By Randy Richardson

I sift through my collection of baseball memorabilia with the intensity of Indiana Jones digging for an ancient artifact. Trading cards. Game giveaways. News clippings. They've all been stowed away in a plastic bin that rests under my underwear drawer. They represent the memories of a past that I cling to for reasons that I can’t adequately explain. All I know is that I can’t let them go. Some I’ve had in my possession since I played Little League. To professional sports hobbyists, they probably would have little value: They haven't been hermetically sealed in protective casings and, thus, show the stains of time.

Marla Collins, Cubs ballgirl 1982-1986One day this collection will be my son’s, and I hope that he will find in it something that will make him feel the same way I felt about baseball. Maybe he will find in it the kid that I used to be.

But there’s one treasure in it he can’t have, at least not until he’s mature enough to understand it, and it is what I search for today.

I am alone in the house, except for the Siamese cat that sits on the floor next to me, curiously watching over my every move with a tilted head that seems to ask, “What the hell are you doing?” Damn cat.

An army of baseball cards surrounds me. Tony Oliva flanks my right side. Jose Cardenal is at my rear. Boog Powell holds guard at my left knee.

I've undertaken this excavation not to find a baseball card but another piece of my baseball past, a gift from a law school roommate that I've never let anyone else see. I know it’s in here: somewhere.

After ten minutes of fruitless searching, my patience runs thin. I dump the entire bin's contents on the floor. A foot-high mountain of baseball memorabilia encircles me. The cat looks at me as if I've lost my marbles. Using both arms as plows, I separate the pile in two. That’s when I catch glimpse of it, plain white poster paper, unblemished except for an old piece of cellophane tape on it, evenly divided into fours.

Even though I know I'm alone, except for the scrutinizing eyes of my cat, I self-consciously look around before unfolding it with the care one would give to opening a long lost treasure map. I sense myself blushing when I finally do see what, or perhaps more appropriately, who, I've been looking for.

It's her, alright. Make no mistake about it. She's supine on pink satin sheets and wearing a gold bracelet, a turquoise scarf – or is it wrapping paper, I can't tell – and matching turquoise loop earrings. And nothing else.

She is Marla Collins, who for five years in the 1980s kept me watching Cubs home games on WGN-TV even in the worst of times. From 1982 to 1986, my college years, she was the Cubs ballgirl and she would dress up for home games in a shrunken Cubs uniform that left little to the imagination. Her job was to shag foul balls and to keep the home plate umpire's pockets stuffed with baseballs. My eyes usually weren't on the game. They were on her. She had become what Farrah Fawcett and Lynda "Wonder Woman" Carter had been for me during high school – a fantasy.

I can't adequately explain why I wanted to shag this ball-shagger. She was of course beautiful, with fiery red hair and a curvaceous body, but there was more to it than that and I think it had less to do with her and more to do with the uniform, a confession that I am a little uncomfortable about.

The late, great Cubs broadcaster Harry Caray was one of Collins' biggest fans and would often be distracted from the game by her. Some viewers found this habit of his annoying if not disturbing. But it was what made Harry different from most every other sports broadcaster out there. He was genuine and never pretended to be anything other than what he was. He saw in Marla Collins what I saw in Marla Collins.

On one unseasonably cold spring day, Harry notices Marla is dressed for the weather and not in her usual "hot pants". Without thinking, he utters, "Hey, we see Marla Collins without shorts for the first time." (Listen to the audio clip from the WGN Radio archives.)

Marla Collins, Playboy magazine September 1986The Cubs fired Marla Collins in the middle of a dismal 1986 season after she posed nude for Playboy magazine. According to Chicago Tribune columnist Fred Mitchell, she was fired for breaking the "family-oriented spirit" of the Cubs. Playing lousy baseball apparently didn't wreck that family-oriented spirit, as all of the players kept their jobs despite a 5^th place finish in the NL East that year with a dismal 70-90 record.

Mike Royko, the late Tribune columnist, wrote of Collins' dismissal: "Of course it's hypocritical. But hypocrisy is the very backbone of our sexual moral standards. Many of our most outstanding bluenoses are secret lechers."

It is ironic that the Cubs hired Collins and put her in the shortest of shorts, and then fired her for taking them off.

I look at that nude picture of Collins and another picture of her dressed in that shrunken Cubs uniform, and they don't seem all that different to me. The reality was that I'd seen that nude picture of her long before she posed for it. That was the fantasy.

Randy Richardson, author of Wrigleyville murder-mystery Lost In The Ivy, is a Regular Loser. His work has recently been anthologized in Chicken Soup for the Father and Son Soul and Humor for the Boomer's Heart.