Baseball players who aren't friendly signers

[witster]

Originally Posted by Scott Garner

By far the worst autograph signing experience that I ever had was with Albert "Don't call me Joey" Belle.
I had heard that Belle was a notoriously nasty signer. I decided to take him on as a challenge and approached him outside of the Doubletree Hotel in Anaheim, CA in the mid 1990's while he was with Cleveland.
The Doubletree was frequently used by visiting teams that were in town to play the Angels.

I timed it so that I had him one on one out in front of the hotel and politely asked him to sign a ball that I had brought with me. He literally told me to get the f**k away from him and threatened me. Nice! The word is out on what a scumbag he really is these days. No surprise for me...

Ricky Henderson would always tell you that he would sign in the stadium, but would never sign for anyone except for black children in all the times that I watched him.

Randy Johnson was always nasty/surly and would literally growl at people that asked him for his autograph. That and 6' 10" of big ugly unit made for a near impossible autograph. In a paid signing though, he comes off as a decent guy.

Eddie Murray would never sign for me, but he was always very polite in his refusal. On Father's Day he singled me out outside of the stadium and gave me his wrist band with his uniform number on it.

All of your examples were not successful for me, either many years ago. Belle was going thru the Albert/Joey thing. Some players were jerks, while some auto hounds were jerks who made it worse for everyone else out there.
Sandberg wasn't good at signing either.

I imagine a player being in a hurry or dealing with the pressures of playing, just aren't always the right recipe to approach a guy for an autograph. Sometimes, they're just having a bad day. Some guys sign for who they choose to. I suppose that is their right. Witster

[sreader3]

My worst signing experience ever was with Dillon Tate, an early 2015 first round pick of the Rangers who's now in AA in the Yankees organization.

I took my son and my nephew on a Sally League tour in the summer of 2016 and, in advance, bought a few dozen Bowman Chrome cards of highly rated Sally League prospects for them to get signed. One of them was Tate.

We showed up 90 minutes before a game between Tate's team, the Hickory Crawdads, and the Kannapolis Intimidators. Tate isn't even pitching that day, and is soft tossing in shallow right field along the first base line. My son, who is the ONLY person there, politely waits for Tate to finish throwing and then asks him if he can sign the card. Tate says, "I can't help you" and walks off.

What a tool.

[commishbob]

Cardinal pitcher Ray Washburn told my two younger brothers to 'go to hell' when they called out his name from the Astrodome's pavillion seats at a day game way back when. He had just finished his running along the warning track.
I've never forgotten that.

Back when I was in college I had a Dodger fan friend visiting for a LA-Houston series. I took him to the old Shamrock Hilton hotel where most teams stayed in Houston at the time. Davey Lopes came out of the elevator carrying a garment bag with his name emblazoned in two foot tall script and then proceeded to dress my friend down for approaching him with a baseball.

This won't surprise anyone but I worked a show for a promoter friend and watched Willie Mays sign for two hours seemingly without looking up once. Yes, the stories of him rolling the ball he just signed back to the collector are true.

[Sladge34]

I know it's off topic, but on the great side Of autograph collecting... Mr. Aaron Judge signs before almost every Yankee game in the right field ball boy area. Not to mention he throws his warmup balls while playing right field into the stands every time, which is cool, I was lucky enough to catch one during the Alcs last year.. game 5, 4th inning... was offered 500 and still kept the ball

[Johnny630]

All of these horror stories about baseball players make me thankful I only had one in person autograph requests from golfers.... well and one football player. Very Positive!

I was spoiled as a young kid in the early 90’s. I had the great pleasure of meeting and receiving signatures of two of my all time favorite golfers. Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer! After hitting their tee shots on one of the holes I called for them to come over so I could shake their hands. I had a lot of guts right ? There had to be no more then 10 people around. It was a super humid July afternoon in Md. Both were gracious, saying hi, shook my hand and signed the program I had picked up from the first tee. After Arnold signed my program he said, “Son I think you may want the guy walking down the fairway behind me. I said who is he ? He said it’s Golden Arm son. I said ok who is that !! Haha how naive was I. Anyway I said hey golden arm come here and sign my program haha I was brave. He came right over kindly smiled and signed my program along with shaking my hand. When I came home and showed my pop he educated me on who golden arm was.