Ex-Doyers Are Good To Me

The saga of my new found addiction continues to impress me.  My new addiction is sending out letters to ball players and asking for autographs.  Not an evil addiction that would be fun in the short term but have long term consequences like cocaine addiction.

TTM is a good addiction that has given me some cool results so far.

Of the Dodger autographs that I have obtained, Ron Cey may have the nicest signature.  The way his first and last name bleeds into one another is sweet.  The way he puts the number 10 in his "R" is a nice touch.  I also dig that he used a blue sharpie on my TTM request.  Cey is a true Dodger that understands what his fans like.

I guess the blue works when a Cubs fan asks for his autograph also.

Cey sent me these to me really quickly.  He lives about 20 minutes from my house so, that is probably the reason.  He could have held onto my letter and read and then re-read my words over the course of several days.  Luckily, he didn't and sent these two cards back to me.

The next return that I received was from former Dodger shortstop Greg Gagne.  His name is pronounced how it is spelled not the French way like Eric Gagne.  Gagne is American so, I'm sure his ancestors assimilated and the pronunciation became Americanized.

  Gagne also added a 3:16 inscription to his autograph.  I have seen this before.  I am not a religious man so, I am not sure what 3:16 means.  Maybe a reader may be able to educate me on that.

Gagne also answered a couple questions for me.  I had asked about the biggest difference for him when he came from the AL Central to the NL West.  He mentioned that the travel was a lot tougher.  Gagne had played in the 1991 World Series for the Minnesota Twins.  I asked him about the crowd noise.  I asked him this because I remember how loud the Metro Dome got during the playoffs.  The place sounded insane.  He wrote that he felt a different vibe from the crowd but, he was able to block out the sound and concentrate on the game.

It was cool that he answered my questions.  I am going to try and include a few questions in each letter that I mail out.  It will be fun for me to get some responses back from the men that played the greatest game ever at the highest level.

I believe that I have lived in the same city as Mike Lieberthal throughout his entire playing career.  So, I have watched him play for a huge chunk of my life.  When he started his career for the Phillies in 1994, I had just move to the Philadelphia area from SoCal.  Then, when Lieberthal came to the Dodgers to finish his playing career, I was already back and living in LA.  We kind of followed each other.

Sadly, I only had one card of him as a Dodger to send him.  This card came out nice though.

This is kind of a Phillies card.  It has the Phillies logo on the bottom corner but, Lieberthal is wearing his high school jersey.  This is my favorite card that he sent back to me.  He looks so young in this photo.  Obviously, he does.  But, I always thought that Lieberthal looked like a grizzled vet throughout his career.

This card is sweet because his high school stats are on the back of this card.  He hit 13 bombs his senior year and even stole 8 bases.  What happened to those wheels?

This is a full on Philadelphia Phillies card.  This is also one of those mid-90s Fleer cards that were made to get signed. I am not sure if I ever had one of these signed before.  I didn't open too many packs of these back in the day even though I enjoyed Fleer products.  I was more of a Fleer Ultra man anyways.

I am having a ton of fun sending cards and letters out to ballplayers.  I should be sending more out this week and I hope to get more returns.