Ken Griffey Sr Game-Used Bat Card

Ken Griffey was an exceptional baseball in his own right: All-Star Game MVP (1980), three-time All-Star, and two-time World Series champion.

And here's some perspective: he was an All-Star despite playing on the Big Red Machine, the Cincinnati Reds team that dominated the National League from 1970 to 1979 and included Hall Of Famers Pete Rose (well, former HoFer, but still the MLB's all-time hits leader), Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan and Tony Pérez, and was supported by Dave Concepción, George Foster, and César Gerónimo.

Their starting fielders were known as the Great Eight. With the All-Star Game being what it is and needing to represent all teams, it was difficult to pick more than three players of a single team at once, so the fact that Griffey Sr. made the cut three times was a testament of how good he was.

He will tell you, however, that his greatest achievement was playing alongside his son, Ken Griffey Jr. with the Seattle Mariners in 1990 and 1991, to finish off his career; they were the first father-and-son duo to suit up as teammates. He also claims Junior was the best player he ever played with, and that only the great Willie Mays can compare to him.

Which seems about right, to be honest. Like Barry Bonds, he had it all and made use of all his DNA-given abilities, but unlike Bonds, Junior played clean.

By the age of 25, Junior had already surpassed his old man's career home run total of 152, clearly on his way to the Hall.

Here's a Game-Used Bat card of Ken Griffey Sr.'s, B-KG from Upper Deck's 2001 Decade 1970s set:

It shows him wearing the Reds' white (home) uniform. It contains a very thin slice of bat, and a very pale one at that.

Dave Parker Bat Card

It's summer, and once in a while, someone reminds me that baseball still exists. I no longer care for the ball or its teams, but the larger-than-life heroes it created at the turn of the last century, into the 1950s, then into the 80s and 90s for my time - that's different; you knew watching the never-ending games that someone, somewhere would find magic in what just happened, and would enter it in one of the sport's numerous history books.

70 games without making an error. 51 home runs in a single season. 40 homers and 40 stolen bases. Perfect games. A home run from each side of the plate. Batting for .400. The World Series, which barely qualifies as such because only one team isn't from the U.S., and the first Canadian team appeared in 1968. The Chicago Cubs never winning.

One such character was Dave Parker, the brash, outspoken man who seemed like an egomaniac and always talked about how good he looked, who played balls-out and ran into every catcher he ever played against, and whose turning baseball into a contact sport may have ended up causing his Parkinson's - the incurable disease that has him with a permanently shaking right hand, and causes the man who used to be a loud mouth to now speak slowly and more softly.

He now has a foundation that teaches kids how to play ball as well as about Parkinson's, and many other former Cincinnati Reds are part of it.

On the field, he won World Series titles with the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates and 1989 Oakland A's, a batting title in 1978, played in seven All-Star Games including being named the MVP of the 1979 edition after throwing out Jim Rice at third base and Brian Downing at home plate from the outfield, and contributing one RBI. Baseball's first million-dollar man is still waiting for his entry in the Hall Of Fame, partly because he admitted to cocaine use in 1985.

He attended Courter Tech High School, whee he was both a star right fielder and running back, and it's the running back in him that took over every time a catcher stood between Parker and the plate. Even if it meant breaking his cheekbone, like in a 1978 collision with New York Mets catcher John Stearns that probably also resulted in a concussion.

Speaking of which, on this Century Collection card (#69 in the set, numbered 94/100) from the 2010 Donruss Americana set by Panini, he is shown wearing his high school uniform although the piece of game-used bat is ''guaranteed'' to have been used in a ''professional'' game:

The picture is obviously a crop from a team photo.

Ken Caminiti Game-Used Bat Card

I pretty much stopped caring about baseball following the players' strike in 1994; that, in itself, turned into hatred for the sport in late 2001 when my hometown Montréal Expos were done being dismantled by then-majority owner Jeffrey Loria and 'sold' to Major League Baseball in one of the shadiest deals in the history of the business world.

But for much of the 80s and half of the 90s, it was a sport I would at times partake in with friends, and one I would go see at least 10 times each summer, despite the Olympic Stadium's not-quite-ideal location.

One guy that always gave my team a lot of trouble was Houston Astros' third baseman Ken Caminiti, and the team we'd always have to beat to win our division and make the playoffs were the Atlanta Braves. This Topps card (card #TTR-KC from the 2001 Topps Traded And Rookies set) combines both headache-and-nightmare inducing entities in just one, with an authentic piece of a game-used baseball bat that he likely used to crush the Expos with.

Caminiti's fate, however, is symptomatic of the rampant corruption of the sport from the 90s onwards and of the little care its owners took in ensuring the players - their product, as it were - remain healthy and receive the medical and psychological help they need.

Like many others named in the 2004 Mitchell Report on steroid use - and countless others who got away with it - Caminiti was a bona fide star player, one of the, say, 3 best players on his team; he would bat for .250, hit over 20 home runs, and had the potential to go .300 with 30 homers.

By 1994, he had already admitted to an alcohol problem (one he would not enter rehab for until 2000, though, for some odd reason). Cocaine use was also an issue. By 1996, he'd added steroids to the mix, but instead of people finding his character had changed, he was praised for his new-found power and he won the National League MVP award, batting .326 with 40 home runs, almost double his previous season's numbers. No one found it strange.

In 2001, he was arrested for possession of cocaine and sentenced to probation. In 2002, in a Sports Illustrated cover story, he admitted to steroid use during his MVP season, and even a few seasons after that (likely the end of 1999, when injuries brought his home run totals down to 13, from 29 the previous year).

In September 2004, he was sentenced to 180 days in prison for having been caught with cocaine again - for the fourth time. On October 5th, he admitted in court to having violated his probation (i.e. been taking coke the whole time), and, five days later, was found dead of a heart failure.

Autopsy results showed coronary artery disease and heart hypertrophy (an enlarged heart, a condition that occurs more and more in the sports world when drugs are involved, someone should look into that) but, more importantly, that it was caused by ''an acute intoxication due to the combined effects of cocaine and opiates'', meaning a drug overdose, resulting from a mix of either cocaine and heroin, or cocaine and a legal form of opiates, maybe Oxycontin.

So, not content in being a star player, Caminiti, already using illegal substances and judgement-impaired, chose to enhance his performance for what turned out to be one magical season, in exchange for dying at age 41 in the Bronx, where he seemingly had no business going.

He and at least 89 other players risked their health under the complicit eye of Major League Baseball, who cared less about taking care of its primary source of revenue than putting asses in the seats, and since inflated statistics meant higher ratings and more revenue, they refused to question the obvious.

It's natural for a professional sports league to have 25 to 40 superstars to sell to their public, but when records are shattered every year by previously unheralded players, and suddenly 200 players have superstar stats, not only is the whole situation questionable, it must also be hell for the league's PR department, who no longer have a clue who to promote and make money off of.

It's too bad guys like Caminiti went this route; he'd had a good career, and it could have been twice as long should he not have risked it for one season. Like Barry Bonds, Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire, he didn't need to enhance hi body's already-impressive capabilities - they were all already All Star Game material. And their cheating undermines the exploits of past baseball greats like Felipe Alou, Tim Raines (despite a short bout of cocaine use), Dennis Martinez (as well), Andre Dawson, Babe Ruth (despite his drunkenness), Ken Griffey Sr, Willie Mays and countless others.

It's a shame, it really is, but you lnow what? Given the way MLB has treated my City and the two million people that went to see the Expos when the going was good, it's also just what it deserves. When you disrespect the fans who pay to see your show, and the players they pay to see, it has to blow up in your face at some point. And I'm glad to see the NFL - a real league with decency rules overseeing an exciting sport - stepped in to steal MLB's TV ratings. Karma's a bitch.