The future was 25 years ago

 

For those of us who went to grade school in the 1970s, we grew up with a certain idea of the future. Yeah, flying cars and personal robots, sure, but we also knew when that would happen.

 

In the year 2000, we'd have all that stuff and walk around in space suits. The year 2000 seemed exceedingly far away, unimaginable really (I would be 35!). What would that be like? I used to try to wrap my head around it and then give up, happy that I didn't have to address what was to come for eons. As a 12 year old, 22 years into the future is eons.

 

Likewise, 1999 seemed just as futuristic. The very sound of the year seemed otherworldly. Prince put that feeling to music with the song "1999". He didn't come up with the idea of the world ending in 2000, we were all thinking it, for a long time. Or at least "our world" would be ending anyway.

 

Then 1999 arrived and what did I have? There were panicked Y2K people (thanks a lot media), but besides that, it was a crazy boring year from where I was. My whole life was tending to a newborn and handling a still-new-to-me job. I didn't even have any time for baseball or collecting. I've written many times that I didn't collect a single card in 1999.

 

Baseball wasn't even interesting to me. The one interesting thing I can think about MLB in 1999 was the All-Star Game with Ted Williams and all the players in that lovefest. But the postseason was icky. The Yankees and the Braves again. The Yankees winning again. The Mets in their black uniforms. The Diamondbacks were getting really good. Just gross. When I think of baseball that year, all the scenes in my head are shrouded in black. No daylight anywhere.

 

As for the collecting scene that year, I've addressed it. It's nothing I participated in, but I know younger collectors on the blogs and social media really liked it. Still, I can't get interested. Every card I have from 1999 is either a Dodgers card (got lots of those) or a handful of cards I either picked up card-by-card in a stack sale online or something that came in a repack box.

 

Here are all the non-Dodger 1999 Topps cards I own:

 

 

That's all of them. The design is pretty clean but definitely not one of my favorites. It hasn't inspired me to add any others -- certainly not attempt to complete the set. "Just buy the whole thing" someone is saying. I don't even want to do that.

 

This is the future we were waiting for. Kind of a disappointment.

 

But now that future is 25 years old. I haven't seen a lot of 25th anniversary tributes to 1999 cards this year. Not that I've been looking. I'm one of those guys that does anniversary tributes to card sets. This is all you're going to get from me for 1999.

 

But it is wild to me that the year that I thought was so distant that I couldn't possibly imagine what the earth would be like then is now 25 years in the past.

 

Even more shocking?

 

 1984 -- another futuristic year -- was 40 years ago.

I was sitting in my classroom, reading this book with that very cover, wondering what strangeness was going to happen in 1984, too.

It turns out it was a pretty good year for me. The cards were good, too.