The Things We Keep: Lou Limmer’s Baseball Card

Several years ago, when I was working for the New Jersey Jewish News, I was charged with handling just about all of the sports related stories.

You probably know that there haven’t been a whole of lot Jewish players among the nearly 20,000 players in the Major Leagues (19,940 as of this writing so that number will undoubtedly be reached this season). So how lucky was I to discover that Lou Limmer, who played for the Philadelphia Athletics in 1951 and 1954, lived not all that far from my office?

He graciously invited me to visit and I spent a pleasant hour discussing his brief career with him and his wife. (Trying to find a link to that story.) As I was leaving, he briefly excused himself and returned with a little memento of the occasion:

Sometimes I think about players of his generation, who, like most, who never made the big bucks. But regardless of their time of service, as the saying goes, “they played the game.”

It’s both sweet and sad, when I think about it. There’s a saying that goes something like, “Don’t cry because it’s over; smile because it happened.” It’s sweet that he had those memories, but a bit sad, too, that it was so long ago. I guess he had a supply of these things to give away for such situations. I never got into collecting autographs, but something like this, which came from someone like Limmer, has some meaning so I will keep it.

Limmer passed away in 2007.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Now as to things I will not be keeping…

I am on a purging kick these days, which I blame on the lingering effects of reading Donald Lopez’s thought-provoking Buddha Takes the Mound. The idea of impermanence has had a great impact on me lately and I find myself looking to get rid of a lot of stuff, including the majority of my baseball library.

I used to be averse to simply throwing out books. Tried selling them to the used book store. Tried giving them away to my local library, as well as the Yogi Berra Museum which is in my town. I was fortunate to have a Facebook friend come by a few years ago and haul away a literal truckload. But it has come to this:

My daughter was more upset about this than I and urged me to take them back, trying to sell them via various apps. So going forward I will be sorting the bulk of my books by category and posting on OfferUp. But if that doesn’t work in a reasonable amount of time, out they go.

Such is life.