[Howe’s Hunter]

At one time I was trying to get autographed baseballs of players I met in person. Bob Gibson had a charity golf tournament every year in Omaha and quite a few former players would be there year after year. One year, Robin Roberts was there and was one of the few players who went along with Gibson’s request that only the official program be signed and nothing else. When I approached him, Roberts said to contact his website, run by his son and he would send a baseball. I did, and several months passed with no ball. Contacted again and got a reply that they weren’t doing that much anymore, if I wanted a pre-signed ball I could order one at a new price list they had online. Ordered a ball with just the signature and waited. By this time almost a year had gone by and I called the number in the website. Who answered the phone but Robin. He said he remembered my request at the tournament and had a few choice words for the kid they had hired to run the website. He took my name and address and said he’d make it right. Less than a week later I had a ball with a signature, a HoF inscription, a Sporting News player of the year inscription ... in total there were twelve inscriptions on the ball. It was covered with every award he had ever won. With the sig and HoF inscription on the sweet spot. Way beyond what he would have had to do to make me a happy guy.