An Autograph Collection as Sad as My Childhood

On the eighth day of Gheorghemas
Big Gheorghe gave to me:

Eight Autographs Showing How Sad My Childhood Was
Seven Books for Reading
Six Vinyl Discs
Five golden (Cream Yellow, really) cylinders for Squeaky
Four players playing
Three Nutty Squirrels
Two Chilean bangers (literally)
And a British lass slingin’ hot meat

I hope the extended Gheorghemas interlude is treating all well. I have used the time quasi-effectively. After recently carving out space for an office/man cave in my basement, I pulled out a box with some stuff from my pre-college days: high school yearbooks, memorable SI issues, collectibles and the like. Also in the box was a binder with my childhood autograph collection. I was not a big autograph collector as a kid, but I would take whatever I could get b/c I loved sports and was too poor to be picky. Being a child of divorce with two single parents with no money meant you loved every sports interaction you could get, even if it meant only going to Nets games when your dad cut out 2-for-1 ticket deals I found on the side of cartons of milk.

I leafed through my childhood autograph book the other day. It was quite depressing and sorta fit the sad recollection of my childhood that I have. (Editor's note: TR's two most prized autographs from his childhood - Pat LaFontaine and Dave Winfield - were not kept in this book and are therefore not included below. They were framed and hung on his wall. His Dave Winfield autograph got cat claw marks on one corner the day the autograph happened b/c TR's cat attacked the 8x10 photo he left drying on his kitchen table, just to remind him his life sucked. Yep, that was TR's childhood in a nutshell. Bullied by a female cat named Fred.)  

So without further ado, check out the highlights from my depressing collection. One for each day of Gheorghemas.

Autograph 1: Duncan, the New Jersey Nets' mascot. The Nets were an abomination throughout the 80's. I have no idea how I got this, but I love the witty "All my glove" signing. Duncan was the shit, even if he never got out from under the Phillie Phanatic's shadow.

Autograph 2: Adrian Vandeberg, guitarist of Whitesnake. My first concert was at the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, NJ in the summer of 1988. It was a Whitesnake/Great White show. My dad yelled at me to wear a jacket when he dropped us all off at the show. I said no. He made me wear the Members Only jacket he was wearing, as if I needed one more way to look uncool at a 1980's summer heavy metal amphitheatre show.

No, I did not get any hot action that night. But I got the autograph below at a record store the day of the show! No idea why I went. I think my friends went and I said I would go along. Good thing I added the note and the down arrow so I could figure out where the autograph was on the page. There were a lot of slutty, older metal girls at the autograph signing. The kind that made a 13 y/o kid keep his autograph pad in front of his privates the whole time. I think life was very fun for Adrian, Coverdale, Rudy Sarzo and the other Whitesnake guys for a few years.

Autograph 3: assorted low level New York Giant players from the mid 1980's. I got this at a sad "Giants vs local firefighers" event one night. This was another great job by me - writing the actual names of the players next to the autograph. Not a lot of Hall of Famers in this bunch (Zeke Mowatt, Maurice Carthon, Kenny Hill, Herb Welch, Tony Galbreath and Stacy Robinson). Zeke went on to do some very impressive things. Glad I have that one.

Autograph 4 - "Future Star" Dave Magadan. Remember when a really smart dude wrote a compelling set of entries on 1980's Topps baseball cards on this blog? I was REALLY into baseball cards in the late 80's, I would bite hard on any "hot" rookie cards. I still have a lot of rookie cards of Ramon Martinez, Todd Zeile, Mike Greenwell, Hensly Meulens and others. Not Pedro Martinez, mind you. His older brother Ramon. I think a card of Razor Ramon would be more valuable today than one of Ramon Martinez. I have this autographed Dave Magadan card. I made my dad take me to sad baseball card shop somewhere in the swamps of Jersey to buy this. It was a cold weekend morning and Dave came out late. It wasn't very crowded, and he was a bigger dude than I expected. His career was underwhelming, because Mets.

Autograph 5 - Phil Simms. This one is actually legit. Two-time Super Bowl winner and a big force behind Bigelow Tea's marketing campaign. Notice the theme of me having more stuff from the local teams I did not root for (Mets, Giants) than the ones I did root for (Yankees, Jets).

Autograph 6 - Moose Skowron. He was a cog, but not a star, on several 1950's Yankees World Series winners. Maybe that makes him the Scott Brosius of the 50's? I got this card and the autograph at a baseball card convention in Asbury Park. I went to a bunch of these conventions, where I built up an absurdly/creepily large set of Dave Winfield cards/memorabilia.

All I remember from this autograph is that Moose was old and square and built like a brick shithouse.

Autograph 7 - Chuck Wepner. My dad did what many other immigrants did while in the US - worked his ass off to climb up to middle class status.  In addition to his full-time gig at the local college, he worked part-time at local bars/restaurants throughout my childhood. He would go and turn them around. People like to buy and own bars and grills, but they usually don't know how to run them. My dad would redo the menu, work with them on kitchen equipment (scaling it, buy/lease debates, etc) and tell them to stop giving away liquor, the highest profit margin product a bar sells. One place where he worked for a few months was Edgar's in Sea Girt, NJ. The owner  was a shady man who went by "Fat Al." Fat Al was a friend of Chuck Wepner. My dad, who was always a suck-up to celebrities, became casual friends with Wepner and got me his autograph. According to Chuck's own words, he and I are pals and my dad is a great guy. So we got that going for us.

Autograph 8 - Leroy Neiman and Greg Butler (not pictured). The name Greg Butler should mean little to most of you. Butler was a 2nd round draft pick of the Knicks in 1988, a good old-fashioned 7-foot stiff white center who never did much in the NBA. In one of my earliest visits to MSG, which was a bucket list moment for me when I was 14 or 15, my dad and I attended a Knicks game. Back then, you could wander all over the arena and get pretty close to the court. I mustered up some courage and got Greg Butler's autograph courtside. As I walked back to my dad, he pointed out Leroy Neiman nearby, he of the sports and other dated paintings. Leroy indulged me. So I got that going for me.

Merry Gheorghemas!