Today’s mail brought an envelope with five Hall of Fame postcards in it from Tom O (orr23mj on SCN). Tom was running a Christmas special of five postcards for $100. He happened to have five listed that I did not have and could not pass up the opportunity so I picked up the following:
Dennis Eckersley
Bob Gibson
Juan Marichal
Bill Mazeroski
Don Sutton
I really did not collect these postcards but had quite a few and these will fill the holes nicely.
Category: HOF
The Ryan Express
There are not too many Foundations that do autograph signings as well as Nolan Ryan’s does. I heard via SCN that Nolan was going to have one more signing before Christmas and the deadline was around the end of November. I needed three of his Sports Illustrated magazines signed but found that his first issue was not in as good of shape as I would have liked so I only sent in two. I mailed in the 07.23.1979 and 05.01.1989 issues. (I have since found a real nice version of his first issue to send in next year.) Today I received the two magazines back signed beautifully with the Nolan Ryan hologram on each. They do an awesome job with everything. If you are looking for a Ryan autograph, you cannot go wrong sending in to the Nolan Ryan Foundation!
Also in the mail today was a 4×6 photo of Rudy Guiliani I received in trade with Eric M (erocmace on SCN). It was my first autograph of Mr Guiliani and a nice one at that.
The White Rat!
Today’s mail brought a nice envelope with a pair of items from Whitey Herzog. For the longest time I have had a picture of Whitey and Tom Kelly shaking hands before Game 1 of the 1987 World Series already signed by TK and finally decided to mail it to Whitey along with a HOF Postcard. Both were signed beautifully in blue Sharpie.
Another Nice Mail Day!
Today I received three packages from various people with autographed items in them. One was a box full of baseballs gotten for me at the Arizona Fall League, one was a World Series ticket, and the other a couple photos I traded for.
The baseballs came from Christian B (hheroes10 on SCN) who has gotten me autographs from Arizona Spring Training and Fall League over the past number of years. This group contained:
Jesse Winker
Hunter Dozier
Anthony DeSclafani
Eddie Rosario
DJ Peterson
They were all signed perfectly in blue on the sweetspot just how I like ’em!
A couple weeks I saw where Dan C (scfdff on SCN) was going to a signing with Jim Kaat in New York and was offering to take items. I had a Game 2 of the 1965 World Series ticket I had been wanting to get signed by Jim for a while. I sent it to Dan asking if he would ask Jim if he would write “Complete Game Winner” on the ticket too. Dan emailed me right after the signing and said Jim’s agent was saying no inscriptions but he asked and Jim told him it was such a unique item he would inscribe it. Today I got the ticket and COULD NOT be happier! It turned out AWESOME!
The other package was a tube with a pair of photos. Bryan W (bryanwood on SCN) contacted me about an NFL Duke football I posted on SCN a long time ago for trade. He was going to see someone a couple days later and wanted it for the signing. Since I bought the ball in hopes of having Brett Favre sign it when he was a Viking and it never happened, it was just gathering dust so I looked over his trade items and picked out a couple cool signed pictures. The first picture is an 8×10 of the fight between George Brett and Graig Nettles in the 1977 ALCS signed by both of those guys. I showed it to Caden and we watched the video of it and he wanted that photo so I got that one. The other one I received is a really cool 11×14 of Phil Niekro on the mound in mid-windup about to throw a knuckleball while playing for the Yankees. What makes this photo so cool is there are five inscriptions on the photo all signed in perfect silver paint pen. Cami saw that picture and said she wanted that one.
All in all it was a really nice mail day!