February 28th was a day for me that I would never forget, it was my grandfathers birthday. He passed away in 2003, and I’ll never forget him. Unfortunately another event happened on the same day last year that the card world, not the sports card world, but the collectible card game world lost a giant figure that I considered one of my best friends.
Barron Vangor Toth designed and lived for the WWF Raw Deal Collectible Card game. I met him right before the Backlash expansion launched for Raw Deal. This set had a new character that I was looking forward to use and learn playing the game. ou see Barron was a huge fan of the character my friend Michael Manna played in the WWE in the Right to Censor. He had followed Michael since his days in ECW and was one of his biggest fans. I met Barron at Knights Quest in Gardner, MA. I had know idea really who I was looking for, but when I went in to the store to look for him and asked where he was people just told me “You’ll know who it is when you see him!”
Well I went to the back of the store and met Barron for the first time. He was quite the person to be around. He stood around 6’8″ I believe, but he was as kind a person that I have ever met. After this day he became one of my closest friends, we would talk wrestling, designing the game, and just about our everyday lives.
I would travel to card tournaments with Barron, and even roomed with him at two Wrestlemania’s. I was one of the few who could easily sleep through his snoring! He was always there for me to talk to, and I spent hours on the phone with him commuting back and forth to broadcast school.
But I will never forget the opportunity I was able to present him with one summer afternoon. I was going to visit Michael aka Stevie, and told him about how Barron had made him really over powered in the game, and how he would do everything he could to get Stevie on cards. So Barron, Stevie and I spent a day hanging out at the StevieCorp compound in Wallingford, CT. I was able to help Barron hang out with one of his all time favorite wrestlers, and if you knew how much Barron loved wrestling, that was a huge deal.
But overtime I slowed on playing Raw Deal and didn’t talk to Barron as much as I had before. But everytime we talked it was like no time had passed and we were right back like we had been hanging out and talking the day before. Last January, I told him that he was one of my friends that I was disappointed that we didn’t talk as much, but said to him “You are one of those friends that I will always be able to let time pass and pick right up like we had talked the day before no matter what.”. That was the last thing I ever said to him
But on February 28th last year I got the news that Barron had been battling cancer for the last year plus. We didn’t talk a lot in that time period not just due to me, but he had been undergoing cancer treatments the whole time. He passed away one year ago today, and I wanted to put something up to remember him through the channel that I have to communicate with people. Too often someone who is well known passes away and people make a huge deal of it right away, but it fades over time. Barron was a huge deal to the CCG world and the poker world. But he was a bigger deal to me, he was my friend, one of my closest friends and not a day goes by that I do not miss him.
God bless you Barron. I miss you man.
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