Best & Worst Experience Meeting An Athlete

[seanofjapan]

Best:

Brett Butler - in 1990 I was among a throng of kids next to the Giants dugout during BP before a game at Olympic Stadium. I gave him my card of him (1990 Donruss) and my sharpie. He signed it, then looked at the card and noticed that my pen was running low on ink and his signature didn't look too good. He said "hold on", walked over to the dugout, grabbed a new pen, signed the card again and gave it to me with a smile on his face, saying "I think you need to get a better pen, this one is running out of ink." It only took about 10 seconds, but he gratuitously gave me those 10 seconds even though he could have walked away and I've always thought the best of him since that. Also I have a cool 1990 Donruss card that has been signed by Brett Butler twice!

Honorable mention: Brooks Robinson was super nice when I got his autograph at a show, letting my friend and i come behind the table to pose for pictures with him and chatting with us a bit and just being an awesome guy.

Worst:
My worst was with Hank Aaron, whose signature I got at the same show Brooks Robinson was at. After the great and personal experience with Brooks, my friend and I (we were both 15 years old at the time) went over to Aaron's table. We weren't allowed to have any interaction with him at all, I was told to give the ball I wanted him to sign to some guy sitting next to Aaron (maybe his agent? Don't know who), who would then give it to Aaron. After Aaron had signed it, he gave it back to the guy sitting next to him without so much as looking up at me, and that guy handed it to me.

It was such an impersonal experience my buddy and I both walked away feeling kind of jilted, especially when we looked at our balls and noticed his signature looked like "Stan Aaron" because of the way he wrote his first name. Also we paid 25$ for his autograph (this was in 1992) and only I think 5 or 10$ for Brooks. We both walked away with diminished opinions of Aaron, but as huge fans of Brooks Robinson. (in fairness I should note that Aaron's table had a much longer line than Brooks' which might explain the different treatment more than any differences in their character, but it still left a bad taste with me!)