Best & Worst Experience Meeting An Athlete

[50sBaseball]

I have had some great experiences interacting with MLB players.

TED WILLIAMS: As a 13-year old kid at Fenway Park in 1959, I asked Ted if I could take his picture. Kids' cameras back then had two settings: on and off. He was a little further away than I wanted near the batting cage, so I asked him if he could move a little closer. Though he did not do so, he did speak to me and said: "Take the picture, kid, I gotta go hit." I treasure that picture to this day.
In 1999, 40 years later, Ted came to the Chantilly Show to sign autographs in commemoration of his 30-year anniversary of managing the Washington Senators. I had my picture taken with him and shook his hand. He signed a picture of him that I had bought at Fenway Park 40+ years earlier. Ted was not in the best of health then, but I ventured to speak with him, and told him, "Ted, I think that you are the best hitter who ever lived" (which is how he wanted to be remembered). He looked at me and after a moment said in his still booming voice: "why do you think so?" I said: "You hit for average and you hit for power." Perhaps he would have liked to have heard that he never swung at a ball out of the strike zone!

FRANK WHITE: KC Royals 2nd Baseman. Was at a spring training game in Florida with our young sons in, I think, 1979. He signed autographs for the boys, but then stayed a bit and talked with them. Asked them how they liked baseball, etc.
He was super-friendly to them.

1960 MILWAUKEE BRAVES/HANK AARON&CHUCK COTTIER: At a spring training game in Bradenton, Florida between the Braves and Pirates, chased down a foul ball during BP and started to get Braves' autographs. Aaron and a few others were playing Pepper down the third-base line, and their ball came over the chain-link fence and I got it. One of the players said, "hey kid, throw our ball back." I said: "OK if you will sign my ball." And 4 or 5 players signed my ball right there and posed for photos!! Later, I threw my ball over the fence only to have it land on the slanted roof of the dugout. Chuck Cottier, a utility infielder, saw what happened, and suggested to one of my older brothers how to get the ball, and it worked. And then Cottier signed it as well. 3 HOFers signed that ball: Aaron, Mathews and Spahn.