[whitehse]

Originally Posted by tedzan

Here are a couple of interesting BB player stories at the Willow Grove show.

Featured guest at Willow Grove (circa 1990) was Gus Zernial. I gave Gus his famous 1952 Topps card to sign. Gus asked me.......
" Do you really want me to sign this card, isn't it quite valuable ? "

I told him that I had 4 more of these cards back home. He smiled and autographed it. What impressed me about Gus was....at 67
years old, Gus looked like he could go to the ballpark and hit many more HR's.








Bill Hedin, you'll appreciate this story......

Jimmy Piersall was the guest at Willow Grove in the early 1990's. I was in line to meet him and get his autograph. The guy (dealer)
in front of me presented Jimmy an egg-crate type of box containing 24 balls for Jimmy to sign. Jimmy looks up at him, and asked....
"do I have to sign all of these ?" The dealer responded...."Why yes, I paid for all of them."
Obviously, Jimmy was not that happy about this. Piersall signs the first ball, and reaches over the table and places it in one of the
slots in this 24-slot grid. Then Jim signs the 2nd ball and tosses it into this crate...."swish"....it lands in a slot. Jim appeared quite
pleased with himself. So, as he signed the remaining 22 balls, Jim would toss them into the crate. All the rest of the balls bounced
off the crate, and were rolling all over the floor. Needless to say, the dealer was very "ticked-off".....while Jimmy was laughing.


TED Z

A quick note on Jimmy Piersall.

I promoted shows in suburban Chicago back in the 80's and 90's and since Piersall lived close by I had him signing at a card show one weekend. Piersall had everyone laughing as he was telling stories about his past and about some of the players that he knew and played with. A young girl, about 16 years old came up to him and said she loved playing baseball and softball and asked if he had any advice for her. Piersall looked directly into her eyes and said, "yeah I have advice...stay outta back seats." He signed her autograph, laughed hysterically as she walked away while the rest of us were just stunned that he would say something like that!! I still shake my head at that memory!