Inside the rise of Pokémon card collecting in MLB clubhousesDodgers reliever Will Klein shows off his Pokémon card glove. Here’s how the hobby has swept MLB baseball. Will Klein via InstagramJeff Passan
On the shelf with another injury, frustrated to the point he wondered whether he would ever play Major League Baseball again, Chris Sale spent the end of his 2022 season trying to find something to take his mind off his misfortune. Over the previous five months, he had fractured a rib, a pinky and a wrist in three separate freak incidents, leaving him unable to golf, shoot guns or even play video games let alone pitch.
“I’ll be completely honest with you,” Sale stated. “I was losing it.”
Earlier that year, Sale’s brother-in-law, Rob Aron, was cleaning out his parents’ house and stumbled upon a treasure trove: a binder of old Pokémon cards and some unopened packs. When Aron shared his spoils with Sale’s three sons, it reminded Sale of how he felt between 1998 and 2000, the height of the Pokémon craze, when baseball and soccer teammates would bring their binders into the dugout, share stories and trade cards, leaving Sale, a non-collector, wondering what he was missing.
He would not leave that question unanswered this time. On Sept. 17, 2022, he logged on to eBay and purchased his first card, a 1999 Base Set Charizard, opting for the fire-breathing, dragon-like creature because “if I’m going to get into this,” he stated, “I’m going to go for the big dog.” In the nearly four years since, Sale has amassed a gargantuan collection of Pokémon cards: thousands graded by Professional Sports Authenticators — almost all gem-mint 10s — and reams of unopened boxes, all residing in the finished attic space he calls his “Pokémon lair.”
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The Atlanta Braves ace is far from the only Pokémon-obsessed player in MLB. Milwaukee Brewers ace Jacob Misiorowski hunts cards in shops of every big league city he visits, has filled a comically large binder with them and even redecorated his basement bathroom in a Pokémon theme. In an effort to break out of a slump, Los Angeles Angels stars Mike Trout and Zach Neto earlier this season opened Pokémon packs and pulled a coveted Charizard card. Both homered the next day.
Texas Rangers teammates Jordan Montgomery and Jake Burger, Chicago Cubs starter Jameson Taillon, San Diego Padres starter Nick Pivetta and Los Angeles Dodgers reliever Will Klein all are avowed Pokémon fans, too, deep into the rabbit hole of what evolved from a children’s card game into a pastime in which unopened vintage packs can cost thousands of dollars and, individual cards regularly sell for tens of thousands or more. The equivalent of baseball’s T206 Honus Wagner card — a Pikachu Illustrator, of which just 41 copies were made — was bought by Logan Paul for $5.275 million five years ago and sold at auction in February for $16.5 million.
Sale’s love for Pokémon runs deep enough that he joked with his wife, Brianne, that he had won the auction — and, for a second, she believed it. It’s illustrative of baseball players’ place at the forefront of celebrity Pokémon collectors, continuing the decreasing stigma that long attached itself to those in the hobby. Whether it’s pack-ripping sessions inside the clubhouse or the custom-made gloves of Misiorowski and Klein that include see-through pockets holding Pokémon cards, MLB is the nerve center of an unlikely pairing: the professional athlete and nerd culture.
Sale and Misiorowski, of course, are not merely ballplayers. They are two of baseball’s best pitchers, almost mirror images of each other: tall (Sale is 6-foot-6, Misiorowski 6-foot-7), lithe (180 and 190 pounds, respectively) and super effective (matching 1.89 ERAs entering this week). The only significant gap between the two is their ages, with the 37-year-old Sale on the back end of his illustrious career and the 24-year-old Misiorowski just beginning his ascent.
Their shared love speaks to the massive appeal of Pokémon, which started as video games in 1996 and months later produced cards originally intended to battle one another in a tabletop game. Pokémon blew up into the highest-grossing media franchise ever, a $115 billion monster of video games, toys, apparel, movies, TV series and the cards that served as Sale’s outlet as he rebuilt his career. Over the past three years, he has solidified his case as a surefire future Hall of Famer, winning his first Cy Young Award with the Atlanta Braves and aging as gracefully as his collection, which has skyrocketed in value over the past year. Sale regularly trawls auction sites to bolster his collection — “I’m proud of myself if I can go a full week without having a purchase on eBay,” he stated — even if, he noted with a chuckle, “I just waited 20 years to pay 50x.”He’s competitive, after all, and much of the allure is in the chase. He’ll rip packs with his three sons at a local hobby shop, but completing sets truly animates him. Sale especially loves his full complement of PSA 10 Charizard cards from the Skyridge expansion, including one from Germany, where Charizard is known as Glurak.Breaking News from Jeff Passan
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While Sale does not readily share his Pokémon fixation with the public, his collection became something of a fascination among collectors in MLB. Players regularly send requests for autographs from opposing players through clubhouse attendants. Sale has signed balls, bats, jerseys and even bourbon bottles for other players. What Taillon asked for was something new.
“I had heard Chris Sale was super into Pokémon. So I bought a raw, really cool old Charizard and sent it over to his side to sign,” the Cubs right-hander stated. “I have a Chris Sale autographed Charizard.
“That’s what’s great about cards,” he continued. “Once people find out you’re in the hobby, people are super generous with it.”
Never was that generosity more apparent than at last year’s All-Star Game. In the days leading up to it, the commissioner’s office named Misiorowski as a replacement for the injured Matthew Boyd despite Misiorowski having made all of five major league starts. Sale, aware that Misiorowski adores Pokémon, found out that Lugia was his favorite and started hunting through his collection for a welcome gift. Sale has more than 2,000 graded cards — each slabbed inside of a hard, plastic, tamper-proof case — and has spent countless mornings organizing them meticulously enough that he can typically find a specific card within seconds.
“There was just some kind of B.S. surrounding him being there,” he stated. “I saw that and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s an easy way to go break the ice and just try to make him feel a little bit more comfortable for being there.'”
This Charizard is part of Brewers ace Jacob Misiorowski’s extensive Pokémon card collection Courtesy of Jacob MisiorowskiThe present reinforced what Misiorowski already had learned in the Brewers clubhouse: Pokémon can serve as a great unifier among players. Last August, Misiorowski and teammates Brandon Woodruff, Rhys Hoskins and Trevor Megill opened a 1999 Base Set pack in the clubhouse. Like Sale, they were in pursuit of Charizard. And when Misiorowski slowly revealed the bottom of the card, its red hue set off a frenzy.
“We start freaking out,” Misiorowski stated. “Everyone’s questioning what’s going on. And all of a sudden, you reveal the card and everyone realizes what it is.”
It is, to Pokémon disciples young and old, that magical moment when a chase card becomes reality — a feeling not just limited to animated characters but known equally well to those who prefer sports cards, such as Sale’s teammate Grant Holmes. When the Braves’ core of Pokémon enthusiasts — Sale and reliever Dylan Lee are the true aficionados left after reliever Pierce Johnson signed with the Cincinnati Reds — starts talking shop, Holmes will join in because he knows how good a win in the card space feels, even if it sounds like Sale and Lee are speaking a different language.
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During spring training this year, Sale completed his set of Poncho cards — in which the Pokémon sheathe their heads and bodies in poncho-styled outerwear — and couldn’t wait to inform the group. Though the joy Sale derived from it was contagious, it still didn’t quite match one of the biggest wins of his collecting career.
That came earlier, when he pulled a Rayquaza card from the Evolving Skies set. He reveled in that hit, convinced it was a PSA 10 out of the pack, only to send it in for grading and have it returned an 8. Sale sent it back to get re-graded, figuring a 9 or 10 was on the horizon. Didn’t happen the second time, either. Or the third.
Sale felt as if PSA had declared war on him.
“I will be 85 years old still sending this card back,” Sale stated, “until I get a higher grade than an 8.”
The fourth try was the charm. Even if Sale had spent more money grading the card than it was worth, seeing the 9 — seeing victory — gave him a rush. When he got to the ballpark that day, he gathered the core group to deliver an announcement.
“I’m done,” he stated, adding the perfect nod to the franchise that pitted characters of all manner and variety against one another: “I won the battle.”
