the Autograph Corner
GETTING READY FOR NEXT SEASON
Well, the World Series is over
and you won't have much baseball to think about between now
and February, when Spring Training begins. WRONG! I wrote
an article on how I prepare as an autographer for the
upcoming season a few years ago. There's a lot of you out
there who never saw it, so I'm going to run through again
how I do it. I'll be writing from a Midwest League
perspective, but the same pointers pretty much apply for any
league you watch.
Lay in the feeder sets. A
feeder set is a minor league set of players from a league
below yours. For instance, the 2004 Quad City players will
have played in Elizabethton, TN in 2003, or Peoria's 2004
players will come from the Johnson City or New Jersey
Clubs. Now's the time to be ordering those minor league
sets. I order sets for myself and 2 friends in Burlington,
thus I order directly from the teams and save the mark up
and split the shipping costs with my friends. If this is
too much work, there are reputable minor league card dealers
(STB Sports immediately comes to mind) whom you can order
from. Provo goes to Cedar Rapids, Staten Island to Battle
Creek, Vancouver to Kane County. You get the idea. You
might also wish to lay in the set just above your league
in case some of those players slide down a level.
Do your research. Try to figure
out what players will be promoted to your club and lay in
their cards during the off season. Bowman is an especially
good set for prospects, but don't just stop there. Surf
e-bay's minor league cards, check the checklists on the
Upper Deck, Topps, Just Minors and other sites, and watch
for the cards that you need. Card shows are another good
place to search for players that you think you'll be seeing
this upcoming season. Surf the net as well. Last
year, for instance, I found some great action pictures of
Kennard Jones on the Indiana University baseball web site
where he played college ball. Often times you'll find
biographies of upcoming prospects in their college baseball
team websites, and they make great items to have signed if
you've no cards. A recent option that has come out has been
the Team USA cards. These are kids who are among the top
future prospects of the game, but they have not been drafted
yet. Get them now, before most people have heard of them.
Upper Deck has put out this years Team USA set. It runs for
roughly $25 and includes 27 base cards and 3 autographed
cards. They are beautiful. I highly recommend picking up a
set before they sell out. I know collectors who write to
the colleges to get the college baseball schedules to get
signed. That's another option.
Make your own cards and laminate
your own items to get signed. I go through about 3 boxes of
laminating sheets per season. My local Peoria, Burlington
and Quad City newspapers have great color action shots that
I can laminate, often times incorporating human interest
articles about the player as well. I usually buy blue, red
and green 8 x 10 construction paper to affix the pictures
to. My finished products not only look great in my
scrapbook, but it makes for a highly personal and unique
scrapbook as well. For instance, last year I made up 8x10
displays to commemorate everything from Jonah Bayliss'
no-hitter to Frank White's appearance in Burlington.
Finding smaller pictures? I'm always looking at card shows
for the old Fleer and Upper Deck team logo cards. The early
90s team logo cards make great backs for homemade baseball
cards. You cut the picture to size, paste it on there, and
then I laminate it to prevent it from fading. Again, you
can find a lot of good pictures on the internet, in your
local newspapers, or in Baseball America. Upper Deck's
Premiere Prospect set this past season had minor league logo
cards that I put to good use as well. Baseball America is a must. I
not only get a lot of good pictures to make into cards, but
the articles about players in my league can be cut and
laminated onto index cards if small, such as an
organizational report, or onto construction paper if it's a
larger feature article. The only limit to what you can do
with your scrapbook is your imagination.
A couple publications that I
consider a "must" are: 1. Baseball America's Baseball
Directory. Not only does this book have every address an
autograph collector could use as far as contacting a team
goes, but it also lists the staff for each major league team
even down to the roving instructors. For instance, last
year I knew enough to pack John Wathan, Andre David, Ron
Clark, Jaime Garcia and Brian Poldberg with my Burlington
cards, because these roving instructors would appear in
Burlington on occasion to work with the youngsters in the
Royals organization. Every major league affiliated team has
roving instructors that come into train players. You should
be carrying them with you. The baseball directory will tell
you not only the address of college teams even, but will
also give you their coaching staff. Add to that the
addresses for independent league teams, the coaching staffs
of those teams, addresses for the Arizona Fall League, and
foreign winter leagues, and you can see what a valuable book
this is. Not only that, but if you travel it has got the
schedule for every minor league team, including
independents, and even directions on how to get to the
stadiums. 2. Either Smalling's or Meiselman's address book
for retired ball players. The winter months are a good time
to write to retired ball players. You'll get conflicting
opinions from people as to whose address book is better. I
have a preference, but since both are good I won't attempt
to influence you.
Time to lay in some pens, too.
I have gone from Sharpie to LumoColor. LumoColor dries
quickly, so I don't get smearing or bubbling as I sometimes
would with a Sharpie autograph if I had failed to rub down
the card adequately. LumoColor pens are hard to find,
especially the medium point blue that I like. This is
another topic for debate. I know autographers who insist
upon a fine point. I like an autograph that I can "see"
though, so I prefer the medium. I prefer blue over black,
but really there's no intelligent reason why one should
prefer one color over another. It's just personal
preference.
Watch your leagues minor league
web sites during the off season. It's always great to get a
heads up on who the new coaches and managers will be in the
upcoming season. For instance, in the Midwest League I know
that Randy Ready will be the new Fort Wayne Manager, and
that Matt Walbeck, the former Cub, will be replacing Phil
Reagan at West Michigan. You can bet that I'm digging out
cards for these guys already. West Michigan's web site has
a nice write up on their new staff, as does the Cedar Rapids
web site on theirs .
That's about it on this topic
except...yes, I take my own pictures too. Now if I had 8
hands like a Hindu god, I'd love to have a large camera with
a huge zoom lens on it. Given the fact that I'm working on
autographs too, I settle for a pocket camera with a strap to
keep me from dropping it and a minimal 120 zoom lens. I
usually get 5 sets of prints from the pictures I develop, 2
for me, 2 for friends in Burlington who give me copies of
the pictures that they take, and of course 1 for the
player. The players usually are happy to get a picture to
send home to their folks, and it's just common courtesy to
give them one. In fact, I got a nice note back from Fort
Wayne's Rashaad Smith last year. I sent him a copy of his
picture and he responded saying that it was the only picture
that he had of himself in a Fort Wayne uniform. If you want
to really get creative and spend a little more money, you
can have them enlarged to 8 x 10s, or even made in Sepia
tone, but I have mine done in 4 x 6, so that I can mount 3
on a sheet of paper on each side, and slide them into 1 8 x
10 sleeve. Again it makes for a very unique and personal
scrapbook.
Hopefully I've given you a few
ideas here. I learn more each year, and so will you if
you're serious about your hobby.
WILL I GET AN ANSWER FROM HIM?
It was a fun baseball
postseason. I'll have to admit, I was pulling for Florida.
Against the Yankees, that I don't need to explain, but
against the Cubs? Yes. I had gotten to meet several of the
Florida players in the Midwest League, players such as Josh
Beckett and Miguel Cabrera, and even my Bees had a
representative in Ugeeth Urbina. I had to cheer for the
Marlins. Besides, the Cubs have such a long tradition of
losing, it almost seemed sacreligous to
think of them even making it to the World Series. It
would've meant a rent in the divine fabric of the Universe,
or something equally incomprehensible. Enter Steve Bartman.
Loki in disguise perhaps? Talk about being in the wrong
place at the wrong time. Forgotten is Alex Gonzalez's error
that REALLY opened up the floodgates. The goat horns had
already been assigned. Well, given that poor Mr Bartman has become a
part of Cub folklore, I put together an 8x10 with THE
picture and an article about him and sent it to him asking for his autograph. Hopefully
he's got a sense of humor and will send it back to me. It
BELONGS in my Cub scrapbook. Best case scenario: hopefully
after all the shit this poor guy has had to endure, he'll
find a way to profit financially from this in the end. Who
knows, maybe we'll see him at Wrigley next year singing
"Take Me Out to the Ball Game." He's gotta be better than
OZZY.
FOOTBALL AUTOGRAPHS
I had given up writing for
football autographs about four years ago, because my
percentage of returns were so poor in relation to baseball.
I resumed this year. Thus far the
returns have been unspectacular, maybe getting about 8 back
of the 70 plus that I've sent out. I've gotten a few good
responses though, including Marc Bulger, Carson Palmer,
Freddie Jones and Dallas Clark (yeah, I'm an IOWA fan). I
think that part of the reason football successes come harder
is that these guys have achieved "Star" status in college.
By the time they're drafted they're past the point of being flattered by
an autograph request. Contrast this with baseball where
even the #1 pick has to look at time in the minors.
Speaking of Football, I'm on a
roll this season. I'm in 1st place out of 78 in our plant's
"Pick the Winners weekly pool, leading second place by 20
points. My Anarchist Bombers fantasy team is 8-1 too,
leading our league, with only a 7-2 and 2 6-3 teams
challenging me at all in a 10 team league.
Well anyway, I've rambled on
long enough. Have fun with the hobby. I sure try to.
~Rich Hanson
