Donruss Diamond Kings. The coolest baseball cards ever. For my money, it doesn't get better than the 1989 Chris Sabo. And now that I think about it, I'm not just restricting that sentence to baseball cards. There are few things, in all walks of life, that are/were cooler than Sabes in '89.
Brother loves to make fun of me for the hundreds (thousands?) of baseball, football, basketball, and even some hockey cards stacked in my old bedroom at my parents' house, saying it was a gigantic waste of money (between cards, Starting Lineups, and video games, I'm positive I didn't spend a dollar of my own money on anything else until I was 23.)
But I disagree. That's my childhood there. Cleaning the entire Bergman house top to bottom, splitting 7 dollars three ways, then walking over to Gold & Silver to haggle with Mr. Nelson over the Kenny Lofton rookie card on the top shelf of his rotisserie case. Getting dropped off at Sports Emporium in South Forks Plaza so we could shuffle through every "4 for a dollar" rack in the place, buy as many as possible, then hide the rest in the walls of the store so nobody else could get them before we returned with more allowance. Haggling over trades for days, until either a fight breaks out, or finally one side caves in and accepts the conditions. I loved it.
And the old Donruss Diamond Kings were the coolest. When I was scrolling through the google images, I was getting hit with pangs of nostalgia everywhere. Like if someone tipped over a beehive in my office, and I was covered in honey, and maybe the beehive was shaken up before it was tipped over, so the bees were super pissed...but they were nostalgia bees, so instead of a painful stinger, I got little nostalgia bites all over my body. But I'm not allergic to the nostalgia bees or anything, so my body didn't puff up all weird and I didn't have to go to the hospital. You get it.
Here were some of my favorites:
Rickey Henderson- looking about as cocky/retarded as you would expect him to be.
Jesse Orosco- almost definitely a serial killer. Registered sex offender, minimum.
Tim Raines- they never should have got rid of those old Expos unis. So baller.
Bobby Bonilla- when I was a kid, inexplicably one of my favorite players. By all accounts, he was a prick. He was probably the most overpaid player in the sport. I kinda hated the Pirates and Mets. But yet, I loved him. The moral: never underestimate the weight a sweet nickname carries with an 8 year old. Bobby Bo!
Dan Gladden- if I was a Twins fan, he'd be my all-time favorite for sure. Champion mullet-stache combo.
Darryl Strawberry- You don't have to worry about putting a good curve in your brim when you're high all the time. GANGSTA, son.OK I seriously have to stop. The collection of illustrated 'staches, rapist beards, jheri curls and old-school unis are almost too much for me. Don't go google imaging Donruss Diamond Kings unless you have at least 35 minutes to spare. Fo' reals.
