Michael O'Keeffe

Michael O’Keeffe is a sportswriter for the Daily News, a guy who takes his job as a journalist seriously and, as a consequence, is one of the best reporters in the business (he’s also a self-professed fan of The Starting Five, which is always nice to hear). He graciously agreed to sit down with me (virtually) to talk about his new book and about his views on important issues of the day in sports. His book, The Card: Collectors, Con Men and the True Story of History’s Most Desired Baseball Card (co-authored with Teri Thompson), was published this Spring by Harper Collins. It tells the story of how the T-206 Honus Wagner baseball card, originally printed in 1909 (also known as the Gretzky T-206 because the Great One once owned the card) became the most sought-after card in the world, having sold most recently for over two million dollars, and the nefarious circumstances under which that card came to be deemed so valuable. Along the way, O’Keeffe tells some fascinating tales, including how revenue from Topps’ baseball cards allowed Marvin Miller to transform the Major League Baseball Players’ Association from an inert talking shop into one of America’s most powerful unions. And, he explains how two working-class African American men, in possession of their own T-206 Honus Wagner baseball card, got shut out of a memorabilia market desperate to buy almost anything.