Collecting Autographs

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Back in junior high school our afternoons were dominated by a hobby that we were introduced to by our gym teacher:

Collecting autographs of sports stars.

The process was easy:

We would cut out some photos of our favorite stars and send a self-addressed stamped envelope to the player in the care of the team he was playing for.

A few weeks later:

Bam!

Autographs!

I have Wilt, Mays, Aaron, DiMaggio, Staubach, Gretzky, Sayers and on and on and on.

I’m not sure what might ever become of my massive collection - my boys will inherit - but it is impressive.

And all of this came to be because getting an autograph is now a big business.

Pete Rose goes down to Cooperstown each year and signs a photo for $100 or so.

A lot of players flat out refuse to sign because collectors make big money selling them.

Most fans would rather get a picture with a celebrity than get an autograph.

My favorite autographs are:

1). Wilt Chamberlain - he never signed. I sent him a pack of photos every week, care of the Lakers. They all came back - unsigned. I finally wrote him a letter, placing a dollar in the envelope, promising he could keep the Buck if he signed my photo. He didn’t. But he signed the dollar!

2). Joe DiMaggio - there was a story going around that Joe D. only signed half of his requests - his sister signed the other half - you could tell the difference because his sis put a tail on the O at the end.

My Joe D. signed photo doesn’t have a tail.

3). Mickey Mantle - my buddy Al got me a personalized autograph of the Mick as he signed at a furniture store. I was too chicken shit to go. It’s a great signature.

3). Wayne Gretzky - the story was that the Great One signed every 99th request. We all sent a lot of letters to Edmonton.

My package of photos was picked - Gretzky signed a half dozen photos for me - I traded five of them for some great stuff.

4). Sugar Ray Leonard - I thought it would be funny to send Sugar Ray a photo of him being punched - Roberto Duran’s fist is in the photo, making direct contact with Sugar’s jaw.

The signature was perfect and he added a single word:

“Ow!”

5). Reggie Jackson - Reggie was awesome in ‘77 & ‘78 - just so charismatic and led the Yankees to two titles.

His photo is great and the signature is neat.

Years later, I met some famous people at book signings.

I’ve met a number of sports stars.

It wouldn’t occur to me - as a grown man - to ask someone to sign something for me - unless it was for a youngster.

My boys have met some of the current Bills players - they have photos of them - I don’t believe they asked for an autograph…

…but some day…a long time from now…someone is going to unearth my photo albums filled with signatures.

They won’t have any indication of how innocent a time it was.

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