During my past two years of covering the Hickory Crawdads as a photographer, I have been watching the 'Dads sign autographs at almost every game. I'm not much of an autograph collector myself, but I have been doing it more this year than in the past. I have never had an autographed baseball card until this year. I haven't even had an interest in it until I did the baseball card photos for the 'Dads. I got all of them autographed except for two. I missed getting autographs from Brandon Reddinger and Mike Hofius. They both left the organization before I got my cards. Maybe I'll be able to track them down some day so I can get my cards signed and have a complete set.
In the above photo, I saw this young baseball team lined up at the fence while the team was warming up in the outfield. Each of them had a ball held up hoping to get a player autograph. In my mind, this scene simplifies what professional sports is all about. These kids (and those who bring them to the ball park) pay the player salaries and provide them with a nice place to play. They allow the professional athlete to live his own dream by simply being the fans who buy the tickets and merchandise.
At L.P. Frans Stadium in Hickory, fans usually gather outside the team's clubhouse to get some autographs before the players hit the field for stretching and warmups before the game starts. As the players come out, fans ask for autographs. Most players stop and sign some before the warmups. Some others are guilty of sneaking around the walkway and hopping the fence or using the gate next to the field to bypass the fans. I'm not gonna dig into this subject, but I do believe that EVERY professional athlete should spend some amount of time at every opportunity to sign autographs for fans.
Now that I have gotten that off my chest, let's talk about the two categories of autograph seekers I see at the ball parks... The above photo shows the first category. We have the young fans who aren't collecting as much but enjoy the opportunity just to get the autographs and meet the players. They simply love the game and the players. On the other side of the card, we have the 'professional' collectors. These are the ones I run into more often than the kids when I'm outside the clubhouse. Some of these collectors I have met travel from park to park getting autographs from players. I ran into one last night who had three friends with him who were doing the same thing. There were four guys (30 and older) outside the clubhouse waiting for autographs. When these guys ask for autographs, they open up a notebook and have anywhere from 2 to 18 cards signed by any given player. This takes up a good bit of the player's time and doesn't really allow them to sign for anyone else who may be waiting. They don't have unlimited time between the clubhouse and field warmups. I have watched several Crawdads sign 10 and 15 items for single autograph seekers, and I just don't think it's fair for the player and the other fans who may be seeking autographs. When I see one person ask for autographs on 5 or 10 of the same baseball card, I know that they are going to keep one or two and trade/sell off the others. Baseball card and memorabilia trading is a huge business.
I have never gotten any player feedback on this issue, but after writing about it, I think I will talk to a few players to see what their thoughts are on the issue. I will choose a few Crawdads who I regularly see signing autographs and ask them how they feel about signing autographs in general and signing for the professional collectors. I'll be curious to see how they respond.
I think I fall into a category between the casual and the professional collector. As I said earlier, I have only recently become interested in collecting any autographs. I was quite pleased to get the opportunity to shoot the photos for the Crawdads baseball cards this season, so I obviously wanted to get each of those cards signed. The second set of cards is coming out in August and I'm planning to chase signatures for all those cards also, simply because that's a very unique element of my personal portfolio as a photographer. However, as a photographer, there are some signed photographs that I would like to have also. I'm not planning to get one from every player this season, but I'm going to try to get about half of them. At the half-way point of this season, I gave each player a CD ROM with photos that I had made during the first half, so I hope that they will help me out with my autograph quest :)
I snapped this photo early in the season of Andrew McCutchen signing a baseball for a fan before the start of a game...
John M. Setzler, Jr.
(the guy with the camera)
Neil Walker, Pirates 2004 #1 draft pick (11th overall), is currently playing for the Lynchburg Hillcats. He played for the Crawdads in the 2005 season for almost a full season. He was pulled up to Lynchburg with just a few weeks left.
