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!

Don’t Harp On Me!

Today Brian Harper was in town to sign autographs at the HarMar Mall.  I have been waiting a while to get something signed that I would have been unable to send to someone or a show via the mail so this was my perfect opportunity.

A number of years ago the Twins held a “Garage Sale” of sorts at the Metrodome.  It was before the move to Target Field and they basically offered for sale anything extra from the Dome as well as a ton of leftover stadium give away items.  I went there and picked up a couple really cool things.  One was a banner than hung on the street poles around the Dome with the 40th Anniversary team logo signed by Kirby Puckett.  I have since traded that banner but another cool thing I bought was one of those pictures that were printed on plexiglass that hung in the concourse with a light behind it.  The one I bought featured Brian Harper and Rick Aguilera shaking hands after either Game 1 or Game 2 of the 1991 World Series.  I got Aggie to sign it at one of the Friday Night Alumni Nights the Twins had at the Dome.  He thought it was pretty neat back then so I was excited to see what Harper thought of it.  Brian spotted it while signing the person’s items in line in front of me and kept looking at it.  When it was my turn and put it on the table, he looked and said “That was after Game 6!” and I told him Game 6 was a walkoff and he said “Oh you’re right.  Aggie got the win in 6.  It must have been Game 1 or 2.  All those games were close so he was in ’em all!”  He signed it with “World Champs ’91′”.  It turned out AWESOME!  I am really pleased with it!  I then handed him my 1991 Sports Illustrated and said he must have signed a million of those in his life and he said he has one of those framed in his home.

I then walked over and bought a 2013 Topps Update card set and some singles to finish my set and headed home.  What a great feeling to have finished something I bought around a decade ago!

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