Keepin' it real...

WHO’D YOU GET TODAY?

“Who’d you get today?” That was the standard summer greeting when you saw your buddies. Not, “What’s up?” or “How’s it goin’?” Simply, “Who’d you get today?”

It referred to our summertime hobby during the mid- to late-fifties, which was collecting autographed pictures of Major League baseball players. The way it worked was this: we would walk up to the branch post office on the frontage road along Highway 40 and buy a stack of two-cent postcards. Then we would hunker down and write cards to all of our favorite players, addressed to the stadium in the city where they played. For example:

To: Mickey Mantle
C/O The New York Yankees
Yankee Stadium
The Bronx, New York

Dear Mickey:

You are my favorite player and I am a big fan of the Yankees. Please send me an autographed picture of yourself. I hope you win the triple crown this year, and that the Yankees win the pennant.

Off in the mail would go 50 to 100 postcards at a time. And then you’d wait every morning for the mail to arrive. Sure enough, within a week or so, back would come the requested product in the form of a picture postcard. If you were lucky, the postcard would be autographed personally by the player. In many cases, the autographs were preprinted on the card. It was a never-ending quest because each year the teams would prepare a new set of postcards, so you were constantly trying to get the current year’s edition.

There were several challenges to overcome. First, some players seemed impossible to get. These, of course, were some of the game's great stars, who I’m sure had realized that their pictures and autographs had significant value to collectors. I don’t think I was ever successful in getting Stan “The Man” Musial, though some of my friends actually made that catch.

Second, there was the problem of the preprinted autograph. We got around that by writing letters to the players and enclosing a self-addressed postcard:

Dear Mr. Ted Williams:
I think you are the greatest hitter of all time. Please autograph the enclosed self-addressed postcard and mail it to me. I hope you hit .400 this year.

You might ask what was the genesis of this little hobby? If memory serves, the credit goes to Bobby Morenco, one of my friends from Little League days. I believe he was the original collector. Don Decious, who lived across the street from me, was also an avid and innovative collector. He went so far as to create scrapbooks with all the cards and autographs mounted neatly, preserved for posterity. I had a mediocre collection, but I was in the game, at least enough to shout out the standard greeting to my friends throughout the summer months: “Who’d you get today?”

Then came 1956, the year of The Great Hall of Fame Breakthrough. Somehow, someone – was it Morenco or Decious? – obtained a list of the mailing addresses for all living Hall of Fame members. Wow! Out went the letters with self-addressed postcards enclosed:

Dear Mr. Ty Cobb:

I think you are the greatest hitter of all time. I hope your record stands forever. Please autograph the enclosed postcard and mail it to me.

And back they came, those priceless postcards, autographed by the likes of Carl Hubbell, Frankie Frisch, Rogers Hornsby, Bill Dickey, Jimmy Foxx, Mel Ott, Ty Cobb and (drum roll please) Joe DiMaggio, to name just a few. I couldn’t believe it. Ty Cobb held my postcard in his hands and signed it with a bright green marking pen! Joltin’ Joe, the Yankee Clipper, actually wrote a few words on my card: “Best Wishes from Joe DiMaggio.” I’ll be 69 years old this year and I still get chills every time I hold those cards.

As I said, my collection wasn’t much. It certainly couldn’t compare to Don or Bobby’s. Along about 1959, I began to lose interest. My cards were bound with a rubber band and stored away in an old shoebox. Later, I gave them to my then-brother-in-law, Rick Beaver. Years later, he returned them to me, which was a very thoughtful thing to do. When my sons reached Little League age, along about 1987, I found the old cards and shared the history with them. Now the cards are back in that shoebox waiting for me to do what I should have done many years ago: mount them properly in a scrapbook and make sure they are passed along to future generations.

That scrapbook is definitely on my “to do” list, along with several other things, but my “to do” list is notorious as the place where projects go to die. At least I got as far as sharing the story with all of you.

It’s funny, but I can still hear my buddies calling just like it was yesterday: “Hey, Charlie, who’d you get today?”
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