This story was excerpted from Kennedi Landry's Rangers Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
ARLINGTON -- Josh Jung’s father used to take him to Toys “R” Us on Fridays to reward him for a good week of school. Go to school, get good grades, get something from the store.
But Jung didn’t want toys. He wanted baseball cards.
“My entire life was card collecting,” Jung said at Rangers Fan Fest. “It wasn't out there in the universe like it is now. I was a huge A-Rod fan, too. My dad was a huge card collector. I had 5,000-count boxes just loaded down.”
An MLB player collecting baseball cards isn’t too out of the ordinary. But Jung, inspired by his dad’s old collections as a child, has only gotten more interested in card collecting over the years.
Jung attends card shows and peruses card shops in his free time. He even started a YouTube account. His first video is 30 minutes of him opening card packs with Angels superstar Mike Trout.
Ironically, the best card Jung owns is probably a Trout rookie card, though Jung admits he loves to look for himself occasionally. He’s chasing his rookie cards.
“My Trout card is super cool,” Jung said. “He signed two cards for me now. One of the 2011 updates that he put out, and the 2012 Rookie of the Year, which is awesome. Super cool. … Of myself, I have my Topps Chrome Rookie auto[graph] super, which is cool. I didn't have a [MLB debut] patch, right? That’s the crazy hobby right now. So that [Chrome] card is probably my most prestigious rookie card. To be able to have that one, it's pretty cool.”
Jung understands card collectors, too, considering he is one. Athletes spend so much time signing balls, jerseys, cards and everything between. Jung thinks about the fans when he signs.
“It's kind of like a game I play with myself, for sure,” Jung said. “My signature is so simple and easy; it's not too bad. I just want it to be legible, because I remember as a kid and being a card collector, you look at autographs, and you’re like, ‘Ooh, that one sucks.’ Or like, ‘Man, I can't remember who that is.’ And if it's not on a card -- if it's on a baseball or something, and it's smudged or whatever -- you can't even get a letter out of that. So I try to make it a point to write mine legibly.”
Jung likes to have a little fun with his cards sometimes, too. When he signs, he wants his signature to be legible, and he’ll sometimes hide easter eggs in them. In November, he gave himself a mustache and glasses on a card and waited for it to surface. He once signed one as “The Jungle Cat,” his nickname.
When Jung was a kid at Toys “R” Us, he never expected to have his own baseball card, much less the extravaganza that card collecting has turned into. He is still “giddy” each time he sees one of himself.
“I truly didn't know a ton about cards until a couple of years ago, because I didn't know about all the different products,” Jung said. “My dad would just get us a box of cards, and that was all I knew. Chasing autograph cards or patch cards and things like that, it was a huge deal if you got one of those because it never happened. But now, with all the products, it's guaranteed almost, and it's crazy.”