RIP Tito Francona.

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Sixty years ago, I saw my first major league game, an exhibition between the Cardinals and White Sox in Pensacola, Fla. After the game, I saw other kids gathered around a pair of buses and discovered they were getting autographs from the players. I had nothing with me to sign, so I found a discarded popcorn box, ripped off one side and passed the piece of cardboard through a window of each bus. It came back with two signatures from each bus, Tito Francona and Lu (sic) Aparicio from the White Sox bus and Wally Moon and Phil Clark from the Cardinals. What a coincidence that Francona and Moon should leave us the same week 60 years later. Believe it or not, though I do not collect autographs, I still have that chunk of cardboard.
Bob Rich@rd$on