Who's the earliest HOF you met in person?

[Santo10Fan]

I used to work at a valet parking lot one block from Wrigley Field. It was a mom and pop operation, just my boss and I would park around 30-40 cars in a grid. When I first started in 2005, he told me Ronnie occasionally would pull in the driveway and he'd fetch him a couple beers from the garage fridge, as we were on Ronnie's way back to the Kennedy expressway.

Sure enough, after one of the games that summer a black, 2004 Chevy Tahoe with full tints pulled over into the driveway and beeped a couple times. My boss immediately began waving and told me to go intercept it with a couple MGD cans out of the fridge. The window rolled down and there was Ron Santo. His setup was quite unique-all the vehicle's controls were on the steering wheel, just like the hand grips on a motorcycle. So imagine driving on cruise control with the brakes and all! He slipped me a sawbuck. I still wish I would have got to interact with him more than the three times I saw him that year. But I think I deduced why he never really came through again.

Much to my horror, I grabbed one of those MGD cans for my walk home one night, cracked it, took a sip and recoiled-it was absolutely disgusting. I checked the expiration date and it was well past one year. I figure it was about 18 months from brewing. I was so embarassed. I had been giving Ron these absolute shit beers. As the years have passed though, there's no doubt. He will always be my favorite vintage Cub-RIP