baseball & autographs

As the regular season draws to a close old memories baseball solidify ...

While some people enjoy collecting autographs others believe that the idea is ridiculous. Before I go on I should admit that I belong to the former of the two camps. So, if you believe that the very notion of autographs is absurd then you may want to set this aside and return to your copy of War and Peace or Unsafe at any Speed.

I will begin with a brief anecdote.After eying a George Bell autographed card, handsomely displayed on an unwieldy bookcase in my flat, a dinner guest once scoffed, “What’s the big deal about autographs? Ballplayers are just a bunch of regular people doing a job.” Fixing my attention on the baseball card, #184 in the 1987 Leaf set, I pondered this statement. Silently, I wondered how I could possibly explain what autographs meant to me as a kid. I wanted to articulate to my guest how entertaining George Bell was as a ball player. The image of Bell trying to land a flying kick on Boston Red Sox Bruce Kison in the ‘85 season, after an apparent beanball, for instance, flashed in my mind. Now that was interesting.

But how could I ever quantify the value of that sort of entertainment? My dinner guest was not a baseball fan, so he would certainly not remember the flying kick incident. I considered telling my dinner guest about how Bell wouldn’t sign for me the first few times I met him at the Sheraton Centre but for some reason signed for me the last time I saw him (as though divine forces were somehow involved). I wondered if I could convey the kind of value all of my old autographs held for me. As I think back to that conversation with my guest just a few years ago I can only say now that some people don’t get autographs, just as some people don’t get Monty Python, or Star Trek. It’s a matter of preference.