Early signatures of HOF players
 

After reading Eric's cool post on the Derek Jeter signed Little League ball that is going up for sale, I got the idea that it might be a neat idea to start a thread that allowed us to show EARLY autographs of HOF players.

I'll start things off with a Nolan Ryan signed newspaper photo that appeared in The Sporting News in 1967 while he played for the Jacksonville Suns in the minor leagues. Nolan was 20 years old when he signed this. He briefly played for the NY Mets at the end of 1966 (2 games) prior to beginning his 1967 season in Jacksonville. His true rookie season in MLB was 1968.

Please share some of your early HOF sigs with us. I'm curious to see what others have in their collections.

Note: BTW, I previously posted a photo of an initialed Nolan Ryan newspaper receipt from 1967. It has since been determined that this was likely initialed by his dad Lynn Nolan Ryan, Sr.
Many thanks to the board member that weighed in on this. ;)

My kind of thread. This postcard was mailed by a 20 year old Walter Johnson on June 19, 1908 during his second major league season. He talks about beating the Tigers the day before.


http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m...psf959772d.jpg

Ryan's initials from when he was a kid look like a typical player signature today.

John,
Read my edit to my original post above, but it appears that the Ryan paper route receipt was likely signed by Nolan's father, not Nolan the HOF pitcher.

I've weighed in on your WaJo postcard before, but I think this is one of the most unique Walter items that I've ever seen. Love it! :)

here is an autograph of Cal Ripken Jr. @ 17, less than two weeks after he graduated from High School (was able to determine the date from the roster):

http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k1...8Bluefield.jpg