Sports outllook

There was a time in my life, and I bet in the lives of a lot of guys my age, that just about the most important pecuniary denomination was the now lowly nickel.

Yep, five cents. The 20th part of a dollar.

Heck, there was a time when Bill Quarton had the local Double Cola Bottling Co. They kept the refrigerator at school stocked with 12 oz. bottles and sold them at 5 cents a pop.

That nickel began to take on particular significance along in 1954. By the spring of 1955, the big thing with the kids was a box of Sunkist raisins, but not for the obvious reasons. I don't know if any of us really enjoyed eating the things -- catching them in our mouths, that was the deal. When you got good, you could flip them over your back and catch them in your mouth as they came down. When you're eight or nine years old, entertainment often comes with a small price tag.

For my dad, it was the same thing every day. He'd cuss a bit, If you knew him, you knew he could do that well. Then he'd add, "Nickel me to death." Like the time he dropped an 1896 Liberty nickel on me and I refused to spend it. In fact, I still have it. But he didn't want to give me another one. He thought it was stupid and couldn't tell it from a Jefferson.

But early in '55 I was taken aback when I learned that raisins had become passe and it was time to purchase baseball cards. OK! Off to 515 N. Ash and Charlie Ferguson's store. "What kind do you want?" asked Charlie, who serviced kids from both Bryan and St. Mary's schools with anything a kid might want. There was little better than the taste of a cold Double Cola out of the iced water cooler.

But it was baseball cards. No extra money for a Double Cola. Then there was an additional stumper as there were both Topps and Bowman's and I'd seen neither because kids were just starting to purchase them and I wanted to be cutting edge. "Topps," I guessed.

Into my pocket went the cards and off I went to school. The kids were standing off in a circle with their new purchases. I kind of sidled up to the group so I could whip my cards out for comparison purposes.

Much to my humiliation, I quickly discovered that everyone else was taken by Bowman's so-called color TV set where all photos were placed inside what appeared to be a TV screen. While this was one of the most unpopular sets of all time on a national level and marked the end of the Topps-Bowman war, the set was super popular in Nevada but not popular enough nationally to keep Bowman alive. Too bad.

We started picking out our favorite players at that time and I, for some odd reason, picked Rudy Regalado. It didn't take me a great deal of time to figure out this guy wouldn't be around for a card in 1956 and I switched to Duke Snider because of what Richie Ashburn said about him on the back of his card.