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Admit it. When you heard Steve Bartman had turned down an offer to sign his name once for $25,000 at a baseball card and memorabilia show in suburban Chicago, you lost interest in the event.

But now comes word via the New York Daily News that the feds were very intrigued in the proceedings, and that they weren't there to study Wrigley Field's Zapruder film, the video in which Bartman does or does not prevent Moises Alou from catching a foul ball.

No, the FBI was lurking around a convention center, distributing subpoenas as though they were business card-sized advertisements for Las Vegas escort services and generally doing reconnaissance. Of particular interest were those merchants who allegedly enhance certain vintage (i.e. ancient, creased, dog-eared) cards and then try to auction them off as unadulterated pieces of history.

When such work is done on Pamela Anderson, it is known as cosmetic surgery. When it is done on an image of Honus Wagner, it is known as fraud.

In case you were ever curious, you now have another reason to stay away from this house of cards. The whole industry. Not just the dealings in the Windy City, where the local FBI office's trophies include Sam Giancana, "Baby Face" Nelson, John Dillinger, Al Capone and seven forgers of baseball artifacts taken down in "Operation Foul Ball" in 1996.

The doctoring of baseball cards was inevitable. The market, as it has for nearly everything except oil, has tumbled like Manny Ramirez in search of a high fly ball. The only way to keep getting obscene prices for pieces of cardboard is to pretend they've never lost their luster in the literal sense.

For years, the industry thrived on the competitive drive of adolescents and the naivete of their parents. Kids collected cards for bragging rights at recess, but managed to convince mom and dad that the transactions were forward-thinking business decisions. Little Jimmy was developing an entrepreneurial spirit and learning the value of long-term investments. Such planning was to be encouraged, and if that meant forking over a few extra bucks to complete the purchase of the entire 1982 Topps set, then so be it.

As time marched on, the cards would be forgotten, lost in the shuffles of moves from one residence to another and consigned to a corner of the attic.

As generations of kids began embracing the NBA and the NFL and dismissing the slower pace of baseball, those cards that were supposed to help pay for your college were declining in value.

Before cable and satellite TV and the Internet, baseball cards were sometimes a kid's only way to learn that some San Francisco Giants pitcher liked to spend his offseasons hunting and fishing. (The more cards you collected, the more you realized that every baseball player spent his offseasons hunting and fishing, but the knowledge was cool at first.)

Other than the packages of wax paper and "chewing" gum hard enough to classify as a dangerous weapon in at least a dozen states, you wouldn't even know what some of these guys looked like.

But suddenly, information was everywhere. Baseball cards were the mood rings of the 1980s and '90s.

Essentially, Americans have become more discriminating consumers. At some point, they wised up and decided that, no, Pudge Rodriguez couldn't make them rich.

A 2006 Slate magazine piece said there were about 1,700 card shops in operation in the United States. At the industry's peak, there were 10,000. The story said rookie cards of Mike Mussina, a probable Hall of Famer, were going for a quarter apiece.

Baseball cards are different from objects directly tied to real competition. Several years ago, I paid $25 or so for the bottom of a seat that came from Baltimore's Memorial Stadium. Although it's only a piece of wood, it was a participant in sports history. It was on the scene when Paul Blair caught a fly ball in center field and the Orioles swept the favored Los Angeles Dodgers in the 1966 World Series, for example. Game-worn jerseys also fit this sentimental value category.

But a cardboard picture? Some people may have 20 to 30 months in federal prison to ponder why they messed with it.

Contact Rob Daniels at 373-7028 or rob.daniels@news-record.com