Doctor says baseball is good medicine

There is no doubt in the mind of Dr. Morris Seligman that baseball, not laughter, is the best medicine. He may be director of medical affairs at Southeast Missouri Hospital in Cape Girardeau, but probably his more important job is maintaining what has come to be called "Little Cooperstown" in his hospital office.

Seligman greets visitors, whether patients or just those who have heard about his office, with a glow in his eyes to preach to them the doctrine of baseball.

"I guess all of this started when I was about 8 years old growing up in Creve Coeur," said Seligman.

He, like every other boy in his neighborhood, lived for baseball, particularly the hometown St. Louis Cardinals. Every activity was centered on baseball and baseball cards, whether it was collecting baseball cards, flipping the cards in a number of complex card-flipping games or just using the cards in the spokes of their bicycle wheels to make a cool motor noise.

It was the days of innocence, when baseball and card collecting were pure. Seligman would go to sleep at night with a transistor radio earplug in his ear, listening to Jack Buck and Harry Caray announce the Cardinals' games. His young life, and the lives of all of his friends, revolved around baseball.

A lost art

These days, kids no longer flip baseball cards. Number one, they've got too many other things to do. Number two, they can't risk damaging a card that may someday be valuable, because baseball memorabilia has turned into a huge industry. That's kind of sad, said Seligman.

"Baseball card flipping is now a lost art," he said, recalling with a twinkle in his eye how he and his friends played elaborate card-flipping games, like "Knock Down" and "Heads and Tails."

"I could flip that card like a missile," he said.

He, like many other baby boomers, were the beginnings of the baseball memorabilia industry. Nostalgia has turned to gold.

"I remember when the Wall Street Journal first ran a story about baseball cards and baseball memorabilia as an investment," recalls Seligman.

Luckily, he has been as successful as anyone at securing his memories, and his corner of the sports memorabilia market. He now has such prized possessions as autographed pictures of famous baseball players, pennants from World Series games, elusive game programs, and more.

"This collection has just kind of grown slowly," he said. "When people started finding out how much I loved this stuff, they started getting me pieces of memorabilia as gifts."

Added to collection

Even many of his patients have added to his collection.

"People give me things for the collection because they know how much I love it É and they know I will never sell," said Seligman.

Selling is always a big temptation for sports memorabilia collectors. Items in their collection can be worth thousands of dollars.

But, according to Seligman, money is not what matters when it comes to his collection. It's the memories.

"Every baseball memory I have is precious," he said. "I've been honored to meet a lot of famous baseball players and celebrities -- like Jack Buck, Stan Musial, Lou Brock, John Mize and Enos Slaughter. Those moments are like gold to me."

Universal language

And perhaps, just as importantly, Seligman has discovered that the love of baseball is a universal language.

"I keep this collection here at the office because I discovered something very interesting about people," he said. "I discovered that frequently patients would come to my office, see my collection, and they would forget all about their troubles É about their pain. Sometimes they would get so caught up in the moment that they would even forget why they had come to see me."

Because of that, Seligman has decided baseball is probably the best medicine there is. Sometimes baseball has an effect on people that all his training as an internist could not replace, or even explain.

"Sometimes people who visit my office are collectors themselves, and then they tell me all about their collection," said Seligman.

With every visitor, he proudly points out his prized possessions: World Series programs from 1964, 1967, 1968 and 1982; a picture of the crowd running out on the field at the conclusion of the seventh game in the 1982 World Series; a stadium chair from the 1982 World Series signed by Whitey Herzog. He replays that game in his mind as if it were on videotape, because he was there.

"Nothing can replace those memories, and every time I look at these things, I remember," he said.

Perhaps his most prized possession is a pair of unused, mint-condition 1964 World Series tickets.

Someday, he says, he will probably donate some of the items in his collection to the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame. The rest will be passed on to his family, including his 15-year-old son. But it is hard for anyone, including his own son, to match Seligman's enthusiasm for the game.

He's tried passing on that enthusiasm; he even has a picture of his son when he was just 13 months old with Ozzie Smith and Vince Coleman. But, alas, even his own flesh and blood has fallen prey to the distractions of modern society and forsaken glorious baseball.

"I guess all of this has its greatest value in sentiment," he said, "and you just can't pass that on to someone else who hasn't lived it."

The photograph of Babe Ruth can be passed on, as can the original photo of Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio, but the feelings can't really be passed on.

But for him, it will always be 1968. The greatest pitcher of all time will always be Bob Gibson, his favorite team will always be the 1967 Cardinals.

And he will forever be flipping baseball cards in the old neighborhood.