Evan Longoria’s locker is crowded.
Hanging from a rack are t-shirts and shorts, sweat-wicking warmup tops and Diamondbacks jerseys in white, black, crimson, grey and tan. Cabinets and cupboards maintain a smattering of private results; on the ground sits a three-tiered rack only for his footwear. However amongst these ballplayer emblems are footlong white packing containers discovered extra usually within the closets of baseball followers than within the lockers of the game’s stars. Inside, they’re stuffed with baseball playing cards.
This 12 months at Chase Area, it’s frequent to glimpse Longoria breezing into the clubhouse, a pair such packing containers tucked beneath an arm. The 37-year-old veteran needs to share the enjoyment of his favourite passion. “He’s at all times bringing in playing cards like, ‘Hey, let’s open them,’” says rookie outfielder Corbin Carroll. Longoria’s teammates usually oblige. They’ve unearthed a Gabriel Moreno card and ones that includes Arizona prospects Jordan Lawlar and Deyvison De Los Santos. Carroll has even pulled a few his personal.
Longoria’s teammates could not understand it, however the veteran third baseman is just sharing the scraps. He used to crack open packing containers of playing cards like this extra usually – and certainly, it’s nonetheless enjoyable – however Longoria has customary himself into greater than only a hobbyist. What began as a pandemic-shutdown pastime has now was a critical endeavor. Longoria has inserted himself deep into the card-collecting world, shortly studying its intricacies. At house, he has “hundreds and hundreds” of playing cards, he says, a lot of that are an excellent deal extra beneficial than those he lugs into the workplace to indicate his coworkers.
There’s an autographed Mike Trout card that’s price a good amount of cash. Longoria additionally collects Components 1 racing playing cards and lately bought a 2021 Lewis Hamilton card that was one in all simply 5 of its variety. (A kind of identical Hamilton playing cards is presently listed on eBay for $5,000.) He’s additionally scorching after traditional playing cards from baseball’s golden age, each as a result of he’s a fan and since he’s a savvy investor.
Whereas the marketplace for high-priced fashionable playing cards has been extra risky – softening final 12 months after two years of skyrocketing funding, per an evaluation in Sports activities Collectors Digest – top-grade traditional playing cards, like sports activities franchises, steadily acquire worth.
“If I spent $40,000 on a Lou Gehrig card or a Babe Ruth card or one thing like that, in 20 years, it’s going to be price $60,000,” he says. “It’s not taking place. It’s like proudly owning the S&P 500.”
All of this began with a unique kind of collectible. Determined for one thing to do whereas the game was shuttered in the summertime of 2020, Longoria started shopping for Pokémon playing cards to open along with his two oldest kids, now 10 and eight years outdated. The passion caught on with him greater than them, nonetheless, and now Longoria can’t get sufficient.
A novice to card gathering, he began by shopping for packs of baseball playing cards at Goal and Walmart, however that method by no means turned up something particular. Card producers not often sneak the actually beneficial stuff into a budget packs. “It’s like taking part in a slot machine,” he says. “You place in 100 bucks and also you’re in all probability going to lose all of it.” To catch ‘em all, he discovered, you gotta spend. So, he did his analysis and have become extra literate. He adopted outstanding collectors on social media and he watched card breakers on livestreams. He discovered which playing cards had worth, which packs they got here in, and how you can procure them.
That focus to element makes him distinctive amongst professional athletes who accumulate. “He will get it,” says Ryan Veres, proprietor of Burbank Sportscards, a Southern California clearinghouse that sells roughly 4,000 particular person playing cards a day from a inventory of 40 million. Most sports activities stars who accumulate are inclined to delegate, Veres has discovered, however Longoria pops into the store at any time when he’s on the town. “Quite a lot of these guys will simply have guys purchase stuff for them. ‘I don’t know rather a lot about it. Simply purchase me cool stuff,’” Veres says. “However he does all the things himself. He’ll pound the pavement.”
With almost $150 million in profession earnings, Longoria has the scratch to be a critical collector. (Although don’t anticipate him to rival the almost $100 million assortment belonging to Diamondbacks proprietor Ken Kendrick.) He’ll often promote playing cards by way of his Instagram profile. The remaining he retains for his youngsters, within the hopes that they may sometime admire them. They haven’t but.
“Within the meantime, it’s like a Picasso. You get to take a look at it, it’s a narrative. Any person comes over, ‘Hey, examine this out,’” he says. “That, to me, is the thrilling half about it.”
All of it makes for an amusing picture – Longoria, a former Rookie of the 12 months and three-time Gold Glover, grinning as he plucks a card that includes some prospect who’d be fortunate to perform half of what he has. “The way forward for the sport is vivid,” he says, and the playing cards serve to attach him to that future as he prepares to turn into the sport’s previous. That is Longoria’s sixteenth season, and it marks the start of his profession’s last section. Nevertheless it’s a section he entered willingly, signing with Arizona for one 12 months and $4 million to play part-time and stay in his offseason house.
He senses the top is close to, which is why he’s begun gathering one thing apart from playing cards. During the last two seasons, Longoria has made some extent of asking opponents to swap jerseys. He’s obtained customized uniform tops from Austin Riley and Bobby Witt Jr., buying and selling them one in all his personal. This 12 months, Bryce Harper inscribed a message on a dirt-covered jersey he’d simply pulled off his again. Longoria has additionally mined his connections to acquire game-worn uniforms from athletes in different sports activities – together with Devin Booker, Stephen Curry and even the GOAT himself, Tom Brady.
His assortment may very well be much more strong – assume Derek Jeter and David Ortiz – however he lacked the foresight in his early years to curate mementos as he went alongside. Like an actor absconding with a prop after a protracted shoot, it took till the top for Longoria to comprehend he wished to convey house extra than simply recollections. “I’ll not have one other probability,” he says. He doesn’t need his younger Diamondbacks teammates to take their time with no consideration. Carroll, one of many few gamers within the Diamondbacks clubhouse with a professional probability to surpass Longoria’s on-field exploits, sees the logic.
“His reasoning for it was type of cool,” Carroll says. “It made me wish to begin getting some guys that I’ve performed with and can play in opposition to. I feel it’s a cool memento, a dwelling assortment of your profession.”
The sport is hardly accomplished with Longoria but. For the Diamondbacks, he’s offered cost-effective punch from the proper facet of the plate, with an 112 wRC+ total and a 137 mark in opposition to left-handers. He’s a veteran presence on a striving and stunning younger group, and one of many solely males within the room with any postseason expertise. The Diamondbacks have a 50% probability at a playoff berth, per FanGraphs’ projections, they usually’ll want Longoria’s expertise.
He has recollections left to make, however within the meantime, there are packs to open. And so, every now and then, he plops a field on a clubhouse desk and beckons a couple of teammates. They rip open the packaging and rummage by way of like they’re youngsters as soon as extra, pondering which gamers are destined for stardom. And for a second, time stops.