Let's see some pics from signings in the 80's and 90's
 

After mr2686's post of Ted Williams signing in the Williams/Martin thread, it peaked my curiosity whether anyone else has pics of HOFers signing from the 80's/90's? Post away...

Here's a couple more. First one is my favorite of the Mick...couldn't get the smile off of my face for a month. The second is of Dimaggio which I got in 91.

JimStinson
 

Stinson and Boxer Roberto Duran taken a century ago
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JimStinson
 

Bill Terry & I at his home in Jacksonville. Always had an open invitation to drop by whenever I was in Jacksonville. Spoke on the phone with him for over an hour on his last birthday on earth. A fine fellow.
One story he told me that stuck in my mind in talking about the old time ball players Bill told me Ty Cobb was the perfect gentleman, competitive on the field and a gentleman off of it. Told me he never even saw Cobb cuss around women, and was always polite to collectors and fans. By contrast he said that Shoeless Joe Jackson was "trash" hardly worth discussing and deserved everything he got.

Jim...

Would love to hear more about the Bill Terry stories! What year was that picture taken??

Also, the above picture of Mantle has me asking: Was that the ONLY shirt that guy owned in the '80's?? STG I've seen other signings where he's wearing that exact shirt....

C'mon Andrew, don't ya know that that was Mantle's "signing" shirt? :D
I'm surprised the card companies didn't cut it up and put it out in packs of cards.
You can't really see on that picture, but all the way to the right was Whitey Ford. I remember the line to get autographs started forming about 30 minutes ahead of time (this was at a fairly large hotel and had about 15 HOF'ers signing). After 2.5 hours of no Mantle or Ford, one of the collectors in line told me that he was staying at the hotel and was in the bar the night before when Mantle and Ford came in and they didn't leave until it closed. I guess those 10am signings were a bit early after a night of drinking. Of course, that story always seemed funny until he later admitted his alcoholism and of course his medical problems.
That picture of Bill Terry is fantastic. I got back in to the hobby just a few months before he died and never got the chance to meet him. I was able to get a signed ball from a private signing and was saddened when he passed just a few months later.

JimStinson
 

The picture was taken around 1987. Terry and I talked about alot of things but some that stand out in my mind., he had huge hands and one heck of a handshake, physically very strong despite his age.
We talked alot about his career. he told me "I played my entire career on one leg" I asked him what he meant and he said that prior to his being called up to the majors he was chasing a pop up at first and stepped on a piece of line chalk the size of a golfball and twisted and injured his knee. he said it never healed correctly and hurt almost all the time, he was proud of having been the last National Leaguer to hit over .400 in a season. He hated John McGraw and said that he and Mrs Terry used to talk evening walks and would cross paths with Mrs McGraw and her husband doing the same thing , and the ladies would exchange greetings , He would say hello to Mrs McGraw and McGraw would say hello to Mrs Terry both neither of them would exchange a word (smile). He loved Mel Ott like a son and said he was one of the finest human beings you could ever meet on or off the baseball field. Hubbell too. He liked Lou Gehrig and said that Gehrig was a big strong 225 pounder most of his career and when he saw him right before he died he weighed less than 150 pounds. Said that Babe Ruth was a like a "big overgrown kid" , he hated sportwriters and said most of what they wrote was "bunk". He used to say he liked talking about baseball with me because "I knew what I was talking about" which to me was pretty flattering. His house was always filled with hundreds of sharpie pens and he would laugh that when collectors sent him mail for his autograph they would send pens too, he would ask me "Do you think I need anymore pens?". As a joke for his birthday I bought him a gold pen with his name engraved on it and told him "just in case you run out". Right before he died we spoke on the phone and I had just seen the movie "Eight Men out" , which was in the theatres I asked him if he wanted me to take him to see it when I was in Jacksonville (he didn;t drive much he had a 10 year old car in the garage with 5,000 miles on it...hahaha) he said all those baseball movies are "bunk", that they make up based on the lies the sportwriters told over and over. I told him that it appeared mostly factual about the series and he said "If they say Jackson wasn't in on it, its bunk", he said "Being too stupid to know right from wrong is no excuse" We talked about other stuff too of course but alot of it would not be appropriate for this board.

Mike, Jim,

Great stories! I love reading stuff like that. Jim, the fact that you got that insight about McGraw, Joe Jackson, Ty Cobb is incredible....

Mike...good point about the card companies getting their hands on Mantle's signing shirt!

I could sit here and read Jim's stories all day.

+1

Wait until you go out with him for a beer :D:D.

Years ago my son would help me out at my table at baseball card shows and promoters gave table holders free autographs. (yes they did).
My son would get on the autograph line and I would take a Polaroid shot of him with the guest signer. We would then get the shot signed.
Here are two of my favorites.

Great pictures, Richard!

JimStinson
 

Richard those are GREAT pictures ! reminds me why I love this hobby/business so much !

Priceless photos, Richard. Truly awesome!!

in my 10 yrs on the board, jim is my favorite poster. and he's only been here for a couple weeks.

+1

How awesome would it be to go see a baseball movie with a Hall of Famer? Particularly one that has guys he knew in it. Great story.

A few more HOFers with my son.
Now the kid works for ESPN, co hosts an ESPN podcast, writes for the ESPN NY blog, is one of the stat gurus there, and is the in house "Mets historian" at the network. Wonder where he got his baseball interest from :). And he also has thousands of twitter followers.
And he also was sitting next to me at the Robin Ventura grand slam single game :).
He also was sitting next to me at Game 5 of the 2000 WS :(:(.

McGwire '87 and '96

The Hammer, Yaz, Van DerMeer and Joe D.

My word... is DiMaggio actually smiling?!?

:D

yeah! and thats a killer 11 x 14 they are getting signed! very unique!

He saw somebody picking up his restaurant check so he smiled.

JimStinson
 

Thats funny ! Joe would not even have known what a restaurant check LOOKED like if it bit him in the arse (smile), In the book they said that restaurant's actually PAID HIM to eat there. My guess is that he is smiling because he sees the item is "oversized" as is about to ask for FOUR times his normal signing fee.
Icon or no icon he was cheap. A show promoter told me that when he would book him for a show DiMaggio would insist that first class airfare be included in the deal. Then when he got his ticket Joe would exchange the ticket for coach and pocket the difference. Then when he arrived to catch his "coach" flight the airlines would always "bump" him to 1st class because he was Joe Dimaggio. Clever guy!

LOL, thats great. I've heard stories like that. Actually he probably was smiling because I was one of the last guys in line and he was just about done. The funny part of the story was the whole time I was in line everyone kept saying how ornery he was. Don't take a flash photo, don't ask him about Marilyn, don't say this or that, don't, don't, don't. When I got up there all I really wanted was to get a good photo with me shaking his hand. So as he was signing my ball I said, "hey Joe do you mind if I get a picture with you?" He stopped dead, looked me up and down and said, "sure come on around." The whole time I was there I saw no one even try to get in the same shot with him, let alone get to walk behind the table! I was really happy! So the resulting shot is my icon photo...

Those pictures are PRICELESS Richard!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I had one of the first SX-70's Poloroid when I was a kid. I would take players pictures on the field (Dodger Stadium 1974-5) and on Sundays when they set up for autographs on every level. Many times the players would want to see them develop before their eyes. (Andy Messerschmidt and Garvey). They are all in a photo album somewhere. I have to look through them and post them sometime.

I remember those autograph Sundays at Dodger stadium. You'd get in line and hope it went quick so that you could run to the next one...or bypass it if it was a coach so that you could find a player. I was so mad when I got Walt Alston and Jim Gilliam, that is until I grew up and realized they were part of the 55 Dodgers. :D

Two very solid pieces for a collection today!:D

Here's a pic from my favorite signing circa 1993/1994. I've met a ton of HOF'ers in different sports over the years, celebrities in other fields, Presidents, etc, but Ali has been my favorite. I met him on a few different occasions from a couple different card shows, to bumping into him at Notre Dame a time or two. My favorite time was meeting him at this show in Dallas. While waiting to meet him, they had video monitors up playing highlights of his legendary boxing career with sound bytes. I signed up for a photo op, so that was first. When I first met him, I was kind of sad as he moved pretty slow and talked real soft, however, he was a showman when we were taking pictures, and we took a couple different poses, much different than the hurried photo ops that the promoters push you through today. One of the poses was him punching me on the chin and me looking like I was recoiling in pain, very cool. One thing I asked him was how it felt to be "The Greatest". He smiled and bent down in my ear and spoke in classic Ali, "It feels good", very neat moment for me. This is my autographed photo from that photo op:

http://i9.tinypic.com/4mj8qv9.jpg

After the photo op, we had to wait in another line to get autographs on our other items. As I approached in line, I would watch him sign and move pretty slow, but every now and then, a young kid would approach and Ali would throw out several fast shadow punches, or do a magic trick or something. Very cool and highly entertaining. I got up there to get my glove signed, and he signed it "Muhammad Ali AKA Cassius Clay" for me, and then he stood up in front of me, started leaning toward me, and he started writing on my chest. He was autographing the shirt you see me wearing in the picture above while I was wearing it (you can't see it in the pic as it wasn't signed for the photo op) very cool experience.

1986 We met Ali at a signing where he did two items for me. He picked up my youngest boy and kissed him on the cheek but I didnt get the photo. Greatest of all time, what a thrill.

Don Newcombe and me, from a day I got to spend at Dodgers Stadium with Newk.

http://photos.imageevent.com/exhibit...damandnewk.jpg

One of the cards I had him sign, from 1955 of course:

http://photos.imageevent.com/exhibit...ombe%202_1.jpg

Me and Manny Mota, same day:

http://photos.imageevent.com/exhibit...nny%20Mota.JPG

Jim's comment about Cobb always being polite to collectors is definately reflected in all of the letters that I've read that were penned in his own hand.

I've always been intrigued by the contrast of what Cobb was supposedly like in person and the intellegence and demeaner that he brought when he sat down to write a letter.

Aha, Mike- there you are! It's nice to finally put a face with your name. :)

Ted in 1996? second 500 HR Club reunion.

I went to so many shows, I wish I was better about getting photos. It's so much easier now... we forget what a pain it could be with film cameras. I have more somewhere, but I have to dig them out and scan them. I have a lot with me and astronauts as well.

Me and Ralph Houk

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...hs/houk_sz.jpg


With Leon Spinks

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2.../spinks_sz.jpg


Yogi signing a ball for Leon.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...and-spinks.jpg

Steve, great shot of you and "The Major."

JimStinson
 

Oh Leon ! Have posted one of my own. Brought back some memories. I had booked him to do a personal appearence in Orlando Florida and he kept missing his flights, finally got him on a plane (smile) and we spent a couple days hanging out during the promotion. Then a couple months later I see him in one of the casinos in Las Vegas before some big fight. So we both say HEY !!! and give each other a big hug and are chatting and a couple drunk guys who must have thought Leon was "giving out hugs", come up to him and said HEY LEON !!! and tried to hug him and he took a step back and got that St Louis "street" look on his face like if they took one more step they would get the opposite of a HUG....was funny to see, guess you had to be there.

Apparently Leon had been watching The Cosby Show according to his sweater. ;)

Great pic, Jim!

Reggie Jackson after signing my 500 HR litho. What you don't see are my buddies that had been in front of me with their lithos. When they got up to have them signed, Reggie was eating a tuna sandwich and was holding it with one hand (over the lithos) and signing with the other. I wish I had a photo of their faces as they worried that a big blop of mayo was going to drop on Mantle or Williams autos.
By the time I got up there he had finished which made me very happy!
They got me back though when one of them asked Willie Mays to add his homerun total under his picture. That pissed off Mays so much (what doesn't?) that he wouldn't even change the color of his sharpie when signing mine.

Photos of baseball signings 1980's and 1990's
 

This one just barely qualifies, but this is a photo of HOF Robin Yount, my good friend Tom Duino (left) and me (right) taken after finishing up a round of golf on The Leatherstocking GC at Cooperstown in July 1999. I played golf in the foursome behind Robin and his brother Larry the day before Yount got inducted into the HOF with Nolan Ryan, George Brett and Orlando Cepeda.

I have a sharpie in my hand because Yount just knocked out an autograph for me on a Leatherstocking GC golf ball. We had a chance to talk with Robin and Larry a few times throughout the day. Robin Yount is truly one of the nicest players that I ever met and he's one hell of a golfer to boot!

Did anyone know that Robin Yount actually considered quitting baseball to persue a career as a PGA pro at one point? One terrific athlete and a great guy with no attitude. :)

Any idea how Larry views his (very brief) time in the big leagues? Must have been awfully tough to get so close (even worse than Moonlight Graham's story)

Back in the 80's and early 90's me and my two partners ran some successful mall shows in the suburbs of Chicago and we would try and bring local athletes in to sign free autographs for the show guests. We tried to bring in some decent names but never brought the current athletes in because we could never afford them as we were giving the autos away.

Here are some of the guests we had. Excuse the pictures as some got really beat up and my scanner really sucks.

1st up is Ray Meyer, head basketball coach of DePaul and a Hall of Famer. Great guy and even asked me what much of his memorabilia collection might be worth. He had every basketball from his milestone wins and he was thinking about selling them.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...s/raymeyer.jpg

Next up is the man that practically raised me. Jack Brickhouse is the voice I always wanted to hear on a summer day because that meant baseball was on WGN television. Jack was the broadcaster for the Cubs for many years and the White Sox as well. I got to spend three hours with him and found out he was so much more than a baseball announcer. He interviewed presidents, queens, kings, popes and just about anyone else in between. The man is a Chicago legend and I am glad I got to know him a bit.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...ards/brick.jpg

The next guest we had was Notre Dame's Heisman trophy winner Johnny Lattner. Johnny came into the mall pushing a shopping cart and was looking for me. After shaking hands I finally realized what he had in the shopping cart....THE Heisman Trophy!! I almost fell down right there. He was one of the best guests we ever had and he let everyone touch the trophy and pose for pictures with it. I have one some where where I was actually holding it but cant find it right now. That thing was heavy. One of the best moments of my life.....sports speaking!!

The photos are beat up and I have to have new copies made. (I am the fat guy on the right!!)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...ds/lattner.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...s/lattner2.jpg

The last one I have pictures of (I have to dig more out) was Dottie Ferguson Key. She was a Rockford Peach and told us she was one of the inspirations for the "Dottie" character that Geena Davis played in League of Their Own. Dottie had an incredible grip and you just knew she would kick your ass if she wanted to. She was the Canadian Skating Champion in the 30's and was due to go to the 1940 Olympics before they were cancelled because of the war. Her husband, Donald Key, who is sitting next to her in this picture was also a Canadian Olympian and a damn fine athlete himself.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...rds/dottie.jpg

I will have to dig out more pictures.

Great Job guys. Cool thread. I got you all beat tho.

From a special kids only section of the signing. c 1996 Pennsylvania. Event was put on by Lee and Scott and Ted and the gang from Coach's corner. Special on site COA's issued by Government secret FBI agent, Chris Moorales.

Did Lou sign right handed?

Seems so:)

Wow Scott! Which kid are you? Also, can Coaches Corner still get a signing set up? I would love for my children to meet Lou. :D

JimStinson
 

Great Photo of Lou !!! Is that a young Richard S. (the kid with the tie) in the photo ??? And I thought I had been around the hobby a long time :)
Unlike the Babe , Rumor has it Lou was not too fond of kids so probably had to be "shoe horned" into that photo opt.
Yes Lou signed Right handed

James,
Forget the kids. I want to meet Lou Gehrig.
I've a whole lot of pictures to get signed.

For a grandma dottie looks like she was at the gun show. she could crush a beer can with her bare mitts.