Aaron Judge has broken records and compiled an array of individual honors on his way to becoming one of the faces of Major League Baseball during his career with the New York Yankees. Baseball card collectors have been drawn to the 2017 American League Rookie of the Year and 2022 AL MVP in growing numbers, but what are the best starting points when it comes to Judge cards? Here are our picks.

Things to know before buying

The value of sports cards can fluctuate for various reasons such as condition, print runs, or graded population. Other factors that can cause prices to go up or down include player performance, market trends, and health of the wider economy. The secondary sales market for individual cards of a given sport generally hits its lowest point during the offseason (in other words, you can usually find better prices in the offseason than during the season). My recommendations are not an attempt to promote specific investment behavior or trading advice, but to guide and inform readers about popular and unique cards that are celebrated by the sports card community.

Ultimately, the best cards to collect are always the ones you will enjoy regardless of whether they go up or down in value. The recommendations below should serve as a starting point for cards to consider, but a big part of the fun in collecting is the hunt for the cards you like the most.

“Raw” cards vs. Graded cards

Cards can come out of the pack (their “raw” state) with a wide variety of imperfections that can impact their value. Card grading is a process in a which an expert of the field determines the condition of a card based on a number of factors (including corner sharpness, image centering, print imperfections, and more) and assigns a numerical grade, usually on a scale of 1-10 (with the latter being close to perfect) and sealed in a protective case. There are a number of grading companies, each with their own unique grading scales, but Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA) is by far the largest and most prominent in the industry. Cards graded a “PSA 10” can carry a significant value multiplier compared to raw cards or those graded by other companies.

It’s fine (and often cheaper) to buy cards raw, but if you want to ensure authenticity and/or a minimum condition level and you’re not experienced at determining card condition for yourself, you may want to buy a graded card instead — particularly if you’re buying online and only able to see the card in photographs.

Judge’s 2013 Bowman Chrome #BDPP19 is my best value recommendation based on the number of graded copies and price. It also marks one of his first cards as a member of the Yankees organization, predating his official Topps rookie cards by four years.

Best low-end (~$1-$99) Aaron Judge cards

This is a category for collectors who are on a tighter budget or aren’t as concerned about the long-term monetary value of the cards they buy. 

2017 Topps #287 rookie card

I consider Aaron Judge’s 2017 Topps #287 a prototypical rookie card that’s high in demand and affordably priced. Raw versions are currently selling on eBay for around $20 with multiple transactions per day over the last 30 days.

I don’t necessarily blame folks who’d prefer a rookie card that captures Judge at the plate, but the fact that it’s his first rookie card from Topps’ flagship set makes it my top budget-friendly recommendation.

More expensive variations and parallels of this card: Purple, Negative, Rainbow Foil, Image Variation SP (short print), Gold (/2017), Vintage Stock (/99), Black (/66), Mother’s Day Pink (/50), Father’s Day light blue (/50), Memorial Day Camouflage (/25), Clear (/10), Platinum (1/1), Printing Plates (1/1), 65th Anniversary Stamp (1/1)

2017 Topps Archives #62 rookie card

As someone who appreciates the history of the hobby, I felt it was necessary to feature Aaron Judge’s’ 2017 Topps Archives #62 card. The Archives product was created to pay homage to the classic Topps baseball card designs of the past while featuring current rookies and stars. The horizontal look, dual imaging, and bright colors of this card are a tribute to the 1960 Topps design.

Although this is a set that’s not particularly known for garnering high interest on the secondary market for its base cards, the current demand for Aaron Judge rookies combined with the nostalgic aspects of this card design has it selling for around $40-$60 on eBay as of this writing.

More expensive variations and parallels: Grey Back, Peach (/199), Blue (/75), Red (/25), Black (1/1)

Best value (~$100-$499) Aaron Judge cards

This is a category for collectors looking to pay a bit more for cards that have some degree of scarcity and have a better chance at retaining or increasing in value long-term. 

2013 Bowman Chrome Draft Picks & Prospects #BDPP19

Before his 2017 Major League debut, Judge’s first official baseball card as part of the New York Yankees organization can be found in 2013 Bowman Chrome Draft Picks & Prospects.

Let me clarify the difference between a player’s first Bowman card and Topps rookie card — a “1st Bowman” card is a player’s first official pro baseball card that comes once they’ve joined a team’s minor league system through free agency or the draft. On the other hand, a Topps rookie card refers to a player’s first card once they debut in the Major Leagues, which, in the modern era, generally includes an “RC” (for “rookie card”) stamped on the front.

Judge’s Chrome base card (chromium cards are shiny and are printed on a thicker card stock than the generally more abundant and flimsier “paper” cards) from 2013 Bowman Chrome Draft Picks & Prospects is my best value recommendation based on the number of graded copies and price. Unlike most of the cards on this list, this set was not offered in big box retail stores (like Walmart or Target) and could only be purchased in hobby shops or online. In most cases, this means fewer cards are printed for hobby-exclusive releases compared to sets with retail formats.

According to PSA, there are less than 3,500 examples of this card authenticated by the company and less than 1,500 have received a Gem Mint 10 grade. Since the card’s grading population is relatively low for today’s standards, raw copies will cost you around $150. (For comparison, there are around 10,000 PSA graded examples of the aforementioned 2017 Topps #287 and more than 5,000 PSA 10s.)

This set also offers numerous refractors and autograph variations that I’d highly consider if you really want to splurge. In 2022, the year he won his first AL MVP award, Judge’s Bowman Chrome DPP Superfractor 1/1 Autograph sold for over $300,000.

More expensive variations and parallels: Refractor, Blue (/99), Green (/75), Gold (/50), Black (/35), Orange (/25), Red Ice (/25), Purple Ice (/10), Orange Ice (/5), Red (/5), Black Ice (1/1), Superfractor (1/1), Printing Plate (1/1)

Note: there is also a mini version of this card that sells for less than the full-sized version. 

2017 Topps Chrome #169 rookie card

First released in 1996, Topps Chrome has lit up collectors eyes’ with shiny metallic cardstock and rainbow refractor parallels. Experienced collectors know that Aaron Judge’s 2017 Topps Chrome #169 is his most popular rookie card.

To go with that high demand, it has the highest PSA 10 population on this list with over 6,500 copies graded in Gem Mint condition (but fewer total PSA-graded examples than the paper #287 at less than 9,000). The Chrome base rookie card is a logical starting point for novice or experienced collectors, but the Refractor or Prism Refractor are solid alternatives for those who prefer more limited parallel cards. PSA 10 sales of the base card are currently around $200 as of this writing.

More expensive variations and parallels: Refractor, Negative Refractor, Pink Refractor, Sepia Refractor, Prism Refractor, X-Fractor, Image Variation, Purple Refractor (/250), Blue Refractor (/150), Green Refractor (/99), Blue Wave Refractor (/75), Gold Refractor (/50), Gold Wave Refractor (/50), Orange Refractor (/25), Red Refractor (/5), Printing Plates (1/1), Superfractor (1/1)

Best high-end (~$500+) Aaron Judge cards

This is a category for collectors looking to acquire the most desired Judge cards on the market. 

2017 Topps Heritage Real One Autographs #AJ rookie card

Topps Heritage is praised as one of the go-to baseball card sets for rookie autographs. One of the major selling points to Aaron Judge’s 2017 Topps Heritage “Real One” Autographs is that his signature is directly on the card. This may seem like no biggie, but “on-card autographs” are highly desired because many of the signatures in modern collecting come in the form of the player signing a sticker, which is then affixed to the card. It’s just not the same as the player signing the card itself.

2017 Topps Heritage Real One Autographs come in two variations: a base card auto in blue ink and a parallel red ink autograph limited to 68 copies (2017 Topps Heritage harkened back to the 1968 Topps set design). The base auto in various grades is currently selling for over $2,000.That said, I wouldn’t consider this the priciest Aaron Judge card on the market, but it has my vote as his best rookie autograph card.

2017 Topps Chrome Sapphire Edition #287 rookie card

Aaron Judge’’s 2017 Topps Chrome Sapphire Edition #287 is his most expensive base rookie card and is also known for its extreme rarity. 2017 Topps Chrome Sapphire Baseball was released as a premium box set featuring 700 blue sapphire chrome cards, five rookie autographs, 13 parallel cards, and two Superfractor 1/1 parallel cards. Back then, Sapphire could only be purchased as an online exclusive and was a limited release of 250 sets — meaning there were only 250 copies of Aaron Judge’s Base Sapphire RC ever produced. A raw version of this card was purchased for $750 in July, while a Gem Mint PSA 10 example sold for $2,500 in August. I consider this the holy grail of Aaron Judge base rookie cards.

Two other cool Aaron Judge Cards

2021 and 2022 Panini Absolute Kaboom!

Topps has the exclusive MLB trading card license, meaning they are the only card manufacturer that can print Major League team names and logos on their trading cards. Unlicensed cards, like those produced by Panini for baseball, generally garner lower collector interest, but some cards can overcome their unofficial status with an eye-catching design and that’s the case with the Kaboom! inserts. Even more highly sought-after in Panini’s NFL and NBA sets, where they do have league licenses (for the time being), Kaboom! cards have become some of the most popular inserts of the modern era thanks in part to their relative scarcity and comic-book style design. Judge was featured in both the 2021 and 2022 Kaboom! checklists and it’s a perfect fit for a player who has become synonymous with hitting home runs.

2021 Topps Now Field of Dreams Game Autograph and Corn Stalk Relic

In 2021, the Yankees and White Sox played a regular season game at the filming site for the 1989 baseball classic “Field of Dreams.” Judge hit two homers into the cornfield in that game and to mark the occasion, Topps Now — a print-on-demand product used to quickly commemorate milestones and significant performances — produced an autographed Judge card that also featured an MLB authenticated “game-used corn stalk.” Cards featuring pieces of memorabilia have become commonplace in the hobby, but the game-used corn stalk is an unusual one.

Getting the best price

Prices for a certain trading card can vary wildly and fluctuate quickly, making it important to check recent sales of a given card to make sure you’re buying at a fair value. You can check recent sales of an item on eBay by selecting the “sold items” filter on search results. You can also run a search on 130point.com, which is a free site that provides sales data from a number of online marketplaces. There are also several apps that provide more in-depth sales data, often charging subscription fees for full access.

To account for outliers, it’s important to take multiple previous sales into account, not just the single most recent. It’s also important to note the recency of those sales and any real-world factors that could affect changes in value.

Why you should trust us

As a second-generation collector (thanks to his dad’s lifelong passion for sports collectibles),  Tyler Holzhammer started collecting cards and attending the National Sports Collectors Convention at 10 years old. He’s continued his passion as a collector into a career, providing sports card content and market analysis for companies like Sports Card Investor and Goldin Auctions. Tyler’s sports card collection is centered around players from his favorite teams, the Los Angeles Rams and the St. Louis Cardinals.

How we selected these cards

We utilize marketplace research databases that provide sports card analysis and sales information, such as eBay’s Terapeak product research tool and CardLadder. We recommended this list of cards by analyzing the values, sales volume, set popularity, and grading population of over a dozen different Aaron Judge rookie cards, while also incorporating the personal preference of an experienced collector.

The Athletic maintains full editorial independence in all our coverage. When you click or make purchases through our links, we may earn a commission.

Further reading

(Top photo by Sam Hodde/Getty Images; all card images: eBay)

The Miami-Dade Police Department on Monday released officers’ bodycam footage of the incident involving Miami Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill.

Miami-Dade Police Director Stephane V. Daniels said more than an hour of footage was going to be released as part of a commitment to transparency. An investigation into the incident is ongoing, and an officer involved in the situation was placed on “administrative duties.”

The footage starts with police officers pulling up next to Hill’s car and telling him he was speeding. Hill asks how fast he was going but is instructed to pull over.

The officer knocks on the window and Hill tells the officer not to knock on his window like that as he hands over his driver’s license. Hill then tells the officer to give him his ticket and rolls the window back up. The officer demands that Hill keep his window down.

“Keep your window down, or I’m going to get you out of the car. As a matter of fact, get out of the car,” the officer says.

A second officer threatens to break the window.

“We’re not playing this game,” another officer says as the bodycam shows one officer opening the door, reaching into Hill’s car and pulling him out with a third officer’s help.

“Hey Drew, I’m getting arrested Drew,” Hill is heard saying, apparently speaking with his agent, Drew Rosenhaus.

One officer says, “When we tell you to do something, you do it, not what you want but when we tell you. You’re a little f—ing confused.”

Tyreek Hill is shown being taken out of his car. (Miami-Dade Police Department)

DOLPHINS’ TYREEK HILL WAS ‘UNCOOPERATIVE’ DURING DETENTION BEFORE GAME, POLICE UNION SAYS

“Take me to jail, bruh. Do what you got to do,” Hill responds while lying on the ground.

A bystander in a separate vehicle near the incident appears to ask what is happening with Hill. The wide receiver responds, “I didn’t do nothing.”

Officers guided Hill to a sitting position on the curb next to his car. Hill told them he had surgery on his knee as he was going down, and one officer asked if he had surgery on his ears.

Another officer on the scene asks the officer whose bodycam footage was released if he knows the man who is sitting on the ground. The officer on the bodycam says he doesn’t know who he is, and the other officer responds, “That’s one of the Dolphins’ star players.”

The officer wearing the bodycam explains to a superior what happened. In the background, Hill is yelling, “I’m just being a Black man, that’s it.”

Hill was issued traffic citations and left in the passenger seat of his car with Rosenhaus.

Dolphins defensive lineman Calais Campbell then walks up to the scene with his hands up about four minutes into the footage. He is ordered to back away from the scene or that he will be handcuffed as well. Campbell says he wants to know what happened.

Miami Dolphins defensive end Calais Campbell walks up to the scene. (Miami-Dade Police Department)

Campbell was later placed in handcuffs.

The officer who addressed Campbell also spoke to Jonnu Smith, who had pulled over to make sure everything was OK. The officer demanded Smith’s license.

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This was going to be about the search.

It was going to be one of those pieces with an absence at its heart, a kind of magical mystery write-around, Frank Sinatra Has A Cold for the Brazilian football heads.

Sometimes you get the interview. Sometimes you just have to shrug and tell the story without it. A version of the story, anyway.

That is how it was shaping up with Kerlon Moura Souza. It was going to be a long-distance profile, the story of one of the game’s strangest parlour tricks and its creator, told through the hazy prism of memory. I had dug out the videos of the dribble that made him famous and watched them countless times. Maybe it was better this way, I told myself. Nothing ruins a folk tale like interrogating the logic of its plot points.

It wasn’t that I hadn’t tried. No, the trying was going to be a big part of it. The plan was to really ham things up, to make a fruitless and objectively quite dull pursuit sound something like spycraft.

I was going to reference the pleading emails I had sent him across a period of years; the time spent tracking his whereabouts from my bedroom; the Instagram messages to his personal and business accounts; the hopeful enquiry to one of his employers. All of which yielded a grand total of… nada. A big old nothing sandwich with a side of radio silence.

As time went on, I often imagined what the title might be. ‘The Hunt for the Seal Dribbler’, perhaps. Or, if that oblique reference to his trademark move didn’t cut it with my editor, something a little more on-the-nose. ‘Kerlon: An Unrequited Love Story’ would have worked just fine.

Earlier this year, I decided the moment had come. Enough waiting, enough frustration. I was going to do it, going to write the piece, going to finally tick it off my list and forget about it.

Then I found him.

Once upon a time, there was a boy. The boy was a talented footballer. He was nippy, skilful and strong. People thought he was going to be a star one day. In many cases, that is as far as the fable goes. It is normally enough to suck people in.

This particular boy, though, also had something else. He had a special move, an invention all of his own. He could make the ball stick to his forehead. He could flick it up and just… keep it there, gravity be damned. It went with him wherever he went. He could run, even change direction, and still it stayed there, just above his eyeline, a little round pet.

Some people loved the boy, loved his trick. It was fun and it was funny in the way that unusual things can be. If anyone had thought to do it before, they had given up long before showing it off. But the boy wasn’t embarrassed and he wasn’t scared. He did the trick even when he knew it would end in tears, even after it had begun to turn strangers into enemies.

The trick made the boy famous. It also made him a target.

The kids are leaving when I arrive. They shuffle off with their parents into cars and trucks, exhausted but happy. Day two of their week-long summer football camp is over.

It is just after midday in Hemby Bridge, a commuter town just southeast of Charlotte, North Carolina. The air is hot and heavy with moisture; my T-shirt begins to stick to my back soon after I step out of the taxi. It doesn’t help that I am jogging, frantically plotting a path to the rear of the local elementary school, trying to get to the sports pitches before Kerlon leaves.

He is not expecting me. I don’t know what to expect of him.

As I approach across the grass, a man is packing the last bag of footballs into the boot of his car. He wears a bucket hat and a black training shirt. He is tanned and stocky, facial hair cropped into a neat goatee. It’s him.

I shout out his name. A grin spreads across his face.

He is gracious and friendly. He says he has lunch planned with his family, but that he will talk if I come back tomorrow, bright and early, before training. I tell him he has a deal.

Kerlon was famous before he had even played first-team football. It was an inevitability: the trick — first dusted off at youth level for Cruzeiro, then for Brazil’s under-17 side — was always destined to make waves.

For one thing, it was just so odd, so wilfully off-kilter. There are a thousand ways to dribble past an opponent, but until Kerlon came along, they pretty much all involved the feet. To watch him set off on a run, ball bobbling up and down on his brow, was to be forced to resolve what instinctively felt like a category error. Little wonder that defenders did not seem to know what to do with him in the early days; it’s hard to counteract something you can barely even understand.

The element of surprise did not last. This was the mid-2000s, probably slightly too early for the trick to be called a viral sensation, but clips of it soon started doing the rounds. One, originally posted on YouTube in December 2005, has been watched over 3.7million times since. The seal dribble, people called the move, a name that conjured colourful circus images. Kerlon swiftly became O Foquinha — The Little Seal — and it wasn’t long before his club were selling seal toys, looking to cash in on his name.

There was more to Kerlon’s game than his trademark move. He was top scorer for Brazil at the South American Under-17 Championship in Venezuela, outshining future senior internationals Marcelo, Renato Augusto and Anderson. The title of another popular YouTube video compared him to Ronaldinho and while that was certainly on the generous side, Kerlon could be similarly effervescent on his day. He could hurt opposition teams with his passing, with his finishing and with his dead-ball ability. Still, everything always came back to the dribble.

Brazil went loopy for Kerlon’s dribble in a way that maybe only Brazil could. This was football as improvisational theatre, as streetwise problem-solving and, above all, as unrefined play. The seal dribble was experimental, naive curiosity supercharged by technique. It was ludic and it was ludicrous — not the thing itself, necessarily, although it did have a certain came-up-with-this-after-six-beers energy. No, the ludicrous part was that Kerlon would do it in actual matches.

He did it in the South American Championship against Colombia and Uruguay. Later, he did it for Cruzeiro in a local derby, sparking a mass brawl and a moral panic. But we’ll get to that later.

Kerlon performing his signature skill (AP Photo/Ana Maria Otero)

Beneath trees that sway in the morning breeze, Kerlon gets as comfy as the wooden bench will allow. We’re a little behind schedule — training starts in 20 minutes — so there is no great preamble, no backlift. Slowly but confidently, Kerlon just launches into the story of the trick that changed his life.

“When I was a very young kid, I would train a lot with my dad,” he says. “Just us two. One day he kicked the ball up high for me. It bounced on the floor and came up to my head. I did four or five little headers in a row, keeping the ball up. My dad stopped. He asked, ‘If you ran with the ball on your head like that, would it be a free kick?’. I said that I didn’t know but that we should find out. My dad looked up the rules and saw that it was legal. There was no issue with it.”

Kerlon’s father, Silvino, asked him to keep practising the move. At first, he would do it on the spot. Later, he tried it while walking in a straight line. “Then I would keep it up while running and finally I did it with cones, dribbling around them like they were opposition players,” explains Kerlon. “We worked on it every day in order to perfect it. It was a real process.”

When Kerlon had nailed the technique, Silvino began to think about how his son might use it in games. He bought a book on peripheral vision and incorporated that into the training regime, the idea being that Kerlon would be able to see opponents approaching even when he had the ball up high.

“It was the product of great dedication on his part,” says Kerlon. “It was easy for me to keep the ball up, but he worked out how it would work on the pitch. The strategy was all his.”

Kerlon was 13 when he first did the trick around other people. He had just joined Cruzeiro and was playing in midfield in an academy match.

“At one point, the opposition goalkeeper took a goal kick and it was just like it was in training with my dad,” he says. “My dad would hit the ball long and I would control it on my chest, lifting it into the air. The same happened in the game and off I went. The other kids just stopped. I kept going and kept going, from the middle of the field to the edge of the box. When I got to the penalty spot, I brought the ball down and scored. It was all so automatic.”

It was also proof of concept. Now that Kerlon and Silvino knew that the dribble could work, they doubled down on it. Kerlon kept practising the trick and often brought it out in matches — although never, he insists, just for the sake of it. He strongly rejects the notion that the seal dribble was some kind of gimmick.

“I think it was a solution I had available to me, a way of getting out of a tricky situation,” he says. “I never walked out onto the field planning to do it. It was just something that would happen naturally.”

It was predictable that certain people would come to view the move as a provocation. Dribbling is a blood sport at the best of times; this felt to some like an attempt to humiliate. At youth level, Kerlon would get tripped and kicked. By the time he was playing with adults, the worst challenges had started to look quite a lot like sucker punches.

Case in point: the Belo Horizonte derby in September 2007. Cruzeiro were beating Atletico Mineiro 4-3 with 10 minutes to play when Kerlon — a second-half substitute — flicked the ball onto his head following a short corner.

One, two, three touches later, Atletico full-back Coelho came along and shoulder-charged him into another dimension, making Kerlon’s head snap back with the impact. It was an awful, cynical challenge. A few seconds later, as players from both sides piled in, the scene looked like something from a martial arts movie.

The incident provoked a good deal of hand-wringing on both sides. Many thought Kerlon — the victim, by any sensible measure — was somehow to blame for the rough treatment.

“In the future, he could miss a lot of football,” said Atletico’s coach, Emerson Leao. “Maybe one day he does that, gets kicked in the face and never plays again.”

Luiz Alberto, the captain of rival club Fluminense, was even more explicit: “It’s disrespectful to his opponents. They are professionals, too. He wouldn’t get past me. I would use capoeira (an Afro-Brazilian martial art) moves if I had to. I would take the ball, his head and everything else.”

Kerlon, at least, was able to defend himself with eloquence beyond his years. “Fans go to the stadium to see a spectacle,” he said. “We need to decide what the main idea of Brazilian football is — art or violence.”

(AP Photo/Fernando Llano)

His advocates included, bizarrely, Atletico midfielder Maicosuel, as well as a number of readers of Placar magazine. “It brings people to the stadium in the same way Garrincha’s feints once did,” read one message of support, published on the letters page. “No-holds-barred fighters like that troglodyte Coelho must be punished.”

The best part of two decades later, Kerlon sees the funny side of it all. He says he realised early on that the seal dribble would be divisive.

“There was a lot of support for me in the youth sides,” he says, “but at senior level, even my own team-mates thought I shouldn’t do it. They would say I was asking for trouble. I had a few issues with the older ones. They really didn’t like it.”

What about his opponents? Did their violence get to him? Kerlon laughs. “No,” he says. “I liked it. When you love to play with freedom, when you love to dribble and beat your man, it feels good to get kicked. As long as you don’t get injured, it’s brilliant. It’s not a bad thing. It drives you on.

“You see that the other guy is pissed off with you, but you do it anyway because it’s part of your game. I think that’s cool. Look at Neymar. He feels good when he beats his man and gets fouled, when he can be a bit dramatic. That’s part of the Brazilian style.”

When it came to his coaches, some were more open to the trick than others. “A few of them thought it was unnecessary; others thought it put our team at risk,” he says. “I was always clear that I would never do the move in my own penalty area. I said I would only do it near the opposition box, where we might win a dangerous free kick or a penalty. The idea was to come up with something for the team, not for me.”

Even when he did get the green light, other issues emerged. Kerlon says one manager asked him to do the seal dribble straight from kick-off. “This is when I was playing for Sliema Wanderers in Malta,” he says. “The coach wanted Rafael Ledesma, the other Brazilian on the team, to flick the ball up for me as soon as the referee started the match. He explained this in a team talk before a match. All the other players just looked at me, as if to say, ‘Really?’.

“I said, ‘How am I going to do that? I’ll have 11 opposition players in front of me. What’s the point? What chance do I have?’. He said that I could win us a free kick. In the end, I told Ledesma to flick the ball up and I’d give it a go. But it was impossible. I took a couple of touches and then the other team just smashed into me. I injured my leg and had to go off. I didn’t even make it out of the centre circle.”

It is here that the other strand of Kerlon’s story — the diminishing returns, the gradual tumble down the slopes of the football pyramid — comes into focus.

(AP Photo/Fernando Llano)

The tide of early fanfare carried Kerlon to Italy — he moved to Inter Milan via Chievo and was represented by the late super agent Mino Raiola — but not much further. He never played a competitive match for Inter or for Ajax during a loan stint there. His next full-time employers were Fujieda MYFC in Japan. There was a fleeting spell in the U.S. with Miami Dade FC. After a handful of games in Malta and a few more in Slovakia, he retired in 2017, aged 29.

It would be easy to glance at that confounding CV and assume that Kerlon was never actually that good — that the seal dribble had written cheques that the rest of his game couldn’t cash. There may be a degree of truth to that, but the reality is that his body never allowed him to fully test the limits of his ability.

There were six ACL injuries — two of them while he was still in his teens — and a pair of serious ankle problems. Each one slowed him down. It was impossible to build up any semblance of momentum.

“I gradually lost my love for football,” he says. “After every surgery, I took six or seven months to fully recover. When I came back, it was hard to keep up, physically. Then I’d get injured again. I looked at other players and they would run up and down constantly. I tried to keep up but some muscle would go and I’d be out for three weeks.”

He endured it for as long as he could, but there was a limit. “Everything hurt by the end,” he says. “It was so bad. It wasn’t that I didn’t love football. It was that I didn’t want to be in pain anymore. That’s why I stopped.”

There is no bitterness in Kerlon’s voice. It helps that he is content with life in the U.S., his home for the last few years. He first moved to Connecticut, seeking job opportunities he felt were lacking in Brazil, then came down to North Carolina during the Covid pandemic. His family is happy and work is good: he is the technical director of the local soccer school and also puts on private sessions. “I love being involved in the game,” he says. “It’s what I know best.”

The American kids have a vague sense of his story, he says, but don’t get too excited by it. The relative anonymity suits him fine. He is happy with his legacy and has no huge desire to burnish it. He has done a couple of short interviews with Brazilian websites since retiring, but he ignores most requests. He got enough attention in those early years to last a lifetime.

“Today, I prefer a quiet life,” he says. “People tell me I have to get my name out there. No. The story is already there and people do remember. Whenever a player does a little header to himself in a game, commentators in Brazil start talking about me. ‘The Little Seal! Remember Kerlon?’. People do remember.”

I don’t mention all the messages and emails. It is always a little uncomfortable when your interviewee details his or her aversion to interviews. Perhaps sensing this, Kerlon explains why he agreed to talk.

“When you came here to find me, I felt proud,” he says. “Look at us here now: you’re from England and you found me, hidden away here. Do you understand? Look how far my dribble travelled.

“If you had just called me, I would have said I wasn’t interested. But you found me. Thank you for coming. This was nice.”

The first boys and girls are now making their way onto the training pitch. A couple look over, quizzically. I thank Kerlon for his time; he poses for a couple of photos.

There is, however, one more question. I don’t know how he’ll react to it, but I feel obliged to ask it anyway.

Can he still do the seal dribble now?

He smiles. “Easy,” he says, grabbing a ball. He throws it to me and asks me to kick it to him at chest height.

A second or two later, he’s running across the turf, his old partner in crime dancing on his forehead, the decades and the injuries and all of it fading away until only the gentle tap-tap-tap of leather on skin remains.

(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)