How you pine for the Caldor days, Mr. Keeler. If I was armed with a frogs-tounge (Bickford’s circa 1985), I would have snatched that psudo-dubage from your hand.

Back in 2000, I made my annual trek to Fenway for a game vs. the Mets. This was a couple of days before Carl Everett flipped out. My brothers and I showed up really early to get SRO tickets. We had lunch at Uno’s over by Fenway and I encountered a familar looking figure washing his hands in the men’s room. He looked like Brian Daubach. So I asked him, “Is that you Brian?” He nodded sheepishly and I wished him luck for the game. I wouldn’t think of taking any credit for his game winning double that nite, that was more Armando Benitez’s doing, but that’s my favorite Close Encounter of the First Base Kind.

I attended a baseball dinner in NH in the early-80s. The keynote speaker was Ted Williams. Guests paid something like $50-$75 to attend the dinner; the meal sucked, but afterward all guests could go to into a particular conference room to meet the players and former players, and get their autographs.

When the players started to come in, the excitement was palpable. One enters. Cool. Two enter. Aswesome. People swarm around them. Three. Groovy. Four, and five, six , seven. “Where’s Ted Williams?,” everyone started asking. We all waited and waited. The youngest guests were all crestfallen, when we all realized that Williams was not going to come down from his hotel room.

The coolest player I ever met was Lance Parrish. I brought some drawings I created for some of the player/speakers that came the next year. Lance Parrish signed my drawing of him, and wrote some really cool personal stuff on the drawing. He kept telling me how good my drawing was. Then, I asked him where Sparky Anderson was (Sparky had spoken earlier, but evidently, he too was pulling a “Ted Williams”). Lance was so damn cool. He said to me, “Hey, I see you have a drawing of Sparky too. You want him to sign it?” I said, “Yes, of course.” Lance leans over towards me and whispers, “He’s in room 304.” I said, “Wow. Thanks a lot Lance! I’ll go up and see him right now!”

I made my way up to room 304. Nervously, I knocked. A voice shouts from the otherside of the door. “Who is it?” I weakly replied, “Um, Mr. Anderson . . . I uh, have this drawing I created . . . and uh, I was hoping you would sign it for me.” I hear the latch unlock, and then the door was opened slowly. And, there he was . . . Sparky Anderson . . . in his underwear! Sparky says, “What do you have?” I handed him my drawing, and said, “This drawing I did of you, Sparky.” In a sleepy voice, he says “Hey, that’s pretty good,” and then he signed it for me. Then, the man in the white underwear says, “Hey, have a good night kid.” Cool. I went back downstairs and ran up to Lance Parrish, and thanked him like crazy. He just smiled, and thought it was great. Lance Parrish rocks.