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Posted By: Dan McCarthy

One of the best memories of my childhood was when the All-Star game was in Boston in '99 and my dad took me to the FanFest. As a nine year old, I was completely awestruck by the vast amount of baseball things going on in a single place. Even then I was an avid baseball card collector (with a cache of 1999 Topps cards squirreled away somewhere in my room), and there was a free autograph signing that I knew I wanted to go to. The newspaper had published who was going to be there during the FanFest but not when they were appearing, so in order to be prepared for all circumstances I had my mom bring me to the (now out of business) baseball card store and I bought whatever cheap cards I could conjure of the players slated to be there. Though the line was very long, I had some packs to open and was thrilled when the Topps rep started handing out preview cards of the brand new 1999 Topps Tek cards (the ultimate in "shiny stuff!!!"), so I kept busy. When we finally got to the front of the line, we got autographs from:

Enos Slaughter
Carl Yastrzemski
Don Larsen
Don Schwall
And a few others that I forget (all the signed stuff is at home and I'm at school so I can't check).

Despite the Hall of Famers, the best ballplayer we met was Maury Wills. I handed him his 1981 Fleer managerial card and he burst out laughing; admittedly, it isn't the most flattering photo. We talked about his card for a moment and he joked about his poor managerial record, and then we talked about his stolen bases a little and he offered to take a picture with me -- I think he was amazed that a little kid knew who he was. He struck me as an incredibly kind and genuine man, and the photo of us is still on my shelf of baseball memorabilia.