I hadn’t thought about the signed baseball card in years. Then there it was, buried at the bottom of a box of nothings and everythings in the deepest corner of the closet.

Held in the same plastic case it was put in 27 years ago, the blue-inked signature danced like it did the first day. Carl Hubbell. King Carl. Winner of 253 games. National Baseball Hall of Famer from the 1920s and ’30s. He once struck out, in order, future Hall of Famers Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Al Simmons and Joe Cronin in the 1934 All-Star Game at the Polo Grounds, his home park.

My grandfather saw him pitch — against the great Sandy Koufax no less.

At least that was the story.

Grandpa, born in 1909 in Albany, N.Y., regaled us in tales of life during the Great Depression when his family lost their house and was forced into a tent alongside the Hudson River. He told of the bottoms falling out of moving cars — while he was driving. And he told of the great matchup between Koufax the Brooklyn Dodgers southpaw and Hubbell of the New York Giants.

The fact that when Hubbell pitched his last Major League game, Koufax was shy of his 8th birthday didn’t bother grandpa; he was there.

So one day perusing a Sears and Roebuck baseball autograph address book — with actual players’ addresses — a lightbulb went off in my head. Wouldn’t it be a blast to write Hubbell and Koufax, and tell them the story of Grandpa, the Polo Grounds and their famous “duel.” I hand-wrote letters to each of them. Being 13 and not knowing any better, I did not enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope. I did not provide anything to sign. I wanted two cards to give as a Christmas present, but I never wrote that.

Weeks passed. A letter from the Sandy Koufax Foundation, or something akin to that, alerted me to a fee for the great lefty’s signature. Days later, a legal-sized envelope arrived, hand-addressed in deep blue ink. In it, wrapped in a blank white sheet of paper sat a Carl Hubbell baseball card. It wasn’t original, but a specialty card made up for some Hall of Famers. Across the bottom, in script, read “Carl Hubbell” in the same blue ink as on the envelope.

Hubbell was killed in a car crash two weeks after I received that envelope. He was 85. I like to think that maybe the last autograph he ever signed came with a smile and recollections of the famous “game.” The card sat on top of grandpa’s dusty television until his death seven years later at age 86. I never did send Koufax any money.

That card no longer rests in a box, stuck between old newspapers and browned birthday cards.

It’s displayed prominently, now, as an ever-present reminder of a baseball game that never happened — and the men who witnessed it.