Growing up as a baseball fan in Springfield, Missouri, I did the same thing that most young baseball fans did: I collected baseball cards. Like many of my friends, I would go to a sports memorabilia store named Fastbreak Sports and sift through thousands of cards until I found one to my liking.
The only difference being that I would sift through the Royals section while all my friends sifted through the Cardinals section. Growing up a lonely Royals fan in the early 2000’s was an interesting phenomenon. As most baseball card collectors, I loved jersey cards and autographed cards and going back through the cards that I viewed as sacred is pretty amusing.