Great story, David. No price you could ever put on that signed ball.
I used to wait at that very same clubhouse door after every game I attended back in the fifties with my game scorecard to get as many Yankee and visiting team autographs as I could. The Yanks would walk to the curb to be whisked away in a cab or by their wives and we kids would mob them in the thirty seconds or a minute we had. The visiting ALers would generally go off in a bus. When Mantle exited the clubhouse a small brigade of NYPD would form out of nowhere into a modified flying wedge, a cab would materialize at the curb and he would vanish in seconds amidst the kids squealing "Mickey, Mickey". Had all the Yankees but never got Mantle's sig. Wish I could go back to 1957 for a day with a digital camera. Great memories.
|