Only two baseball players.
Brooks Robinson, at a Sports Illustrated hospitality room in 1976. Really great, held up the line to talk baseball a bit. When someone complained he told them somewhat loudly "I'm talking to the kid about baseball! You can wait" I think he stretched to conversation a bit.
Bob Feller. He pitched a homerun contest between games of a minor league doubleheader - I think maybe 74 or 75? Afterwards he came up in the stands and signed as much as you wanted, he had probably a couple thousand 8 1/2 x11 printed picture sheets. Most of the kids made paper planes out of them. When I asked if that bugged him he said it was ok because they were kids. Since I was hanging around he asked about little league, and spent most of an inning talking about pitching, and what the pitchers in the game were doing.
The Russian rider at the 73 ISDT who signed by having a pen attachment molded into his arm cast was amazing, even without much interaction. Language barrier, just finshed 6-8 hours riding mostly challenging off-road trails with his arm in a cast, day 3 or four I think, and I'm not sure just when he'd injured the arm. And the first thing he did heading out of the motorcycle impound/pits was have the mechanic bring the pen and put it into the cast.
Steve B
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