After Game 3 of the 2013 World Series ended with an obstruction call, I knew I needed a ball about it. I wrote a heartfelt letter about how I used Jim Joyce’s actions a few years ago on how he admitted a mistake and handled it with class to teach Caden the right way to react to a mistake and sent it to him with a request to write his memory of the call on the ball. Today I received the ball and my donation back to give to his current favorite charity (my son’s piggy bank) and a real nice note. The note actually means more to me than the baseball. On the baseball he signed it and wrote the following quote:
“May the hand of a friend always be near.”
He was my favorite umpire before this and his actions solidified his standing in my eyes. Thanks Mr Joyce!
Category: Baseballs
The Exceptional Mr Elliott!
I always love a mail day after a holiday. I get two days worth of mail. Even better is when the holiday is a Monday as yesterday was. Today’s mail day fit the bill!
Back in August I emailed Mr Bob Elliott asking him if he would be willing to autograph a baseball along with “2012 J G Taylor Spink Award” and if he had a charity of choice. He replied he would be delighted to and his donations go to the Professional Baseball Scouts Foundation. I mailed it off and received it today. We have emailed a couple times in the meantime and I found him to be very receptive and kind. In fact, in one reply he told me that he had signed 100’s of baseballs and my package was the most organized of all. I am guessing it was because I provided an envelope already addressed to the charity with all it needing was postage from Canada. I included cash for return postage as well as the postage to mail the donation and he returned it and paid the postage himself. I am very excited to add Mr Elliott’s autograph to my collection and to have the interaction I had with him. Thank you Mr Elliott!
Also in today’s mail was an envelope with two autographed cards I bought from Mickey’s Sports Cards. They both had real nice blue ink signatures on them. They were a 1968 Bob Allison and a 1967 Zoilo Versalles.
Dandy Dave!
Today’s mail brought a really cool baseball. I was watching MLB tv a couple weeks ago and they had on some great Divisional Series games from the past and one of them was from Game 4 of the 2003 NLDS. They played the audio of Dave O’Brien calling the game and the exciting finish when a collision between Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez and JT Snow at home plate ended the game. Pudge hung on to the ball after getting hammered by Snow. It was a great ending. Not only did Mr O’Brien write his call on the ball but also returned my donation to him and wrote a note thanking me for “bringing back one amazing memory”. Not too many times the signer is as happy as the recipient but this might just be the case here! THANK YOU Dave!
#5,000 is History!
About a month ago I received a baseball from Eric Nadel where he wrote his call of Jurickson Profar’s first career walk off home run. In my note to him, I asked if he would be willing to do a call ball of Nolan Ryan’s 5,000th career strikeout and he said yes. I immediately mailed a baseball and donation to him and today I received it back signed perfectly! He wrote his call from 8/22/1989 when Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan struck out Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson for #5,000! Thank you Eric!