The Chris Moeller Archives

Adventures in autographing

I told you about the time I stabbed one-time Cardinals great Lonnie Smith in the eye while trying to get his autograph in 1988. Well, after a long layoff I think I've gotten a little better at hounding.

I went to St. Louis with a pal this weekend to take in a Cardinals' three-game series against the Tampa Bay Rays-- they found the Lord a few seasons back and dropped the "Devil" from the Rays' name. The Cardinals lost more of the three games than I would have preferred, but there were highlights a plenty, including Friday's first-ever Pride Night at Busch Stadium. I bought our tickets before the announcement though so we didn't have the special ticket that would get us a rainbow-colored Cardinals cap.

Plenty of other free stuff was parceled out during the weekend, though-- Friday was also Mystery Hall of Fame Manager Bobblehead Night, and I'm happy to say I wound up with a Whitey Herzog model. The other possibilities were bobbling likenesses of  Red Schoendienst, Joe Torre, and Tony LaRussa. Whitey was my first choice, with all respect to the other gentlemen, and it came to pass that we would be united. Sunday's freebie for all of us at the park was a Mike Shannon-themed alarm clock. Mike's the Cardinals play-by-play man on the radio, on the air each year since the very early '70s. His most frequent home run call on the radio is "Get up, baby, get up!" So alarm clock.

Other weekends, that alarm clock might have dwarfed all else, but not this one. On Saturday, I woke up at the crack of eight and walked from the Value Inn, a dusty motor lodge almost hilariously located in the literal shadow of the towering, modern, and elegant Four Seasons abutting the Laclede's Landing neighborhood. The lady's voice inside our car mapping system got all excited as we approached our lodging destination for the first time on Friday afternoon and then she started to cry. So I hit the pavement in the morning with my coffee and milk drink that costs six dollars and I'm going to stand in line to get a free autograph from former Cardinals great Jim Edmonds at the team's Hall of Fame and Museum. This is where our real story begins. You can line up beginning at 9:30, somebody has said, but at 8:45, I'm about the 330th person in line. I find out that number later. It seems they will give out 320 autograph tickets at 10, then it comes down to time after that-- how fast will Jimmy be able to sign, and will I be willing to stick it out in line with no guarantees that it won't all be for nought at noon.

It's team Hall of Fame Weekend for 2017 and superstars Mark McGwire and Tim McCarver are going to be inducted, along with the late Pepper Martin, who will be represented in the proceedings by his daughter Jenny Weathersby. I'm going to guess that Jenny is in her 70s, and there's something that I find eternally charming about an older lady when she starts talking about "daddy." The big annual event is why the autograph line is so long. The ceremony itself begins at 2pm. A game tonight at 6. While standing in line, I make fast friends with the surrounding people. Great people, great Cardinals fans. Jim Edmonds fans.The time goes by swiftly because of the company, but it does go by. It's now 11:30, there's been a lot of standing, and I have progressed in the line into the museum itself and up a staircase, but not yet reached the admission desk. And my cluster of associates and I have still not earned the tickets that guarantee and foreshadow an Edmonds signature.

Then who should come up the steps behind my group but another familiar face, one of today's honorees, Tim McCarver, the starting catcher for the Cardinals in 21 World Series games during the 1960s and a television broadcaster for so long after that that he retired from the national work having broadcast more World Series on television than any man or woman that ever lived. He has come into the museum, along with a videographer and a Cardinals P.R. representative to see his Hall of Fame plaque for the first time just prior to the ceremony. And this guy here-- me-- has an ace in his pocket-- in a plastic shopping bag, to be more precise. About seven years ago, in a moment of almost-sickening foresight, I saw fit to spend some money online for a compact disc that featured Tim McCarver singing. You never knew this, but Tim put this collection out into the world and it's called "Tim McCarver Sings Selections from the Great American Songbook," and upon its many grooves, Tim interprets such chestnuts as "On a Clear Day," "Gee Baby Ain't I Good To You," and "I'll Remember April." Well, it seems that within any given-- moderately-sized-- group of Cardinals fans, I'm the only one that owns one of these-- and, and... just happens to have it on his person. Since I've already bragged about this item to the people standing around me, they practically push me over to where he's standing. "But I don't have a Sharpie," I object, which was true. "Here, use mine," cries out the greatest saint in this region since Louis.

I make my way over to Tim, who has now offered to sign for people. Fans were initially hesitant to approach him because he's looking officially at his plaque, but Tim is the one that breaks the ice. "Would you like me to sign that?" he says to someone. He signs a first baseball, one that was probably intended for Jim Edmonds, and I stick my compact disc of his into his purview as he peers down signing his second baseball. Not too elevated with the disc now, Moeller, don't stab him in the eye. He sees the disc out of the corner of his eye, and he doesn't say anything, but he throws his head back and lets out a big laugh. He's charmed-- and I detect, humbled. After signing the baseball that's in his hand, I'm telling you, he reaches past four or five, maybe six other baseballs, right over them, to grab my CD and sign it. The paper cover is out of its case, but the case is there for physical support, and he puts a fresh Tim McCarver right on there, just below his name as it already appears in white font on the cover and partially across the cheek on the face that smiles back at us in the photo. Big loops and stuff. The little 'c' in "McCarver" is underlined.

Well, I'm blissed out. I'm back to my spot in line graciously saved for me-- and I'm a hero to boot-- the guy that owns a rare compact disc that has now somehow been lifted from the category of priceless to more priceless. I hadn't expected to get within 100 feet of Tim McCarver today, especially on what was to be one of the most important days of his baseball life. But still I had it with me. On Thursday night, as I was pulling a framed Jim Edmonds photo off the wall in the bedroom, contemplating this particular weekend to come, something-- or someone-- told me to go to the basement of the condo, dig through the disc collection that had been banished there by my interior decorator wife, and pull that disc back out and pack it up for its ultimate life's adventure. Be prepared. That's the boy scout motto. Be prepared.

Now the rest falls into place. Not minutes later, a museum door opens and Jim Edmonds autograph tickets appear for me and for all my friends. We move through the gates and very soon I'm doubling my good fortune by being before Mr. Edmonds. As he signs-- and here's a fun fact for you-- Tim McCarver and Jim Edmonds both wore uniform number 15 as members of the Cardinals, each assigned by the clubhouse manager almost 40 years apart... as he signs, I pour out my heart to him in Twitter space or less. "Jim, I love you", I say-- a man should never be afraid to tell one of his favorite baseball players that he loves him-- "But I love that you and your wife appeared on Real Housewives. My wife is from Kenya and I can't get her interested in baseball at all-- but she knows who Jim Edmonds is!" Jim's been signing autographs for almost two hours at this time so he smiles but his reaction is understated, plus the guy ahead of me has Down syndrome so that sort of overwhelms my thing. But I got another one! Not even two for two today. Two for one. Then the Cardinals Hall of Fame does an almost incomprehensible thing--  it gives me a free bottle of iced tea on my way out the museum door. This is insane.

Would you even believe it if I told you that I then made my way over to the ceremony and my pal had secured us the perfect balcony view of an extraordinary civic event? And for good measure Tony LaRussa walked right past me and I shook his hand? And he was actually smiling? And McCarver's speech made me laugh? And then Mark McGwire's made me cry like I was a little baby? And McGwire cried too? Just like he used to? And some of those other Hall of Famers sitting up there on stage, looking like-- to steal a line from Jack Buck-- some diamonds in the window of a jewelry store-- looked like they might cry too? And Jim Edmonds sat behind McGwire, his former teammate, on the dais and rallied the standing ovation that would come flooding in for one of the greatest men that ever played the game? And then the baseball day was capped, about five hours later, at about 9 o'clock Central, when Tommy Pham hit a walk-off home run for the Cards in the bottom of the ninth inning after we had been behind by as many as three runs? And then I ate some hot fudge and pecan custard at a parlor that is also a Route 66 landmark called Ted Drewe's Frozen Custard? I don't think you would believe it.

posted by CM @ 8:54 PM