Best Autographs You Ever Got

When I was a kid I went to the Long Beach Grand Prix every year -- back in the late 70s, when it was still an F1 race. After practice I hopped the wall, walked down pit row and got autographs from Niki Lauda and Mario Andretti. I also went through the garage and got a few others -- including my all-time favorite driver, Emerson Fittipaldi. 30 years later that's one's still in a frame with a poster of his car, hanging on my 9-year old son's wall. (His middle name is Emerson, by the way.) The ink has faded over time but you can still read the signature if you look close.

These days it's almost impossible to catch a glimpse of an F1 driver out of the car. It's funny to think back 30 years when I could hop a two foot barricade and walk up to Niki Lauda on pit lane. He was eating an orange, leaning on a pole next to his car.

I should find my old autograph collection. It's heavy on F1 drivers, NASL players and LA Dodgers of the late 70s.

 

Mike Bielecki signed a ball for me before a game when I was 12 or 13. Bob Kipper was a Rated Rookie, Sammy Khalifa was a starting shortstop on a major league team and Bielecki was part of a Pirates rotation that looked to 400-pound Don Robinson as a key to the season. I had a broken arm at the time and Bielecki put "Get well soon, we might be needing you."

 

Being a Steelers fan, I was enamored as a kid with getting autographs of players from the '70s Super Bowl teams. I found this book full of addresses at the library and wrote a bunch of letters. I still have a big autographed photo of Terry Bradshaw... an old photo from a game, which is pretty cool. And I developed a pretty neat correspondence with Rocky Bleier, who is a war vet and former Steelers RB. I think I still have about six or seven hand-written letters from him, each several pages long, and several autographed cards from the 70s.

After covering plenty of asshole college and pro athletes upon getting into journalism, I now realize what a class act Rocky was for being pen pals with a star struck little kid.

 

I'm a Cleveland Browns fan.

As a kid, they would sometimes spend a couple summer days training with the Giants near where I grew up. I'd spend all day, every day at training camp watching the Browns. I must have gotten autographs from the entire team. The best, though, was having my picture taken with Clay Matthews. I sent it to him, and he returned it signed.

 

1999 International at Castle Pines

Ernie Els--my God, this man is a monster.........
Craig Stadler--hilarious
Nick Price---Very, very nice man
Dennis Paulson---Hands like a grizzly bear
Davis Love III---also, very nice man---taller than he looks

story about the last one......On our way to the car park.....someone looks around and says, "hey, there's Elway"---he had annonuced his retirement not long before, so ElwayMania was going berzerk in Colorado.......So, I politely go up, and ask him for his autograph, and he politely signs my Titleist hat........his wife, who is 1. three sheets to the wind, and 2. is a raging, three-dollar whore--starts screaming at us......."Why can't you people just leave us alone? We just try to come out here to a golf tournament, and you people start bugging my husband for his autograph?" Elway looks at her, mouths the words..."SHUT THE FUCK UP".....and into the limo they go.

 

Arnold Palmer, Lee Trevino and some PGA Tour rookie named Watson from Kansas City on the same pairings sheet from the 1972 then-Danny Thomas Memphis Open.

Also got a bunch of others that day: Charles Coody, Mike Hill, Dave Stockton, Tom Shaw I know for sure.

 

I used to stake out the stadiums when I was a kid and got virtually every major-leaguer doing so in the late 1980s.

One of my biggest gets, as it turns out, was on Opening Day 1989 when I skipped school and totally raked by getting three Ruben Sierras, who at the time was an MVP candidate. I was all excited about it and walking back to my normal hangout spot when I see commissioner Bart Giamatti walking into the stadium. I had an extra unsigned baseball, so I ran up to him and got him. Great guy. Of course, he died within the year. I still have the ball, which is perfectly signed. It's worth some mucho dinero from what I understand.

Best autograph-related story is from when my best buddy back at that time got into promoting card shows. At one of his biggest he brought in Hank Aaron, who of course was a MAJOR draw. I got to sit pick many of these players up at the airport, sit next to them, take tickets, hand them the right pens with which to sign, etc. Pretty heady stuff for a 20-year-old kid. Well, by the time Aaron got in the place was PACKED. He wound up signing for three straight hours, over 1,500 autographs. I sat next to him the whole time, taking tickets, handing him pens, showing him where to sign stuff and so forth.

It was so busy I never even really got a chance to speak with him, but clearly I was in awe. So finally the session ends and he walks to the office of this convention hall with his agent and my buddy to get paid. I come along and as Aaron's leaving the building he motions for me to follow him outside to where his car was waiting. I follow and watch as he opens the door, reaches in for something and then turns around and comes back to me. He sticks his hand out to shake mine and of course I do the same. As I shake it I notice he's handing me a folded up $100 bill!!! He says, 'Thanks a lot for your help.' I'm like, 'Uh, Mr. Aaron, it was my pleasure. No need to tip me.' He says, 'No, you earned it. Thanks again.' And heads to his car.

My buddy nearly shit a brick, as did I. Know what I did with that $100? Ran out and bought a Sega Genesis later that night. DOH!!! At least I still have it, though, and even play it to this day. Thanks, Hank!!!

 

Walter Payton

Met him in the garage area at a small-time road race a few years after he retired from the NFL. Very nice guy. He signed my staff pass after I helped him take the hood off his car.

Dan Jenkins

He spoke at a dinner I attended several years ago and I managed to work up the courage to ask him to autograph a copy of "You Gotta Play Hurt".

Babe Ruth

I have a baseball on the shelf in my office at home signed by the Babe. Obviously I didn't get the autograph myself. It was given to me by my grandfather when I was a kid and I have no idea how he got it. I had the ball appraised a few years ago and was told that is more than likely authentic.

 

Sir Edmund Hillary.

 

Ballgame.

 

I went to a Harlem Globetrotters game and, at halftime, I got Curly O'Neil, Goose and all of that bunch to sign. I don't know what happened to that. But my wife has a Harlem Globetrotters hat with many of the same names. Small world, I guess.

My dad went to a little festival years ago and brought home an autographed glossy of Little Jimmy Dickens, of may the bird of paradise fly up your nose fame, or infamy.

 

Wayne Gretzky. He was at a charity golf tournament on the course that bordered our house at the time. A crowd of neighbourhood kids gathered at my house, and he pulled his golf cart over — far away from the fairway and politely signed everything we had.

He was very classy, and I think I can still pinpoint where his tire tracks were, even if they're long, long gone. He had a hell of a nice drive on that hole too, for anyone wondering.