Quote:
Originally Posted by Exhibitman
I sat next to Eddie Murray on a flight back to LA from the National in 2019 and that is basically the story he told me. The promoters bring them in the day before signing, put them up for one night, then fly them home the next day. They report for duty early in the day to sign mail order and the promoters stuff. It is part reunion with former teammates and fellow HOFers but mostly it is wading through several large stacks of mail order items and stock photos. Then they go onstage at the pavilion and sign their live signings, then they can leave. He opts to go home immediately. I told him about the NSCC from the collector's side: show, dinner party, bar, bed, repeat. I then started running material and jokes about collectors for him. He cracks up and tells me that I should be a comedian. When I tell him I do stand-up on the side, he says that when he first saw me he thought I was Brian Posehn but when I said I was a lawyer he thought I might take it the wrong way, so he didn't mention it. He then was asking me about where I'm from, what I do, etc. I even invited him to the Burbank Comedy Festival where I was going to be performing. At the end he offered me a handshake.
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Eddie is very cool. I bumped into him outside Chantilly one time and had to share the fact that he is the answer to my favorite trivia question as he is the only player in baseball history to lead the entire Majors in batting and yet not win his league batting title.
Willie McGee was hitting .335 in 1990 when he was traded to Oakland where he hit .272 the rest of the year for a total of .324. Eddie batted .331. However McGee had enough at bats in the NL to qualify for the batting crown beating Eddie by 4 points. The AL leader that year was George Brett at.329. So Eddie led the Majors in hitting at .331 with no batting title to show for it.
He listened to the whole thing (which I can't believe he didn't already know) and smiled and said "I bet you win a lot of bar bets with that"