Reggie Jackson

Polar bears will be extinct by the end of this century. I read that yesterday in an article by Peter Matthiessen on the Alaskan wilderness that is in danger of being obliterated for the short-term benefit of a few already impossibly wealthy oil men. I was on a Metra commuter train, cringing low on the upper level in hopes that the conductor below might not see me so I could save three bucks. At work earlier in the day I’d been in a meeting where the constant change of the company I’m employed by was discussed in light of a quote about gazelles getting eaten by lions. Be the lion, it was implied, or at least not the weakest gazelle.

Anyway, here’s that fuckhead Reggie Jackson, in another of Topps’ doctored cards. Like Dave Cash, Reggie switched teams too soon before the start of the year for Topps to have a picture of him in a Yankee uniform on file, so they sprung for some Wite-Out and a black Bic and within moments, voila, what once was a wealthy Oriole is now an even wealthier Yankee. Unlike Dave Cash, Reggie doesn’t seem to give a shit. Why should he? Doubt is for panting polar bears and introspective gazelles.

I find it somehow comforting, in an impotently nostalgic way, that it’s possible to see the crude residue of change in these cards. Undoubtedly when a similar situation arises today the cards are altered digitally, seamlessly, the wheels of change invisible. Every day I half expect to show up at my job to find that the nameplate on my cubicle has been removed. It wouldn’t even surprise me that much if the whole building was gone.