When the Hobby Was a Job...
 

Ahhh...the good old days! This is a picture of a 13-year old me napping at a 1982 Oakland A's game. I had it rough back then. Wake up, eat breakfast and head to the visiting team hotel to get autographs, then head over to the game to try and get more autographs and game used equipment. That was pretty much my non-school life between the ages of 12-14. I pretty much lived at the Oakland Coliseum going to A's and Warriors games and during football season we would go to the Oakland Raiders training camp from time to time to get autographs before they moved to L.A. When the A's were out of town me and my buddy would catch Bart or bus over to San Francisco and hang out at the NL visiting teams hotel and get autographs too.

I guess I must have been tired from trying to get autographs that day when a photographer for the San Francisco Examiner took this photo of me on July 3, 1982 and it ran in the paper on July 5th. I finally scanned a copy of it today in the Microfilm Library on campus where I work. I remember when I woke up the photographer asked me my name. I never actually saw the photo in the paper back then. When I was older, I always thought the photo was taken during the 1983 season so when I looked for it before I could never find it and always thought maybe they didn't use it. It finally dawned on me to check 1982 and there it was. Almost 36 years later and I was a little upset that they misspelled my nickname in the caption!

I looked up the photographer who took it and he turned out to be a Pulitzer Prize award winning photographer, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Komenich, not for this photo unfortunately!

Dewey

That's very cool!

Thanks for sharing

Bill

That is awesome! Great picture.

I've always wished I could make my love for collecting a full time job, like I'm sure a lot of you have wished also. My only problem is I would want to probably keep most of what I pick up, lol.

Mike

Cool pic and story.

Awesome. I remember trying to be an autograph hound at the same age down in socal. The 12 year old me got snubbed by Dale Murphy outside the hotel as they were loading the bus to get to Jack Murphy Stadium. Still bitter. Just kidding. :)

Haha! I have nothing but good memories from my autograph hound days although there were a number of snubs.

This is my Dale Murphy memory. We were at the hotel one day getting autographs and I asked him if it would be possible to get a bat and he said sure. I went to the Braves/Giants game that evening, got his attention after BP and he reached into the bat rack and handed me a bat and signed it.

Great story
 

Thanks for sharing Dewey. I enjoyed reading it.

Great story and great picture. It's like someone saved a moment of your life for you look at later.