favorite thru the mail autographs

[egri]

I have a couple favorites:

Bobby Doerr was my first TTM success, when I was in fifth grade. I was so excited to be writing to a former Red Sox player that I didn’t include a SASE, which I found out later was a major pet peeve of his. Fortunately, he was kind enough to address one himself. That got me started on the Teammates era Red Sox, and baseball history in general.

Wayne Terwilliger was one of the first players I wrote to when I started my 1953 Topps project. I mentioned that one of my neighbors had served in the Marines during Vietnam (Twig was at Saipan, Tinian and Iwo Jima). He wrote back “Semper Fi to your neighbor, and tell him thanks for his service”.

I was one of the last people Al Dark signed for. I sent his 1949 Bowman card to him in late September 2014, and it came back a couple weeks later with my SASE stamped “Unable to sign/Thank you for understanding”. Surprisingly, he had signed it, albeit very shakily. About a month later, he died. It was thoughtful of him to keep signing as long as he did.