Please sign Mr Jeter - NY Times article about collecting Jeter in Fla

[Exhibitman]

The instructions for getting a signature sound like the Soup Nazi's ordering ritual.

Now this is more like it:

"Tyler Austin, one of the organization’s top prospects, always makes himself available — an easy decision, he said. He recalled attending a Chattanooga Lookouts minor league game as an 8-year-old and positioning himself for postgame autographs by moving down the right-field line, just past a gate that led to the team’s locker room. A couple of players stopped. Many more did not. “I remember it vividly,” said Austin, an outfielder who has hit .331 in the minors. “My mom looked at me and said, ‘One day you’re going to be there, and I swear if I ever see you walk by anybody and not sign a thing for them, I will come and personally slap you right across the face.’ ” "

So someone sells the 'graph, so what? A guy like Jeter makes $200,000,000.00+ over a career and he's miffed that some shmuck ekes out a living selling signatures? What, is the guy taking money out of Jeter's pocket? Taking away a business opp? No and no. And if that was the case, Jeter could simply be polite about it and make a blanket announcement or deal with it like a gentleman. Cary Grant did not sign autographs but he was unfailingly nice to the people who asked. Ringo Starr until relatively recenty signed TTM and when he decided to quit he made a video about it and posted it all over the place just to alert fans not to send him more stuff. Derek Jeter is bigger than a Beatle?!?! Bigger than Ali, as Travis pointed out? There was a recent story about George Clooney in a restaurant in Europe where he thought that his party might have been too loud so he surreptitiously picked up the dinner tab for the table next to his. It's called "class" and Jeter and the rest of the A-hole Brigade don't have it and never will.

The real bottom line about Jeter and the rest of them is what the late boxing broadcaster Nick Charles said was his philosophy: "Judge a man by how he treats someone who can do nothing for him."