Thursday, September 12, 2013

Mail Call: Hell Freezes Over.

       I got back from New Orleans late afternoon on Wednesday and after I dropped my bag and realized it took me longer to go from Brooklyn to New Jersey than it did to go from NOLA to JFK, I dove into the high pile of mail sitting on my dining room table.  Amongst the third class ads and glorious PWE full of Listia goodness was a little pink slip from the post office.  These are usually left for large packages or the like, but this particular one was for a certified letter.  My brain went through the long list of people and creditors that might send me such a thing, but my mind drew a blank.  So I had to slog down to my local post office today, which features a counter staffed by three ladies I refer to as Fran Drescher and Tweedle dumb and Tweedle dumber.  Without getting further insulting, I think those names cover what I think of them and their attempts at customer service.

     So I hand over the pink slip and when Tweedle dumber returns, she has this envelope...



































I see that it is a jiffy pack but I am not expecting anything I ordered on eBay to come in such a manner.  Then I noticed the return address is Duryea PA and that means only one thing: Topps.  After a split second of calculation, my brain shouts in joy: oh my god! oh my god! finally!!!!  I remain calm and quietly sign to receive a card I have waited nearly two years for:




















I'll admit it...I had given up hope.  I didn't think it existed.  I was willing to just roll over and accept that I was never getting this card.  The couple of emails I had sent went unanswered.  Eventually, years later, they would send some replacement card of a prospect I had never heard of that played for Milwaukee or Kansas City that never gets above A ball.  I was resigned to the fact that I was never going to get my beautiful shiny Matt Harvey autograph.  And yet, here it is. Maybe with his injury, he had time to sit down and sign his backlog of cards?  I dunno and I don't care.  The only real issue I have with it is that on they back they compare him to Mike Pelfrey.  Yikes.  Luckily, I will never look at the back and if I do, I will just mentally replace that with Tom Seaver.  Ugh, 2015 is a long time away. 

2 comments:

night owl said...

I think you've hit on the reason. I saw a couple other folks display their recently signed/received Harveys the last few days.

It took an injury for you to get your cards.

Anonymous said...

Nice Harvey, I'm not an auto collector, but I'm still quite a bit envious.

I laughed knowingly about the NOLA>JFK / Bklyn>NJ comment. It once took me well over an hour just to drive from Flushing to Staten Island - and that was 15-20 years ago - and I wondered if people from out of state would believe that I drove all that time and never left NYC.