I remember endlessly practicing my autograph during catechism…until Sister O’Beastly caught me, made me kneel on a pointer and stepped on my fingers.
Youngsters in particular treasure a signed baseball by their favorite player. Of course, sports cards are always valued, but not like a ball signed by an Albert Pujols or a Yadier Molina.
It always angers me that some athletes will go to great lengths to sign legibly, and others will scribble their name, and be done with it. Personally, I think it is a travesty for an athlete to sign his name in such a way that you cannot decipher what it says. Now I realize that players sign so much that it is ridiculous, and naturally some players sign more than others, but you can’t tell me that a player can’t at least write two or three letters that can be read by the average person. But sadly that is the case. Give me back those days when players took pride in their penmanship. Not today.
...It is a sad state of events when a father brings home a baseball to his daughter or son of their favorite player and they have to ask who the signature is of. A neighbor told me once that his son was a Rusty Greer fan. Greer had some good years with the Texas Rangers, but was far from a remarkable player. Well anyway, my neighbor brought home a ball signed by Greg Maddux. Keep in mind that Maddux, one of the best pitchers in baseball history, does not have a signature that can be read. My neighbor convinced his son that the signature was of Rusty Greer, and the youngster was ecstatic. A few years later he was told the truth.
Athletes of the world, make kids, and collectors, happy. Write a little neater. Please.
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1. Famous Original Joe C Posted: February 08, 2010 at 02:34 PM (#3455900)"Dear Mr. President, There are too many states nowadays. Please eliminate three. P.S. I am not a crackpot."
I would assume that a signature is tough to change from signing to signing intentionally. Still, I imagine that signing a document laid on a desk results in a better signature than a signature made on a baseball or a program signed in a rush by the dugout fence.
And I did the same thing at flournoy. Like him I got the signature down pat but the swing still needs some work.
And at such low pay, too. What a tough life.
Unless there's a legitimate story behind it, I just don't get the phenomenon of autographs.
I don't, either, but----if you're going to charge for it, you should at least be able to make it legible. A half literate Babe Ruth probably signed more balls than all but a handful of modern stars, and every one of his signatures is as clear as day.
Kid: Hey, I just paid you fifty bucks and I can't even read what your name is.
Player: Buckle up, punk, and just be grateful that you still have a house!
If you go to a restaurant and pay $50 for a lousy meal, you don't go back, order more food but include a message to "make it taste better" - you simply don't go back.
I'd be all for a world where no one paid these guys for their autographs and no one bought autographed merchandise second-hand. But, in the mean time, I don't see where either party has any reason to gripe all that much about what is, completely, a voluntary transaction of a good that has no intrinsic value.
I agree with the charging thing, except 99% of these guys are just signing stuff for fans for free. There's no reason for them to sign this stuff other than to be good to the fans, they don't get paid for it unless it's being paid for by the baseball card goofballs. I'm sorry, if a guy can put his "mark" on the ball in 3 seconds instead of 8, that's saving everyone involved hours.
I also doubt quite a bit that Ruth signed more than even most modern players, there weren't nearly as many fans (attendance topped out at about 1 million for the Yanks and crowd sizes averaging 5000 aren't rare from my eyeballing) and I could be wrong, but I don't think there was nearly the celebrity culture there is now.
If you go to a restaurant and pay $50 for a lousy meal, you don't go back, order more food but include a message to "make it taste better" - you simply don't go back.
I don't disagree with this, and as I said, I have absolutely no idea why anyone would pay money for an autograph that didn't have an interesting association (like Ted Williams' signature alongside Updike's Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu) or a personalized touch that actually meant something. But that still doesn't negate the essential smallness of the player's refusal to take the trouble to make a legible signature.
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I agree with the charging thing, except 99% of these guys are just signing stuff for fans for free. I'm sorry, if a guy can put his "mark" on the ball in 3 seconds instead of 8, that's saving everyone involved hours.
I should have made it clear that I was talking almost entirely about players who charge for their autographs, not players who are faced with long lines of fans and not charging them.
And of course the reason Babe Ruth's signature was so neat was because in Ruth's day penmanship was taught in every school. If Ruth were around today he'd likely be scrawling with the best (or worst) of them.
I actually keep a database of each autographed ball I have and try to include any interesting notes about the encounter. Was the location interesting? (At the ballpark or at a show?) Did the player say anything? Did anything interesting happen? (Frank Robinson held my infant daughter for a picture.)
So I guess I would say it is nice when a player's signature is legible. But for me personally the biggest thing is to know that if it is a scribble at least it is a consistent scribble that other folks can say "yup, that's Greg Maddux's mark" even if you can't read Greg Maddux, otherwise it really is just a pen mark on the ball. And although I know the origin, it really detracts from other people, especially non-baseball fans, from being able to look at it and feel like they are seeing anything of value.
That sentence walks such a fine line between parody and sincerity that I'd almost have to give it a Primey.
Anyone who feels like answering.
Mine is barely legible to the first letter.
Today we teach things kids might need to know to function in society. I am continually irritated that hours of instruction time are lost each year trying to teach cursive writing. Quill pens and inkwells are long dead.
Today we teach things kids might need to know to function in society. I am continually irritated that hours of instruction time are lost each year trying to teach cursive writing. Quill pens and inkwells are long dead.
Well, gee, I guess we shouldn't be teaching anything other than how to buy low and sell high, or how to be a model or a TV personality. Who needs to learn stupid things such as arithmetic, grammar, spelling, or punctuation? You can always hire some teenager from Bangladesh to do all that crap for you.
Look, I wasn't trying to impute any sort of moral superiority to good penmanship; unless I make an effort my handwriting's as bad as it gets, though it's not as bad as my (6 years worth of) French. But when you're charging for an autograph you really should give the poor chump something more than an illegible scrawl.
The Killer was my favorite player as a kid, but I've got to say that the autograph I got from him on a mailed-in 3x5 index card back in the early '70s is ... well, not illegible, certainly, but also not exactly a model of clarity or anything. Of course, his name does have a whole lot of letters.
I was being sincere for what it's worth. Some players' autographs are scribbles and to a non-collector they are illegible. But some players, like Maddux, have a consistent scribble that collectors look at and say "ah ha, that's Greg Maddux's signature." So I guess as long as a player has established a consistent way of signing his name I don't mind how they sign it. To me and other collectors they know who's signature it is.
Though I wish more players would sign legibly.
My guess is if you sent your 3x5 card to Harmon and asked for a better autograph you'd get one.
I was being sincere for what it's worth. Some players' autographs are scribbles and to a non-collector they are illegible. But some players, like Maddux, have a consistent scribble that collectors look at and say "ah ha, that's Greg Maddux's signature." So I guess as long as a player has established a consistent way of signing his name I don't mind how they sign it. To me and other collectors they know who's signature it is.
I can see that, though if I were going to pay money for a signature I'd still much rather have it be readable to someone other than myself and a handful of fellow collectors. The difference really shows up in team signed balls. Look at one of those from the 50's and it's easy to tell who all the players are, even the roster fillers you'd never heard of. Look at one from today, and forget it. And any future collector or historian who has to try to decipher many of today's signatures is going to go absolutely nuts.
They should quit spending time to teach 10 year olds how to make loopy letters in order to not have to pick up the pen and drip ink. They should absolutely replace this time with time spent on grammar, spelling and punctuation. Communication skills are perhaps the most important skills someone can learn. Math skills are next on the list. On the other hand, I stopped writing in cursive when I got out of 6th grade and never looked back. Ball point pens made cursive handwriting irrelevant and word processing has destroyed whatever vestiges of usefulness that remained. It's a waste of teaching resources to spend time on cursive handwriting. I suppose you could put it in art class with other forms of calligraphy.
I wouldn't argue with any of that, though is it true that they actually still teach cursive in public schools? Maybe the reason my own handwriting is so bad is that cheap ball point pens were just coming into widespread use when I was being taught handwriting, and as you say, with ball point pens all those fancy maneuvers aren't necessary.
OTOH I'm sure as hell glad they taught me how to type in 8th grade.
I'm pretty sure my former stepdaughter was complaining on Facebook a couple of weeks ago that her daughter (who's probably in 2nd grade or thereabouts) was having to learn it.
Typing is an important skill that should be substituted. If voice recognition software finally breaks through and replaces the keyboard I would hope they stop teaching that as well.
We could have a whole nother discussion about the emphasis on teaching names/dates who/when/where history while neglecting civics.
Typing is an important skill that should be substituted. If voice recognition software finally breaks through and replaces the keyboard I would hope they stop teaching that as well.
You might want to think that one through a bit more, unless you're cool with reducing mankind to a purely spoken language.
And therein lies the difference between Rich Rifkin and Brett Pedroia.
Of course people should be taught to print. They should also be taught how to use a word processor.
I'm sure I'm missing something here, but what are you using to write your posts? I'm not saying that people should be learning typing on an old Underwood or IBM Selectric, but without mastering the QWERTY keyboard it's kind of hard to express yourself in any kind of written format. Unless, of course, you want to go back to a quill pen.
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