Mets Card of the Week: 1971 Joe Namath

1971 TOPPS JOE NAMATH

This is an old tale and even a happy one. Set the way back machine to Christmas 1971. I shared a room with my brother Gary. We got up early for Christmas, as every good American child has done for ages. Meanwhile, my parents stayed up to all hours of the morning getting Christmas ready for their children.

Now, when I say getting Christmas ready – I mean everything shy of shopping for gifts. You see, for a reason that makes no sense to me as an adult, my parents decided that they waited until the younger children went to bed on Christmas Eve and then they would bring the tree into the house and decorate it. And we didn’t have just any tree – basically we had a giant redwood each year for Christmas. And there was no string of popcorn or garland. No, our tree always had tinsel. And while most people may have put up tinsel by the handful, my parents hung it by individual strand. Unless you’ve done this, it’s hard to imagine what an unbelievable chore this is to do.

Now, this would have been insane enough by itself but they also did all of the wrapping on Christmas Eve. And we had a big family and there were always lots of gifts so that was quite a chore, too. Especially with the super-secret code they used for remembering which present was which. To this day I’m still not sure but I think they were both number and wrapper-coded. Because the gifts had to be handed out in a specific order.

So, my parents didn’t get to bed until three or four in the morning. So, as you might imagine, they weren’t overjoyed when their kids wanted to start Christmas at 5:45 a.m. or whatever time we woke up in a particular year.

By the time I came around, they had a system in place where the children could open their stockings – which were left in their rooms – and play quietly with what was in them until a more reasonable time came along. And while I don’t recall when Christmas ’71 started in our house, I’m betting it was around 8:00, if not earlier.

Regardless, Gary and I were in our room, filled with anticipation on what awaited us when we went down the stairs. The night before it was just a living room but overnight it would be transformed into something magical. There would be a giant tree in our house, covered with ornaments, lights and tinsel. And underneath the tree would be a mound of presents that held treasures that we could only barely imagine.

The younger kids would also exchange presents among ourselves while waiting for the official start of Christmas. My presents this year would be the finest offerings from Mary’s, the local five and dime shop, along with whatever was sold at the school bazaar. I got Gary a pack of football cards from Mary’s. Football cards in ’71 cost 10 cents a pack, which conveniently was the amount of my weekly allowance.

It was, if I do say so myself, a really good gift.

Hey, it wasn’t my fault that baseball cards back then weren’t available in Mary’s in December. And besides, opening a pack of football cards was nearly as good as opening a pack of baseball cards. Gary was a Jets fan and because he was, so was I. It would be a couple of years later before I became a Vikings fan. Anyway, we were both Jets fans and when I gave him the pack of cards, I hovered over him as he opened them, mainly because he was my older brother and I was always doing that, but also because I wanted to see if there were any Jets in the pack.

And in what can only be described as a Christmas miracle, not only was there a Jet – but there was the Jet. Don’t talk to me about John Elliott or Emerson Boozer or even Don Maynard. At this point there was only one Jet who mattered and that was Broadway Joe. The pack I got for my brother had Joe Namath in it.

Buying one pack of cards and getting the Namath was like Charlie pulling the golden ticket and getting to tour the Wonka factory. All these years later, I like to think that was the best gift he received that year.

May you receive your own version of a Namath card this Christmas.