There’s a guy at Yahoo Sports named Mike Oz who does a fun, occasional feature where he and (usually) a baseball player or manager open a pack of 25-year-old baseball cards.  Most of the guys are retired, so the cards feature teammates or people they either played or coached against.

The latest guest was Eric Davis, who unpacked one of the better sets of cards in the series.  Watch it here, and then scroll to the bottom of the page for the rest of the series.  I haven’t seen the others in a while, but I remember the Frank Thomas one being particularly good too.

Eric Davis is also the centerpiece of one of my favorite personal baseball stories.  Back in 1997, while he was playing for the Orioles, he missed a chunk of the season while undergoing treatment for colon cancer.  In those days my family typically went to one game a year in Baltimore, and Davis had returned to the team on the day we went in late August that year.

My younger brother and I had brought along baseballs just in case an autograph opportunity arose.  From our seats in the upper deck behind home plate we could see a line of people forming in the aisle right by the Orioles dugout and figured that was our chance.

As the line moved along, we got closer and closer to the first pitch, at which point we would be expelled back to our section.  But we stayed the course, and ended up at the front of the line just as the national anthem was being played.  Davis yelled at my brother for not clapping after the anthem, and then we were among the last ones to get an autograph.

The next day I went over to a friend’s house, and when I walked in his dad was reading the sports section of the Washington Times.  The lead article was about the Orioles and I mentioned that I had been at the game the day before.  Then I looked closer at the paper and saw the big photo featured Davis.  And my brother.

*Correction: This post originally stated the source of Davis’ remarks as my brother not taking his hat off for the anthem, and identified the newspaper in question as the Baltimore Sun.  1997 was a long time ago.