01 June 2016

A Dilemma of Colonic Proportions

When Bartolo Colon hit his home run last month I got caught up in the hype and anticipated the release of his Topps NOW card the next day. I didn't actually purchase the card from Topps at full price, but once the print run was announced at 8,826 copies I was able to snag one from the many resellers on eBay at a discounted price. Colon's exploits with a bat and on the basepaths have become baseball legend in a blooper-reel kind of way, and that makes his record-setting (oldest pitcher to homer, oldest player to hit their first home run) knock interesting enough to garner a whole load of attention.


I generally have a low-to-no-tolerance policy for players who get popped for PED use. I hesitated to even order this card, because Bartolo Colon is one of the guys who's been suspended for PED violations. I don't really give Ryan Braun a pass (just as an example) and I probably won't give Dee Gordon a pass, either, but Colon's zaniness as a batter and his portly build pushed me to kind of look past his cheating. It's a double standard and I recognize that it is, but I can't explain fully why I let some guys off the hook and others I condemn for basically the rest of their careers. Maybe it is just a personality thing.


So of course as soon as I worked all that out in my mind and ordered the card, the news came out that Colon was being sued for being a deadbeat dad to a couple of kids. Well, heck. I could go either way on PED use, but I am a firm believer that you've got to take care of your kids. The lawsuit just alleges that he hasn't taken care of his kids, though, so I can't assume that he really hasn't taken care of those children, but it certainly raises a red flag. I imagine that the courts will keep whatever happens sealed and we won't know how this gets settled unless one party or the other wants us to know. In the end I guess it's none of my business, but until I hear otherwise my fandom of Bartolo Colon will be followed by an asterisk.

5 comments:

  1. I'm much the same way with players and declaring my fandom.

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    1. I try to collect good-character athletes, but all you really know about anyone is what they present to the world. I am grown up enough to realize that celebrities / athletes are good for entertainment, but fame alone doesn't qualify someone to be a role model. There are people with wildly different values from my own who are very entertaining, so in many cases I don't even hold too closely to my 'good-character rule.' The webs we weave...

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  2. It's worked on me a couple of times. I really wish I'd grabbed the Evan Gattis card before it was announced as the lowest print run to date and all the eBay vultures marked up the price.

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  3. Congratulations on finding this card at a discounted price. I thought about picking one up, but prices are so inflated it's almost comical. I'll wait a few years when things cool off.

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    1. Yeah, prices are pretty high on this one. This one had enough copies printed that you shouldn't have any trouble finding one in the future. Some of the other ones might keep their high prices. It's hard to predict where the prices on this product will be in 5 years. It could be an afterthought, or it could be highly collectible.

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