Make It Right

When I was 12 and old enough to know about Santa, I left a note for the jolly old man on Christmas Eve. “Dear Santa,” it read. “For Christmas this year, I would like a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle rookie baseball card. Thank you. -Jeremy”

 

On Christmas morning, I raced down the stairs to the dining room table and found the following letter at my place.

 

“Dear Jeremy, thank you for the cookies, they were delicious. I couldn’t find you a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle rookie baseball card, but I did find these beautiful socks. Love, Santa. P.S. You're Jewish.”

 

I pleaded with my mom about it when she woke up. “C’mon, Mom, they’re actually pretty affordable if you find one that’s been torn in half!”

 

She would later tell me that she did look for the card for me to no avail.

 

This was the time in my life when I carried around a plastic mini locker full of junk wax era cards everywhere I went. Bobby Bonilla, Ryne Sanberg, Dennis Eckersley (whose mustache was even lankier than he was). The cards were never glossy and really embraced the look of cheap redundancy. Legend has it that some of the cards from the late 80s and early 90s were printed by the millions, making them, quite literally, worth less than the card stock they were printed on.

 

I alternated between bringing the mini locker of baseball cards out to restaurants with me and carrying a bright red tub of markers, crayons, and fimo bead clay. When anyone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said, “Either a baseball player or an artist. Maybe both!”

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Mom died on April 2, 2021, just three days after my second child was born. I’m choosing to believe the last thing she saw was pictures of our newborn and family cuddling together shortly after a home birth that would’ve made her cry in its splendor and fury.

 

Mom’s death was sudden but not wholly unexpected. The experience of walking through her house looking at old mementos was the hardest part. Everything brought back memories that I knew were there but couldn’t remember in detail. Now I could recall the color shoes I wore at the art show she curated in which I was featured (black with woven leather and a dangly tassel on top). Now I knew the traced pictures of baseball team logos I had made in middle school and the final grade I got on my thesis in grad school; Mom kept them all.

 

She also kept some money that no one really knew about. She was stingy in life, about everything other than art. She once told me her biggest fear was that she would become a “bag lady.” But she had such immense privilege and a decent sized estate that would’ve made that impossible.

 

My brother and I are the beneficiaries of that wealth, unearned and undeserving in many ways. And I have chosen to try to use that money for good.

 

I created a business I call the Make It Right Initiative. I’ve started collecting trading cards of players of color. And one very special 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle rookie card that Mom’s money helped me secure nearly 30 years after that note was left for Santa.

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The initiative is using trading cards as a vehicle for driving reparations payments to communities of color and organizations serving racial, environmental, and social justice causes. The sale of any card will include a payment to those causes.

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I currently live in Colorado with my incredible family on the traditional territory of the Arapaho, Ute, and Cheyenne people.