Tatis
 

What's with Fernando Tatis Jr's autograph. He signs Tatis first. is the second word supposed to be Jr, or Fernando?

I find myself asking this question about so many ball players nowadays, it goes along with most of America I think. Cursive is seldom taught in schools, handwriting ain't what it used to be.

Ronald Acuna has a terrible signature, Trout's is awful, you would think the best player in baseball would take pride in his autograph. Juan Soto's is decent, at least it looks like he tried. Mookie's as well isn't too bad. Harper is a coinflip, as sometimes his auto on baseball's looks great and other times it looks terrible.

Gone are the days where you had guys like Mantle, Dimaggio, Williams, Koufax, etc who took pride in the pieces they signed. Their signatures were works of art in comparison to what we get today. Hell even in the past 20 years the quality I feel like has dipped on these younger ballplayers signatures. Griffey has a great auto, Bonds is pretty solid, Jeter has a nice one too.

Penmanship on the whole is on the decline. Yes this has been my old man yells at cloud rant. :D

A lot of guys on the board say that but years ago I posted a "Show YOUR Autograph" thread in the autograph forum. Guess what most of the members signatures were like?

I agree with 99% of what you said, although I will make an exception for Trout. I think his signature has two things going for it:

-While it's not a readable "name", it is a recognizable, stylized initialization that normally also includes his jersey number. When you see the MT27, you know it's Trout and it has a bit of flair to it.

-Trout is known as a very generous signer, and we all know autograph seeking is far beyond the level it was in the '40s-'50s. That makes Trout's "one stroke of the pen" signature easy to quickly sign for many people, in less-than-ideal environments. And they can still (usually) tell it's a Mike Trout autograph.

My two cents.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...4c1bbaeeb3.jpg

Let's not forget Babe Ruth; the proxies who signed many of the infinite number of Ruth balls out there were meticulous. :D:eek:

And they are most likely still signing strong but with no mention of a proxy. At least with a trimmed card you still have a card!

As for penmanship, forget about it. Those days are unfortunately behind us for all but the more senior of members (me included of course).
I think in my area they just started teaching cursive again in public schools. It's a bit of a head scratcher why they would take it out in the first place, at least to me. Signs of the times. And I don't have to like them ... LOL
.

All very valid points. I think I have more of an issue with how his signature looks on the signings he does for money. I remember seeing to get a ball with his full name on it, was something like 800 dollars. Which honestly I wouldn't mind paying, but it looks no neater than his normal one. Probably just a personal gripe on my part.

It is very nice though, that he takes time to sign for his fans, not many ballplayers do anymore.

I've seen the full name signatures on a ball before. I don't blame you, it would be hard to pay the huge premium for that.

It's "Fdo"

Same as many Fernando Valenzuela autographs.....he signed Fdo Valenzuela.

Steve

When I first started collecting cards again, I was just astonished by how many single signed Ruth balls were available for sale. Literally endless supply.

Thanks Steve. That I would have never guessed.