Unring The Bell

 

I have this odd ability to remember things that one really shouldn't be able to recollect. I cannot tell you 98 percent of the information I took in yesterday, but that moment in high school where my friends and I skipped school to run over to Boise the day the new Motley Crue album was released? That, I remember like it was yesterday. 

And as we celebrate this Easter Sunday, I found myself thinking back to Easter, 1991. My grandparents invited me over to their house for dinner, so I made the 17-mile drive from Caldwell to Meridian. I got there early so I could catch the beginning of the New York/New Jersey Knights and London Monarchs game. The World League of American Football had just debuted the prior week and as a football fan, I craved football in the spring. The USFL had satiated that need for three years in the 80s, but came to a screeching halt following the 1985 season. 

Not only was the WLAF (We Laugh, as the joke went) new, so too was my hobby. Well, sort of. Like the aforementioned USFL, my time as a card collector died in the 1980s (1984, to be exact). My sports card collecting days began in 1976 and lasted up until those early teen-aged years. But a conversation with my boss at the time, who was working on the 1986-87 Fleer Basketball set with his sons, reignited the flames. A week before Easter, I found myself in the card aisle at Shopko and decided to buy a couple of packs of 1991 Topps Baseball, as well as a couple of packs of 1990 Topps Football.

Getting back to Easter at my grandparents... at some point during the WLAF broadcast, a commercial for Pro Set Football cards aired. What caught my attention was the mentioning of special WLAF cards inserted into packs. Being new to the hobby, I had no idea about "insert sets." I didn't recall the terminology back when I collected, but I knew that I wanted some. After dinner (which in my grandmother's vocabulary meant, "lunch"), I drove a few miles down the road to the Shopko in Boise, where I was disappointed to find no new Pro Set packs. 

When I eventually found some at retail, I quickly gobbled them up. Not only was there a 32-card insert set featuring players and coaches, but a 10-card team helmet set, showcasing each team's helmet on the front, with its 1991 schedule and other information on the back. The cards would eventually find their way out of my collection. 

I've picked up a few WLAF cards in recent years, of players who went on to play with the Buccaneers, as well as the helmet cards from the stand-alone World League set that came out later that year.

Now, don't laugh, but one of the days, I would like to put together the complete 150-card set.