North Texas radio legend auctioning off baseball card collection to help kids in need
IRVING – It's not every day you can turn a life-long passion into a gift to benefit others in need, but a North Texas radio legend is doing just that.
Mark "Hawkeye" Louis is auctioning off his prized baseball card collection this week and donating the proceeds to help kids.
Hawkeye is a familiar name to North Texans. For more than 35 years, we've shared our morning commutes with him on FM radio's 96.3 KSCS. But what most folks may not know about Hawkeye is that he's also an avid collector – of baseball cards.
"I started in 1971. I moved to this new neighborhood. It was very much like that neighborhood in the movie, The Sandlot," says Hawkeye. "And we played baseball. We just played baseball all day long. And the kids were collecting baseball cards, and I never even really knew about baseball cards and started collecting them. And so that was the fourth grade and it just continued on."
For years, Hawkeye loaded his bases with various baseball cards – until he'd collected more than 17,000. But it wasn't until last summer that he realized he didn't really need them anymore.
"I hadn't really looked at them in a while and I thought I'd like to see them go in the hands of somebody who really does appreciate them. And that's why I went with Heritage Auctions," says Hawkeye. "And I didn't really, you know, I didn't really need to profit off of it. And I thought, what's another legacy I can do with these cards?"
For Hawkeye, the answer was simple: Cook Children's Medical Center in Fort Worth.
He'd worked as a summer camp counselor there for many years, and for the last decade, KSCS has raised millions for the hospital through its "Country for Kids" radiothon.
You can say this is where his two passions meet.
"Yeah," he says. "Really. It really fit so well together. It just seemed like a perfect fit."
It's believed his collection might fetch up to about $15,000.
"I am so excited because I know the people who are bidding on it are going to appreciate the collection. And even the folks at Heritage, they were saying this is a really nice collection. So, it's kind of neat to have some appreciation of what I did as a kid. That's really cool," says Hawkeye.
And something else he knows collectors will like – he has four boxes of cards that have never been opened.
"So, this is really cool for collectors. Collectors really like this because you don't know what's in there. There could be some rookie card, and sometimes they'll open them up on YouTube. It's a thing, so collectors are really into boxes that have never been opened and to open them up as kind of a surprise," says Hawkeye.
Bidding through Heritage Auctions is currently underway, and wraps up Friday, Jan. 26 at 10 p.m. At that point, it will go into an extended auction for those who want to increase their bids.
If you'd like to check out the collection, go to HawkeyeOnAir.com.
And in case you're wondering, Hawkeye says he did decide to hang on to about 30 cards that meant the most to him personally – including his favorite, the first card he ever traded for, a 1970 Carl Yastrzemski, who played his entire career with the Boston Red Sox.
