One evening, my mom’s best friends husband came over to lift weights with my dad in our basement. This guy was huge, and also was a professional softball player. He was 6’8” and could bench press all of the weight on my dad's home gym with ease. He also was a huge sports fan. When he began asking me what hockey players I liked watching I really had no answer other than “Mario Lemieux”. Everyone loved the guy in Pittsburgh, so it was probably 90% of everyone’s answer to the question. He thought it would be a good idea to expose me to a bunch of other players around the league, so he would bring over VHS tapes of other teams, and I would watch them over and over. I’d give them back and he would give me more tapes to watch. Also, later on in the 90’s, he gave me 2 tapes of Don Cherry’s Rock’em Sock’em Hockey. One day in late October, probably in 1998, my mom’s friend left him due to some differences and I’d never see the guy again until summer of 2007. I ran into him in a gas station where he was waiting in line to buy cigarettes. We shook hands and I asked him if he wanted his VHS tapes back and he laughed and said, “No, those were for you. You had a lot of passion for that sport and it made me happy.” What he didn’t know is that he influenced me more than he knew. On one of those tapes he gave to me, I watched the St. Louis Blues play a game against Quebec in 1990 where the Blues went ballistic scoring 9 goals! Also, while watching that game, I found my favorite player of all time, Brett Hull. I would spend hours watching his quick release and I patterned my game to be just like his. My friend John would always come over and play hockey with me in my parents garage. I would always pretend to be Hull, and one day John asked, “Well then who the heck am I?” This was at a time before the internet, so I went back and watched the VHS tape until I knew every player on that St. Louis Blues team. This behavior of mine continued into the next season until my dad who worked for USAirways would start bringing me home USA Today newspapers that people would leave behind on the plane. The sports section would have full box scores. I kept a notebook and tried my best to keep stats, but without getting one every single day, that was near impossible.
In 1992, I got my first radio for Christmas. It was Sony AM/FM and it had 2 tape decks, a CD Player and a headphones jack. One night I was screwing around with AM radio and came across a hockey broadcast. It wasn’t the best quality, occasionally it would be muffled, but it was the St. Louis Blues broadcast from KMOX radio! I could not believe it! I still to this day remember it was station 1120 on AM radio. My dad picked up a Blues schedule for me from one of his friends he used to fly with who was now based on Missouri, and I never missed a game. If I felt myself dozing off to sleep, I would hit record on my tape deck and record the rest of the game and listen to it on the school bus going to and from school the next day. This was my life every season from 1992-1998. I knew every player on those teams. On my 12th birthday, my parents even got me a St. Louis Blues cake! A footnote to this cake was it had this raspberry filling in it and although it looked great, it didn't taste the best to me. I was kind of a picky eater back then, but my parents tried their hardest!
Also, enjoy a photo of me playing left-handed hockey. (I leant out my right-handed stick to one of my friends who attended my party and used my cousin Alan's left-handed stick he left in our garage). Please note, my Brett Hull jersey!
Back to my Blues fandom. One of the more intriguing players to me was this prospect named Denny Felsner. Denny was a highly touted prospect who lit up the scoreboard in college for the Michigan Wolverines. Somehow in 1992 he didn’t win the Hobey Baker Award as the best college player that season (even though he outscored the winner and eventual St. Louis Blues alum Scott Pellerin by 37 points). The KMOX announcers seemed so elated about Felsner, and it really had me excited about the player. I still remember listening to his first game on that station. It seemed every time the puck touched his stick they were just waiting for something good to happen. On April 16, 1992 (I didn’t even look that up, I remembered it), he finally got his first point (an assist) on a goal by Dave Christian. I for sure thought this would be one of many to come. The next season, I tried to get every Denny Felsner card I could. Our local LCS, was owned by my mom’s best friends brother. He held Denny Felsner cards for me, and when I would come in, he would sell them to me at a discount. I remember having a full page 9-pocket binder page of his Topps rookie card alone! I eventually had every rookie card of his except for his Topps Gold. That year, I split a box of Topps with my brother trying to obtain this elusive Denny Felsner Topps Gold. Neither one of us got that stupid card. I ended up spending so much of my grass cutting money buying packs of that product that summer, and still couldn’t pull one. Finally, I just gave up looking for this Denny Felsner card that I swore didn’t exist.
Over the next 3 years, Felsner bounced around between the Peoria Rivermen and the Blues (mostly with Peoria). Felsner only suited up for 18 games total with the Blues. These 18 games would also be his only games played in the NHL. I still remember his first NHL goal. It was against the Blackhawks in the Division finals back in 1993 and I listened to the call on KMOX while I was supposed to be sleeping in my bed. Though technically a playoff goal, it was still his first goal he had in the NHL. I was so pumped I believe I yelled while in bed and got yelled at by my mom. After that last season of Felsner’s, I packed away my collection of him in a binder and tucked it away in my large closet in my bedroom.
About 10 years ago, my nephew started to play ice hockey. One night while my nephew was spending the night over at my parents, I had stopped by to grab my dad’s wire cutters, and my nephew said he had found a binder in the closet with hockey cards in it when he was searching for board games. He asked if they were mine or his dads. My nephew and I went in to take a look, and after seeing the first page full of Topps Felsner rookies, I knew they were mine. The binder was just filled with 90’s junk wax rookies. I told my nephew he could have the binder, and he was excited! It was a blast from the past and I enjoyed flipping through the cards and talking about some of the players with him.
Last July, our neighborhood had an annual garage sale. I put out some junk wax rookies in team bags to give out to kids. One of the neighbors in the townhomes on the next street over who appeared to be about my age asked if I still collected cards. I told him, “Yeah, but not as much as I used to.” He asked me if I would stop by his house to take a look at some of his cards. I said, “Sure!” I got his phone number and when I called him the next week, he asked me if I could stop by the next Sunday afternoon. We made the arrangements and after I put my youngest son down for a nap, I gave the baby monitor to my wife and headed down the hill toward the townhomes. His wife greeted me at the door, and I made the journey up the stairs to my new friend's office. There he had 4 shoe boxes of hockey cards. As I sifted through what seemed like too many 1991/92 Score American and 1992/93 Pro Set hockey cards, I came across something that struck my eye. There it was, the 1992/93 Topps Gold Denny Felsner! I said, “NO WAY!” He looked at me with an excited look and said, “Is that a good one?” I looked at him with my surprised/intrigued look and said, “No, not at all!” He seemed so confused. I told him how hard I looked for that card as a kid. Really, I had forgotten all about it, but here it was about 1,000 feet down a hill from my house. I told him that I had to have this card and that I would give him whatever I had in my wallet for it. He said, “Sounds good!” So, I paid him the $3 I had in my wallet for it. Although his collection wasn’t worth much, he and I had some fun conversations on some of the players on the cards he had. This summer, he and his wife moved away to a single-family home in a housing development about a mile away. I have seen him a few times around town at the grocery store or gas station. That guy will always forever remind me of a Topps Gold card of a failed St. Louis Blues prospect, but that is My Cardboard Life in a nutshell.
1992/93 Topps Gold Denny Felsner RC #514
Who was a prospect from your favorite team growing up that you had a lot of cards of that didn't pan out? I'd love to hear about some in the comments. Thank you for reading.
