Personal Space: Jake Kerr

                                               photo credit: Chris Haylett

1. Kerr, 67, a forestry executive, played hardball as a boy before attending UBC and then Berkeley (where he got his MBA). He took up the game again in his twenties and played each winter in Phoenix until he was 45.

2. With updated facilities and strong ticket sales, the Canadians have begun turning a profit. They’re now a farm team of the Toronto Blue Jays, for whom the bobbleheaded all-star Dave Stieb used to pitch.

3. Kerr’s mother threw out his childhood baseball card collection, which sparked his adult passion 30 years ago. His most valuable memorabilia? “In financial terms, probably the sets of Mickey Mantle Topps baseball cards from the mid 1950s.”

4. The collection includes pennants and pins, magazines and tobacco tins, and baseballs signed by former major-leaguers like Duke Snider and Brooks Robinson, both of whom once played at Kerr’s Nat Bailey Stadium.

5. He picked up this seat, from the old Tiger Stadium in Detroit, online for $500. He’d collect more such bulky items, he says, “but my wife won’t let me have any more real estate.”