, grey and tan. Shelves and cupboards maintain a smattering of private results; on the ground sits a three-tiered rack only for his sneakers. But amongst these ballplayer emblems are footlong white containers discovered extra usually within the closets of baseball followers than within the lockers of the game’s stars. Inside, they’re full of baseball playing cards.
This 12 months at Chase Field, it’s frequent to glimpse Longoria breezing into the clubhouse, a pair such containers tucked underneath an arm. The 37-year-old veteran needs to share the enjoyment of his favourite interest. “He’s always bringing in cards like, ‘Hey, let’s open them,’” says rookie outfielder Corbin Carroll. Longoria’s teammates usually oblige. They’ve unearthed a Gabriel Moreno card and ones that includes Arizona prospects Jordan Lawlar and Deyvison De Los Santos. Carroll has even pulled a few his personal.
Longoria’s teammates could not understand it, however the veteran third baseman is just sharing the scraps. He used to crack open containers of playing cards like this extra usually – and certainly, it’s nonetheless enjoyable – however Longoria has original himself into greater than only a hobbyist. What began as a pandemic-shutdown pastime has now became a severe endeavor. Longoria has inserted himself deep into the card-collecting world, shortly studying its intricacies. At house, he has “thousands and thousands” of playing cards, he says, lots of that are a superb deal extra worthwhile than those he lugs into the workplace to indicate his coworkers.
There’s an autographed Mike Trout card that’s price a good sum of money. Longoria additionally collects Formula 1 racing playing cards and just lately offered a 2021 Lewis Hamilton card that was one among simply 5 of its sort. (One of those self same Hamilton playing cards is at present listed on eBay for $5,000.) He’s additionally scorching after basic playing cards from baseball’s golden age, each as a result of he’s a fan and since he’s a savvy investor.
While the marketplace for high-priced fashionable playing cards has been extra unstable – softening final 12 months after two years of skyrocketing funding, per an evaluation in Sports Collectors Digest – top-grade basic playing cards, like sports franchises, steadily achieve worth.
“If I spent $40,000 on a Lou Gehrig card or a Babe Ruth card or something like that, in 20 years, it’s going to be worth $60,000,” he says. “It’s not going down. It’s like owning the S&P 500.”
All of this began with a distinct sort of collectible. Desperate for one thing to do whereas the game was shuttered in the summertime of 2020, Longoria started shopping for Pokémon playing cards to open together with his two oldest kids, now 10 and eight years outdated. The interest caught on with him greater than them, nevertheless, and now Longoria can’t get sufficient.
A novice to card accumulating, he began by shopping for packs of baseball playing cards at Target and Walmart, however that strategy by no means turned up something particular. Card producers not often sneak the actually worthwhile stuff into a budget packs. “It’s like playing a slot machine,” he says. “You put in a hundred bucks and you’re probably going to lose it all.” To catch ‘em all, he discovered, you gotta spend. So, he did his analysis and have become extra literate. He adopted outstanding collectors on social media and he watched card breakers on livestreams. He discovered which playing cards had worth, which packs they got here in, and the right way to procure them.
That consideration to element makes him distinctive amongst professional athletes who gather. “He gets it,” says Ryan Veres, proprietor of Burbank Sportscards, a Southern California clearinghouse that sells roughly 4,000 particular person playing cards a day from a inventory of 40 million. Most sports stars who gather are likely to delegate, Veres has discovered, however Longoria pops into the store every time he’s on the town. “A lot of those guys will just have guys buy stuff for them. ‘I don’t know a lot about it. Just buy me cool stuff,’” Veres says. “But he does everything himself. He’ll pound the pavement.”
With practically $150 million in profession earnings, Longoria has the scratch to be a severe collector. (Though don’t anticipate him to rival the practically $100 million assortment belonging to Diamondbacks proprietor Ken Kendrick.) He’ll incessantly promote playing cards by his Instagram profile. The relaxation he retains for his children, within the hopes that they may sometime recognize them. They haven’t but.
“In the meantime, it’s like a Picasso. You get to look at it, it’s a story. Somebody comes over, ‘Hey, check this out,’” he says. “That, to me, is the exciting part about it.”
It all makes for an amusing picture – Longoria, a former Rookie of the Year and three-time Gold Glover, grinning as he plucks a card that includes some prospect who’d be fortunate to perform half of what he has. “The future of the game is bright,” he says, and the playing cards serve to attach him to that future as he prepares to develop into the sport’s previous. This is Longoria’s sixteenth season, and it marks the start of his profession’s remaining section. But it’s a section he entered willingly, signing with Arizona for one 12 months and $4 million to play part-time and reside in his offseason house.
He senses the top is close to, which is why he’s begun accumulating one thing apart from playing cards. Over the final two seasons, Longoria has made some extent of asking opponents to swap jerseys. He’s obtained customized uniform tops from Austin Riley and Bobby Witt Jr., buying and selling them one among his personal. This 12 months, Bryce Harper inscribed a message on a dirt-covered jersey he’d simply pulled off his again. Longoria has additionally mined his connections to obtain game-worn uniforms from athletes in different sports – together with Devin Booker, Stephen Curry and even the GOAT himself, Tom Brady.
His assortment might be much more strong – suppose Derek Jeter and David Ortiz – however he lacked the foresight in his early years to curate mementos as he went alongside. Like an actor absconding with a prop after a protracted shoot, it took till the top for Longoria to understand he wished to deliver house extra than simply reminiscences. “I may not have another chance,” he says. He doesn’t need his younger Diamondbacks teammates to take their time without any consideration. Carroll, one of many few gamers within the Diamondbacks clubhouse with a reputable likelihood to surpass Longoria’s on-field exploits, sees the logic.
“His reasoning for it was kind of cool,” Carroll says. “It made me want to start getting some guys that I’ve played with and will play against. I think it’s a cool memento, a living collection of your career.”
The recreation is hardly finished with Longoria but. For the Diamondbacks, he’s supplied cost-effective punch from the appropriate aspect of the plate, with an 112 wRC+ general and a 137 mark in opposition to left-handers. He’s a veteran presence on a striving and shocking younger staff, and one of many solely males within the room with any postseason expertise. The Diamondbacks have a 50% likelihood at a playoff berth, per FanGraphs’ projections, they usually’ll want Longoria’s expertise.
He has reminiscences left to make, however within the meantime, there are packs to open. And so, from time to time, he plops a field on a clubhouse desk and beckons just a few teammates. They rip open the packaging and rummage by like they’re children as soon as extra, pondering which gamers are destined for stardom. And for a second, time stops.
Content Source: blogs.fangraphs.com