For Canadian ex-major leaguers looking for their baseball cards, a Saskatoon man is their go-to source

Canadian retired major league baseball players know Kelly Sage as “the Canadian card guy.”

For many of them, the Saskatoon man has become the best person to get them their own baseball cards.

Of the approximately 50,000 total cards in his collection, Sage estimates he has between 30,000 and 35,000 different individual cards from Canadians.

He said he started collecting baseball cards in the early 1970s in the small town of Cardale, Man., when he was five or six years old.

“The first card I saw when I opened my first pack was Bob Bailey from the Montreal Expos,” he said. “I still have that card.”

Sage stopped collecting for years after it became much easier to acquire complete sets. But one day, Sage bought a few packs of baseball cards at a gas station “for old time’s sake.” A handful of cards were from Canadian players.

“And that made me think, ‘How many Canadians have played at this level?’ And that’s where I started collecting Canadian-born players,” he said.

“Because that seemed a little more interesting to me, because there are a lot fewer of them and they’re a lot less known. And it was intriguing to see your countrymen playing America’s pastime.”

Sage said he began sending cards to retired major league players to sign for him.

He later learned that many of them did not have their own cards.

Once, he sought the autograph of retired Major League pitcher and former Toronto Blue Jay and Montreal Expo Denis Boucher, who was staying at a Saskatoon hotel.

Sage brought a folder of Boucher’s baseball cards for him to look through. Boucher also received several business cards from Sage.

Within weeks, word spread.

“I got emails from guys saying, ‘Hey, do you have any of my cards?'” Sage said.

“So I don’t know if it was senior games or team meetings or how it happened, but it was like my first exposure to the players that came to me.”

Sage said he has standing orders from several players, including Hall of Famer Fergie Jenkins, to send them all the cards he can get so they can give them away at camps and clinics.

“It’s really fun knowing that you can reach out to a player that you watched as a kid and just have a daily conversation with them,” Sage said, “because I know I’m giving them something about themselves that means a lot to them, that they might not even know exists.”

Of the approximately 260 Canadians who have played in the major leagues, Sage said he has cards of about 190. He said between a quarter and a third of Canadians who played in the majors never had cards made with them.

Sage said it has established relationships with local card shops in each city with a Major League Baseball team, to acquire cards of Canadian players who appear in unique local sets, such as those issued by police officers and firefighters to children or those issued by newspapers to subscribers.

Sage’s collection has grown from cards and baseballs signed by retired players to a library about the game, movie posters and other baseball memorabilia.

His collectibles fill a downstairs study and line the walls of the living room. Sage said that “99 percent” of visitors to his home tell him he has a very understanding wife and ask him how he gets his way.

Rhonda Sage said she has her own sewing and quilting room and that arrangement has always worked for them.

“So in collections and in sewing everything is fair,” he said.

“He’s filled the basement. He’s starting to fill part of the upstairs. I’ve given him a gentle warning that if he takes up much more space, he’ll be ‘the big D’ and that doesn’t mean ‘defense.'”

Kelly Sage has some rules of her own.

It does not attempt to collect signatures from current major league players; will not charge former players for the cards it sends them; and will not sell any signed items you receive. However, some items are donated to raise funds for children’s baseball.

When he’s done collecting, he plans to donate his collection to the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame.