Mailday 55 Topps Jackie

[Paul S]

Welcome Duane and congrats on a beautiful card. Here's my Jackie story:

In 1970 when I lived in Los Angeles it was announced that the first East-West All Star game was to be played, at what many people then just referred to as Chavez Ravine. The first, and sorry the say the last, Martin Luther King, Jr. East-West All Star Classic (Negro Leagues used to have the North-South games). You can get better details here, and look who were the participants!:

http://baseballhall.mlblogs.com/2013...n-cooperstown/

I was then a mail-away auto collector. I told my dad we have to go to this game. We got great tickets early and so were at field level. The PA announcer (maybe Scully) announces Jackie to the crowd. Jackie is sitting only two sections away , on the aisle. The game begins. I tell my dad, "I gotta get Jackie". I run up the aisle to the top of my section and cross over to his section. There, the usher stops me and won't let me down to him. I go back to my seat. Then, all of the sudden I am cutting across the section that separates us. Believe it or not there were some semi-empty rows so I was leaping back and forth. People were generally very nice and stood up as I repeated, "I want Jackie Robinson's autograph". All of the sudden I am THERE above his left shoulder. "Mr. Robinson, can I have an autograph?" He looked up a took my program, signed it, and never said a word. I walked back up his section aisle and silently past the usher who had initially prevented me down. Went back to my seat and said to my dad, "Look!" He said he had never seen anything that fun and brazen in his life and laughed. I still remember what I was wearing -- blue denim jeans and a blue&yellow Pendleton flannel shirt (believe it or not, Pendletons were cool in those days).

The stuff is scrapbooked now: