A Big Mac anxiety attack

Wildcat File Photo Arizona Summer Wildcat Craig Degel

The sports memorabilia trade is one in which I choose to not associate myself. I collected baseball cards as a kid and I still have most of them. However, the prices of these cards put out in some monthly manual by "experts" in the trade no longer hold my interest. Where once I may have been excited that my Mark McGwire Topps 1985 rookie card was worth a certain amount of money, I no longer care.

Memorabilia is not an investment opportunity to me and I no longer even ask for autographs for fear that said athlete will think I'm a dealer and I am only looking to sell his John Hancock to some 10-year-old who has saved his allowance since kindergarten just to buy it.

But there I was on Saturday, staring at my personal Holy Grail - a St. Louis Cardinals' logo ball with McGwire's signature.

Price tag: $69.95.

There I was, staring at that thing. For half an hour I stood over the little glass counter pacing back and forth, wrestling with the idea of actually paying for an autograph.

I felt dirty.

My other option was a National League All-Star game ball with his autograph. And that's what started my dilemma - one autograph looked decidedly different from the other, and in this, the year of the fake McGwire autograph, I began to have doubts.

I wanted the autograph, and the guy offered me a certificate of authenticity, but I began to sweat. Then I remembered that McGwire is against the selling of his autograph except for charity, and my mouth dried up. Do I buy the one piece of sports memorabilia that I would cherish till the day they spread my ashes in the Dodger Stadium outfield or respect the wishes of the man?

Like one day he would show up at my door like some beefed-up Michael Corleone.

"I know it was you Craig-o, and you broke my heart," he would say.

And then his bodyguard would take me fishing.

Then my state of autograph delirium deteriorated further. Dealers, like the one in Missouri who sold a kid a fake autographed hat for $120, make me sick. Somebody has to do something, right? So I started to see myself as some modern day Robin Hood. I would buy the ball because it was fake for the sole purpose of saving some poor kid from spending his savings on a forgery.

Sure, the dealer would still get paid, but I can't stand the idea of that kid ever finding out he's got a fake. What can I say; kids are my soft spot.

Eventually, I walked out without the ball. And as I continued to further analyze my preoccupation with autographed balls - hold all Freud jokes please - I began to realize that I didn't buy it because I had no cool story about getting it.

There was no sneaking down to the field to get it, no waiting for hours after the game by the player's entrance to track him down. I would have no story about standing next to the one true legend playing the game today.

And I wouldn't be able to say the one thing that far too many people forget to utter as they run away with their treasure:

Thank you.

Craig Degel is a journalism senior with a five-year lease.