So this happened yesterday and I'm still a little rattled by it. The Cardinals called up a 22-year-old outfielder named Joshua Báez from Triple-A Memphis on Friday. Saturday, he's in the starting lineup against the Cubs at Wrigley. First pitch he sees in the big leagues, he hits it out. Comes up again, six pitches later, hits another one out. Comes up a third time, hits a third one out — opposite field this time, because apparently regular home runs weren't enough of a statement. Five RBIs, an 8-4 Cardinals win, and a brand new line in the record books: first player in the history of Major League Baseball to homer in each of his first three career at-bats. Nobody had ever done that. Not Ruth, not Mantle, not anybody.
Now here's the part that's actually my department. By the time that third ball landed, collectors weren't waiting around. Over 12,000 of his cards changed hands on eBay that Saturday alone. A 2022 Bowman Chrome First Bowman Superfractor of his, graded PSA 9, sold for $16,999. And the autographed version of that same card — which sold for just under $13,000 a month ago, before any of this happened — is now sitting on the market with a $100,000 price tag. That's not a market correction, that's a stampede.
I've seen this movie before, and I want to be clear about something: I'm not saying the kid's a fraud. What he did is genuinely historic and I hope he's the real deal. But I've watched plenty of three-day wonders turn into September call-ups nobody remembers by the following June. One historic afternoon is three at-bats. A career is a few thousand of them. Back in my shop days we'd get a rookie who went deep twice in his debut and the whole store would be sold out of his cards within the hour — and half those guys were out of the league in two years, their rookie cards worth less than the sleeve you put them in. Buying cardboard off of three swings is buying lottery tickets with extra steps.
If you already own Báez cards from before Saturday, congratulations, you got lucky and you should think hard about whether you want to sell into this heat or hold. If you're thinking about buying in now, at these prices, chasing what already happened — do yourself a favor and wait. Watch what he does over his next fifty at-bats, not his first three. And if this kid had done this in Boston instead of St. Louis, I guarantee you every talking head on TV would already have him in Cooperstown. That's the Red Sox media machine for you — everything's a legend until it isn't.