Things just look different when you're a kid. Steve Garvey looked like a baseball superhero. He had those (for the time) impressively muscular forearms. He had that supernatural self-confidence. He always seemed to get the big hit, and flash that big smile in the post-game interview, saying all the right things about helping the team. He was a certain Hall-of-Famer, right?
Of course, it turns out he was all Hollywood flim-flam. A politician in cleats. John Edwards batting cleanup. But, at the time, this card epitomized everything that I thought was right about baseball.