As always there are always more good guys than bad guys ,but you really only hear about the bad guys. It is the nature of our hobby and unfortunately our world!
My personal great experiences out weigh the bad 100 to 1 in my collecting lifetime.

Addie Joss was a little gruff, but not nearly as surly as Pud Galvin. Man, those were the days.

Warren Spahn left something to be desired. Very few actually made a great positive memory.

Where's the darned 'like' button on this site??

Were they together at the Coaches Corner signing last week?

Kevin Maas was also very nice.

You should've been with me when I graphed the Declaration of Independence signing. Ben Franklin was surprisingly generous. On the downside, Charles Carroll insisted on adding 'of Carrolton' to everything and John Hancock always took up half the page.

Joe DiMaggio signed items for me and a number of others in a hotel lobby in 1986 when he was in DC for the Cracker Jack Old Timer's game. He was pleasant to everyone.

Frank Howard definitely the nicest former player I've ever met.

I posted this a while back but thought I would share it again. When Tacoma was the Twins AAA affiliate I played whiffle ball with Lyman Bostock in the parking lot of Cheney Stadium. I was 11 and he was very friendly and left a lasting impression. I was crushed when he was murdered.

Although it is not a baseball story it is still fun nonetheless. I took my son to an Oakland A’s spring training game about eleven years ago. During the game Mohammed Ali made a surprise appearance. When he entered the ball park you could hear a pin drop. It was surreal. The game stopped and the players applauded him.

The crowd chanted Ali, Ali! He sat a few rows away from us and an autograph line quickly formed. He signed between innings. Those in line knelt to avoid obstructing the view of others during the game. My son asked why people were kneeling. My wife smiled and told him you do that before royalty. I told my son that this was an autograph opportunity he should not miss. At that time he was painfully timid but with a bit of coaxing he stood in line by himself for two innings. When it was his turn to receive an autograph play resumed forcing him to kneel and wait. Ali looked over at him and motioned to him. My son approached Ali rather nervously. He told my son to sit next to him in a vacant seat. He then opened a bag and pulled out a large oatmeal cookie broke it in half and handed half to my son. He sat with Ali eating that cookie for a half inning. At the end of the inning Ali smiled at him and threw a quick jab his way. He then signed the autograph and thanked my son for sitting with him.

When we returned home my shy son shocked us with the announcement that he wanted to be a boxer. My wife and I cringed but he was persistent so we relented. He boxed for a few years and although he was an average boxer the sport changed him in a positive manner. He became assertive, disciplined, and extremely confident. He is in law school and has grown into a young man I am very proud of. I have to attribute some of that to boxing and his fifteen minutes with Ali.

Great story, Mike! Well told and the picture almost puts you in the moment.

Speaking of nice guys, I have never met him but have always heard Bob Feller was great at shows. Any Feller tales?

One day in Spring Training in Winter Haven my friend and I were outside the Indians minor league clubhouse. We were the only two around because the big league team was away and only the minor leaguers were there. A car pulled up to the curb and an old man popped out. He walked by and asked how we were doing, then talked about what a nice day it was for baseball. It wasn't until he walked into the clubhouse that we realized it was Feller. We just didn't expect a HOFer to drive up in a Cutlass and walk around like he wasn't anything special. He came back out a few minutes later and happily signed three or four cards for each of us. We talked for another few minutes and he wished us well and drove away.

Another instance with Feller was at a AAA game where he had been brought in to sign. Standing in line about 30 people back, and realized we were standing FOREVER. When we got to the front of the line we quickly realized what was taking so long. Feller would talk about every image on every card and photo that he was signing, telling us where the picture was taken and different facts about that season or even that day. I truly believe that he remembered every single thing that happened throughout his remarkable career. He took as much time as anyone wanted, saying he was in no rush and would stay until the lights turned off if he had to in order to accommodate everyone.

Feller was a truly first class man in every sense of the word.

My dad grew up near Cleveland and as a kid all I heard about was Bob Feller and Larry Doby. I too had a couple of really nice experiences with Feller. I never met a man who enjoyed being himself more than Bob Feller. He was a class act from a generation that knew many. Although his generation is silently fading away that man lived out loud. What a life! The man was pitching and dominating in the majors at age 17. He was toeing the rubber at Municipal Stadium when his peers were playing high school ball. If his teenage years played out in front of today's media and cable sports TV can you imagine the stir he would have caused? Just thinking of such a precocious talent makes me smile and shake my head in disbelief.

Outstanding. :D

+1 I couldn't agree more :)

The Declaration of Independence is one thing, but good luck trying to get Ben to sign a kite unless you are a middle-aged woman who would appreciate Ben's technique. The guy thinks he's Willie Mays or something. ;)

I was at a PawSox game some years ago where Johnny Pesky and Frank Malzone were signing. They were only supposed to be there for an hour or so. If you haven't been to McCoy Stadium, they have a giant spiral ramp that is about 3-4 stories tall. The line wound around that entire thing and spilled out for some distance into the parking lot below. As my luck would have it, I was almost the last person in line, and everyone was fretting that Pesky and Malzone would be gone before we got through. I found out later from talking to one of the security guards that when Pesky was told how long the line was, he just smiled and said he didn't mind. Sure enough, three hours later, when I finally got up to the top, those two were still there smiling and joking with the fans. He was 88 at the time, and his hand must have hurt like the dickens after all that signing but he never let it show.

HA!!!!!

Since this has turned into a good guy thread I thought I would share a story I just heard from a work college the other day.

His name is Glen ans was born and raised in western Mass. for ten years before his father was transferred to South Carolina. He still remained a huge Red Sox fan and when he graduated from high school in the mid 80's his parents gave him a trip to Boston which included tickets to a three game series and hotel accomidations for the duration. His favorite player was Wade Boggs who was on a tear at the time.

While during his stay at the hotel he was hanging out in the lobby waiting for his friends to meet up with him. Glen didn't know this was the same hotel Boggs was staying at during the season. Boggs walked through the lobby and was talking to the front desk person when he noticed my friend starring at him. Boggs smiled and said hello. Glen was speechless and finally stammered "Do you know who you are?"

Boggs laughed and shook his hand and said it was nice to meet him. Glen quickly told him why he was there and couldn't believe he got to meet him. Boggs asked if he wanted an autograph. He said yes but couldn't find anything to have him sign. Boggs said to wait right there, retreated to his room and quickly returned with a 83 Topps rookie card. He signed it and gave it to him.


Boggs then asked if he wanted a picture taken with him to remember the day. He said yes so Boggs asked if the front desk person wouldn't mind snapping a photo with him and "my new friend Glen".

After hearing so many horror stories of people meeting thier heroes and having them turn the moment into regret I was happy to hear such a happy and lasting encounter.

Drew

thanks for sharing that story - shows how athletes can have a substantial impact on the thoughts, beliefs and lives of the kids who follow them. it's a shame that many athletes (old and young alike) take that for granted.

Great Feller stories, Derek and Mike! Thanks for sharing.

Good one about Boggs, too, Drew.

I waited in line for 2 hours for him to sign my copy of Poor Richard's Almanac. He was a bit cranky and gratuitously added an inscription so raunchy I wouldn't post it on a family friendly forum. I won't post it here either. :D

The impact of meeting a hero is huge. Not just athletes, but entertainers as well.

+1 It's almost a year that he has been gone. Like Jr. Seau, he should still be with us and family.

Was running a baseball concession stand in smalltown indiana and someone told me they saw a guy who looked like Ali there the night before. Did not think much about it until the next day I saw a team banner from Mich that had a kid on its roster named ali. Looked in the parking lot and saw a huge motor home with plates that said "champ" . So taking a chance knocked on door and a lady answered and said it was indeed champs RV and he was napping and if I come back in a hour or so he would be glad to sign something for me. He signed a really nice baseball for me and about 20 other people. Nice guy the 2 times I met him!!! There was a teenage girl in line who had a white square purse and he drew a boxing ring and a stick figure of himsel and frazier on it with frazier laying on the ground and his eyes were xx. I remembered how cool it was to watch him draw that I hope she still has it.

WOW:eek: Ali sharing a cookie with your son and how it helped shape his life is one of the best autograph stories I have ever read. Thank you for sharing.

Oh my! Tried to get him one time after an A's game, he put his huge arm around me and said he had to get to the bus...got on the bus, must have found out they weren't leaving right away...then actually came back out off the bus and signed for everyone, but did mine first!

Huge man, huge heart.

Absolutely. There are countless stories about how generous he has been by spending time with fans. As has been stated about a couple of other players on this thread, autograph lines for Hondo move slowly because he enjoys taking his time talking with fans.

I don't do autographs often at all, I think maybe about eight total in person.

But they've all been really good. A couple were average because of the show setup or the size of the crowd. Orr, Rice, Evans.

The others have all been great

Especially Feller.
Dad took me to see him pitch a home run derby between games of a AAA doubleheader. Pretty amazing since he was a bit older, late 50's and still had a lot of speed.
During the second game he came out into the stands with a big stack of printed pictures with some career highlights on the back and started signing them. Being a bit shy I hung back and was one of the last lids in line. Got a couple pictures and a scrap of paper for dads autograph album. He asked if I played and what position. When I said I wanted to pitch but my league didn't allow pitching if you were over 12 (They went to being T ball a year or two after I became too old.) He started explaining what the pitcher in the game was doing and why apparently the guy in the game had some speed but not great even for the mid 70's so he mixed his pitches a lot. during all this kids kept coming up for more pictures but they were making paper planes out of them! I asked if that bothered him and he said "they're kids, it's what they do" I must have been there about two innings getting a lesson in pitching from one of the best before he said it was fun talking but he had to leave. That never really sunk in until I was telling someone about it maybe 20 years later.
It didn't help my pitching, which was hampered by a serious lack of raw talent, but it did very much improve my understanding of the game.

Brooks Robinson was also fantastic.

The other two really good ones were Neil Gaiman, and Chris Hadfield (Graphic novel author and Astronaut respectively)
Hadfields book signing schedule was pretty insane, having already done one about 3 hours away earlier in the day but he gave a nice talk answered questions and was really pleasant. We had a nice exchange since the two books I was getting were for my daughters and he remarked that the names didn't seem like mine. I mentioned them and that one of the great things was having made a part for the space station and being able to watch it go over with them and telling them that light was a spaceship that daddy made a piece of. Nowhere near as cool as going there, but as close as I'll likely ever get. I was surprised that after so long a day he asked what piece and when I told him he apologized for not recalling it. When I said I wasn't surprised because they had thousands of bits of equipment he just smiled and said yes we do.

Steve B

All apologies for bringing this thread back to the negative experiences, but did you tell him that the only reason you bought a ticket was because you asked him, and he specifically told you that he would personalize the photo?

Time was very tight by this time and I didn't have the opportunity to debate the issue. I did appeal to the promoter to no avail. The only thing I could do in the future was to contact the promoter of a show in advance to see if a particular signer would personalize. This save me a lot of grief later, especially with Don Drysdale, and it helped with Warren Spahn.

I also have an Ali story, actually two part, but only part of it pertains to this thread. Many, many years ago at a Tri-Star show in Houston I was set up, and Ali among all of the biggest names in all genre's of sports was signing. First part of the story I walk into the restroom and could not figure out why it was so quiet(this was pre 2000 and the show was packed), I look next to me and I am side by side with Ali. I walk out and his security detail are freaked out how I am in the room when it was supposed to be closed and Ali only. It had a double entrance and I happened to come it at the exact time they shut it down. So long story short I pee'd next to Muhammad Ali. Now for the real point of this post, there were probably 5-6 HOFers from various sports signing on the main stage all at one time, Bobby announced that Muhammad Ali would be taking the stage to sign, you could have heard a pin drop and the most impressive show of respect occured, Joe Namath who was signing, abruptly stopped his signing, stood up and led the crown in a standing ovation for Ali.

Another signing story, a bad signing
 

Although I don't collect autographs( the only one's I used to were Maris and Nellie Fox, no idea why), I used to do a lot of shows. One of the worst signing reactions I observed was at a small local show where a lot of Negro leaguers were signing(I think Dennis Biddle organized them), included many stars of the 1940 and 1950's. Also signing were a few ex MLer's mostly HOFers. So they announce the arrival of the Negro leaguers, they walk in a nice procession, the dealers and crowd all stands, claps and gives them their due. Gibson is seated at a table signing, does not get up, never even looks up, many of the honored Negro league signers were less than impressed and declared without them, he would not be setting where he was signing for much more than they. I believe they were signing for free, but paid by the promoter, where as Gibson was getting carte blanche, first class accommodations and getting paid to sign.

I am presuming you are referring to Bob Gibson?

yes, Bob Gibson.

Bob Gibson was prickish when I met him, but he did signed as I wanted.

Bob Gibson
 

Around 2004 at a Cardinals spring training game in Jupiter, FL., Bob Gibson came over to some fans along the right field foul line to sign some autographs. I was second in line and had his '59 Topps rookie card ready. When he saw it, he flat out refused to sign it. His reasoning when I asked him was 'that's card show stuff' (He wanted the $$). Was it that big of a deal?

he told me, "I don't write books"

I remember when I was a kid Bob Gibson came to White Plains. It was the same show as Tom Seaver. Seaver, like I said, invited me behind the table, asked me my name and took a nice photo with me. Even though Bob gave me a pretty solid autograph, the photo of me and Bob is of me standing on one side of the table while Bob stares at the floor.

I was never into having a photo taken with a player. All I want is a personalized autographed photo, and then I am out of there!

No longer into it now but I was only 10 or 11 years old at the time. Plus this was before camera phones, so documenting things had a little more meaning behind them.