Will Elmore got an unusual text on Monday. Then he got it again and again. Seemingly everyone he knew was watching the Home Run Derby, and when the broadcast flashed to a zoomed-in shot of Philadelphia Phillies reliever Matt Strahm’s waist, Elmore’s phone lit up with photos of his handiwork: a belt made of Strahm’s baseball cards.
Strahm beams as he holds it up. “It takes 14 cards,” he explains, then walks through the first three. “This is my first Phillies card, this is the NLDS card, this is an image variation. That’s my favorite one, ‘cause I’m doing the ‘I love you’ sign to my daughter.”
Elmore, who runs Card Belts, also sent Strahm one with a series of variations on the same card; that is the belt Strahm wore for Tuesday’s All-Star Game at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas.
Strahm collected cards as a child, then started again at 18 with his brother. He estimates his collection, which he stores in a spare bedroom, runs to close to a million cards, including autographed rookie cards of the 54 players who have homered off him.
Last season, a fellow collector, Brandon Verzal, pitched him on hosting a TV show dedicated to collecting; “The Card Life” premiered on regional sports networks across the country last July. On one of their episodes, they featured Elmore, whom they had found on Instagram.
During COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, Elmore, now 48, and his two preteen sons sifted through thousands of baseball cards, separating them into such piles as “huge afros” and “funny mustaches.” Elmore couldn’t imagine stuffing them back into boxes, “where they won’t be looked at for years,” he says. So the digital marketer thought about art projects: a wallet, maybe. But that would only highlight a couple of cards. So he settled on belts. He’s on “method, like, 14,” he says, of designing a belt that looks good and works well. He sells them online and at art festivals, mostly to sports fans and children of former players. (They retail for $69.95 for team belts and between $74.95 and $85.95 for belts of one player.)
Strahm had the good fortune to learn last Sunday that he had been selected to his first All-Star Game, and to do it in the only sport in which players wear belts during play. Uniform rules are much looser during All-Star Week, so he asked Verzal to see if Elmore could do anything for him.
Matt Strahm’s belt for the All-Star Game is made out of *actual* baseball cards… pic.twitter.com/Dxt5i4gxgY
— Topps (@Topps) July 16, 2024
The turnaround time was pretty quick, especially for Elmore’s one-man operation. Verzal overnighted the cards they wanted to use to Elmore’s “belt factory, which is my garage,” he says. Each belt took about 45 minutes; he overnighted them to Citizens Bank Park the next day.
Elmore held his breath on Tuesday, hoping Strahm would get into the game. Finally, with two outs in the seventh, his man got the call. Strahm struck out the only hitter he faced, Royals shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. The camera showed his wide grin—and his waist.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Matt Strahm’s Baseball Card Belt Could Become MLB’s Newest Fashion Trend.
