I've collected autographs since I was around 10 years old, having collected my first thru-the-mail autographs in 1991 when I collected the autographs of Cecil Fielder, Roberto Alomar, and Todd Van Poppel. I was hooked after that! I would love to have the largest collection of autographs, according to Guinness, eventually, but I've got a very long way to go.
Here are some of the autographs I've collected over the years:
As of 21 February 2025, 543 autographs have been posted.
Baseball is just a game, as simple as a ball and a bat. Yet, as complex as the American spirit it symbolizes. A sport, a business and sometimes almost even a religion. - Ernie Harwell
Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal. - George Will
The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. - Terrance Mann as played by James Earl Jones
There's no crying in baseball! Rogers Hornsby was my manager, and he called me a talking pile of pigshit. And that was when my parents drove all the way down from Michigan to see me play the game. And did I cry? No! Because there's no crying in Baseball! - Jimmy Dugan as played by Tom Hanks
To say that I love baseball would be an understatement. My love affair with the game began in the 1980s when my father was a high school umpire. I would travel all over the state with him, and since he was an attorney for his day job, I really apprecited the time I could spend with him! I lost my love for the game a little bit in my last year of Little League. I had grown from 4'9 to 5'7 during the off season which ruined my swing. My coach didn't understand the problem, and though I was just underperforming because I didn't like him or something. We talked it out years later when I was a grown man, and he apologized for not being able to help me at the time.
But I still love the game so much. So much so that I won't get an umpiring credential for baseball even though I referee four other sports. But collecting autographed baseball cards is one of my favorite hobbies. I've been collecting autographed baseball cards since 1991, when I got Cecil Fielder, Todd Van Poppel and Roberto Alomar to sign cards for me while they were playing. I've been collecting autographed baseball cards ever since. I have a ton of autographed baseball cards in my collection, and I'm always looking to add more. I have autographed baseball cards from Hall of Famers, All-Stars, and even some players who only played a few games in the big leagues. I love the history of the game, and I love the stories behind the players. I love the way that baseball connects generations.
1987 Topps
It was the hottest summer of my life, July 1987. That Independence Day weekend, my dad came home with two huge surprises. First, was the first window air conditioning unit we'd ever had at the farmhouse. After he and my grandpa installed the window unit, he and I laid on the living room floor and opened three or four boxes of 1987 Topps baseball cards. When I got a bit older, he and I decided to start trying to collect the entire 1987 Topps card set autographed.
I've been moving forward at a slower pace with the 1987 Topps collection after Dad died in 2019. In fact, after my hosting service decided to kill the ability to use Media Wiki for the site I was hosting on - I was going to just put the project up. In January 2025, my travel partner from the college soccer team, Shaun, over at Penalty Box Radio asked me about it because he wanted to show his kid. This inspired me to work on rebuilding the website.
What I've decided to do for the baseball section, because it is a very large body of work - is to put the 1987 Topps cards in their own section. Each page contains 99 slots for the cards in numberical order. There are a couple of issues that will most likely prevent the set from ever being fully completed:
Ricky Wright (card 202) will not sign his Topps cards. As such, I made a special graphic for this set.
Dick Howser (card 18) was fighting brain cancer when the 1987 Topps set was released, and passed away on June 17 1987.
Mel Hall (card 51) is serving a 45 year sentence for sexual crimes against minors. He is not eligible for parole until 2031, and has a serve-out date in 2054. Due to the nature of his crimes, I have no interest in obtaining his autograph from him.
There is a "Turn Back The Clock" subset (cards 311-315), one of which is Roberto Clemente who had passed well before the set was published. I think I'm going to let these cards slip by as unsigned, unless I stumble on any of them for an affordable price. However, with the other cards in the subset are Rickey Henderson, Reggie Jackson, Carl Yastrzemski and Maury Willis, I think this subset might be a bit out of my affordability range.
I have a Pete Rose autographed card and an autographed ball. I don't have much interest in trying to track down either his player card (Card 200) or his manager card (Card 393) from the set.
Reggie Jackson (card 300), Nolan Ryan (card 757), and Roger Clemens (cards 1, 340 and 614) are prohibitively expensive for me to acquire. Last I checked on any of these three players, an autograph direct from their pen is $100+ each payable to their foundations.
As of February 12, 2025, I have 327 Cards signed and uploaded of the 792 actual total.
