How It All Started...

I first heard about Dan Haren when he was playing college baseball for the University of Pepperdine. I didn't follow college baseball much so I lost track of Dan. Around 2004 I had just got back into collecting baseball cards and I one night I was looking at some cards a fellow collector was selling. Among the various cards he was selling was a 2003 Topps Pristine Dan Haren Uncirculated Refractor. As soon as I saw this card I was reminded of Dan Haren the baseball player that played at Peperdine University. At that point I decided to buy that card for $4 and to start a Dan Haren collection. There was only one problem. Dan Haren played for the St. Louis Cardinals, doesn't seem like too big of a problem right? Well, I am a big time Cincinnati Reds fan and I can not stand the St. Louis Cardinals. The reason I cannot stand the Cardinals steams from them being in the National League Central Division, which is the same division as the Reds and because my brother is a big Cardinals fan so we had a natural family rivalry, with lots of trash talk between us. So for those reasons, it would be difficult for me to collect a player who played for the Cardinals. Well, I decided to purchase the card anyway and then I pondered what I was going to do. It was a difficult decision because I liked Dan Haren as a player but I just couldn't get myself to collect a St. Louis Cardinal. I put the card away and actually forgot about it. Then five months later on December 18th 2004 my brother and I were watching ESPN and as we were watching we saw the following text scroll along the bottom line:

"Oakland Athletics agree to trade pitcher Mark Mulder to the St. Louis Cardinals for pitcher Dan Haren, first basemen Daric Barton and pitcher Kiko Calero"

For those of you don't know, at the time Mark Mulder was a big time pitcher for the Oakland Athletics and Dan Haren, Daric Barton and Kiko Calero were players who only had appeared in combined 95 Major League games. So as soon as my brother saw this trade he went wild, he was jumping up and down and screaming. He was excited to have a big time pitcher on his team and who wouldn't be. He also didn't know who the other three guys were so it was no big deal for him. A few minutes after we saw that something clicked inside of me that said, Dan Haren no longer played for the St. Louis Cardinals, which meant I could finally start my Dan Haren collection. That night I went up to my room and pulled out that 2003 Topps Pristine Uncirculated Refractor of Dan Haren because that was the official start to my Dan Haren collection.