Sports: The Biggest Sports Ripoff Ever!

I'm afraid that I make it sound like all players could care less about their fans. Not true!

I just received one of my cards back with an autograph! Thank you Noah! You're my first "star"!

It took four months and I had gave up but I guess these guys can stay pretty busy so I'm happy even if it did take that long.

I have to admit, I've been getting back about half of my items from newer players, so I hope that they don't get jaded as they become stars.

Guess I get a little paranoid about my new "autograph collecting" hobby. Yah, I know! It started out by my getting autographs to put in the "treasure chests" that I made for the five grandkids, but with 3/4ths of my letters not getting answered I got wrapped up in it. Now I'm just trying to see how many "stars" are willing to return my requests.

I was mowing the lawn a few days back and watched as the mailman stuffed our mail into the box. Nope! No autographs, but I started thinking about how you read stories in the news about piles of letters being found that the mailman was to lazy to deliver. Or the news story about the mailman who was steeling mail that contained money. Rare happenings but it does happen.

From there, it was an easy jump to start wondering if our mailman might not be swiping my autographs? Think about it! It would be real easy for him to watch for my SASE when they came back and just stick them in his pocket to add to his own collection.

Sorry Mr. Postman! It's just a wild thought that crossed my mind! I'm sure that the reason that I'm not getting my autographs returned is just that the players and stars don't want to be bothered or are afraid I might just want them to make money by selling them.

It's not true! I just want them for my grand-kids!

Have you ever added up the money that you spend on sports? If you're like me, you're probably afraid to!

Let's see! Cable charges extra for the decent sports channels and those tickets to get into the game are costing a fortune now-days. Then there's that baseball and football card collections that are tucked away where the kids can't get at them. The subscription prices for the sports magazines are at the point where I almost want to cancel.

I don't know. When you start adding it up, you gotta wonder how you can afford it on your $50k a year wages. Me, on my $14k a year social security! It especially hurts when you see your favorite player sign a multi-million dollar contract! Man, he makes millions traveling the country and playing a game while you're stuck in a hell-hole of a job every day.

But that's not what this is about! This is about that multi-million dollar contract that he gets and that is paid from the money that you spend as a fan. If there were no fans, there would be no high-paying contracts!

Now for the big question! If your favorite player is making a million dollars from proceeds that come from the fans, how can he justify snubbing you at the game or throwing your request for an autograph into the trash?

I sent a news clipping to Tom Brady (Patriots) and requested that he autograph it and return it to me in the enclosed SASE.

I just received a letter back with my clipping unsigned. The letter said that Tom could not autograph my clipping but he would like me to have the enclosed fan pack. It had an 8x10 picture of the Patriots, a picture of Tom Brady, a Patriots button and pencil, plus some Patriot stickers.

Nice fan pack but he must have tossed my SASE and paid the higher postage on the "fan Pack" himself.

While I still would like his autograph on my clipping, I appreciate the rest of the stuff and can't imagine how sending all of this stuff could have been easier than just signing the clipping.

While I can't accuse Tom of "snubbing" his fans, I can wonder if he signed a contract that prohibits his giving out his autograph or if he is just being tight with it so that the value will rise?

Picture: Tom Brady with Randy Moss and Jabar Gaffney after throwing for record 50th td against NY Giants. From Wikipedia by Michigan10

I don't really want to pick on our sports "heros" so I decided to do some research and after a whole lot of digging, I came up with addresses for about thirty movie stars.

I'm either going to end up with a lot of autograhed pictures or I'm going to find out that movie stars are just as bad as sports stars when it comes to signing autographs.

OK! So I'm nuts! But I still think that if the fans enable all of these people to pull in six-figure incomes, they should be willing to offer a little payback in the way of autographs.

I'll keep you all informed as to whether I get any autographs back, and if you have had any luck at receiving autographs from anyone, how about letting me know?

I'm into this "autograph hunting" pretty good right now so I'm sending for autographs at a maddening pace just to see who is willing to reply. I may go broke on buying stamps and envelopes but this thing has gotten under my skin and will bug me until I get wore out trying.

Oh! Don't waste your time on these address lists and email list that you find on the internet. Once they've been up a couple of weeks, everyone on them must change theirs because of being swamped.

I started a site as a tribute to a great baseball player (Derek Jeter) and while Jeter is still a great baseball player, I have my own thoughts as to him being a great person.

If you get bored easily, this article might run a little long for you, but if I'm going to tell you why I don't feel that Jeter is all that great a person it's going to take a few minutes.

Although I've been a baseball fan for well over fifty years, I have never sought out player autographs before but that changed recently. A short while back I was diagnosed with a tumor. This tumor is considered inoperable and for a while I didn't figure that I'd still be here today. The last three MRIs show that it has quit growing for the time being, so it's a little hard to predict the future.

Anyway, going through this experience got me to thinking that I didn't really have anything to leave to my five grand-kids so I decided that I was going to build five small "treasure chests" and fill them with items that my grand-kids would like. Sports autographs seemed like a good idea for some of these items as four of the kids are big sports fans.

What has this got to do with Jeter? Just that I'm beginning to find out that once our "sports heroes" reach a certain point, they no longer worry about their fans and may even take advantage of them.

I know that baseball stars keep pretty busy but stars like Derek Jeter are paid millions of dollars for playing a game, and, as they make a lot more by selling their autographs, I can see why they are not crazy about giving them away except for the fact that the fans are why they make millions to play a game.

But, even their reluctance to give out their autographs is not why I have my doubts about their integrity as a person. My doubts about their integrity stems from the fact that I sent a Derek Jeter card to Mr. Jeter to see if he would autograph it and return it to me so that I could give it back to my grandson. The card belonged to my grandson to start with so now he has a few empty spots in his collection because Mr. Jeter(as well as a couple other "stars") never returned them.

Even if Jeter did not want to autograph the card, he could have stuffed it into the SASE that was included and dropped it in the mail so that Austin would have gotten his card back.

Our superstar baseball player must amass gigantic collections of their own cards at the expense of our kids! Hundreds, or even thousands of starry-eyed kids send in their cards in hopes of getting an autograph and for a millionaire superstar to keep them or even throw them in the trash is in-excusable. The fans are the reason that they are making millions and it would not hurt any of them to take a day now and then to give some of that support back. Especially for the kids!

The younger players are great at returning autographs! It appears that your ego and dis-regard for the fans doesn't start until you've had your name in the papers a few dozen times.

Come on Jeter! Send the kids back their cards even if you are not willing to autograph them.