Open Memori...memmor...Collectibles Thread

The saddest day of my life, my collection of Will Clark baseball cards were stolen from my parents car in the early 1990s. That's the closest to memorabillia I get.

When are the Giants going to put Charlie Brown into the rotation? Good grief.  

I probably mentioned this before on the site, but the Giants memorabilia I treasure the most is the orange Croix de Candlestick button that they handed out for the very last night game at the Stick, 9/29/99 vs. the Dodgers. Ironic, since the game time temperature that evening was 70 degrees without a touch of wind. Crazy Crab made an appearance, and Tommy Lasorda was booed lustily. Just a wonderful night all around.

My fave Giants collectibles are the 1974 team pic that I stupidly tested a felt pen on . I was 6, after all. My late 80s hat, some scorebooks from the 1970s (with John 'The count' Montefusco on the cover of one) and my Joe Morgan bat from the 25th anniversary in 1982. Anyone remember the Joe Morgan pregame show?

In 1989 I sent a few of my favorite players cards and balls to sign.  Will Clark sent me a ball back autographed.  Mark Grace sent me a card.  Jim Abbott sent me a signed 8 x 10 and info about joining his fan club.  Greg Jeffries, Ken Griffey Jr. and Tom Gordon didn't send me anything back.

I've got the same Randy Winn, and Kruk and Kuip bobbleheads that Grant has, plus a Woody bobblehead from Carl's Jr.  However, my favorite is the Dwight Schrute one.

i was at that game, too.  at least i think i was.  i think they did it a few times, but 1982 i remember going to a lot of games.

i remember them driving out on the field after the game in beach cruisers station wagons.  i remember a conga line going around the stadium in the second deck.

i remember leaving game 161 early, stopping in a video arcade on the way home and upon arriving home finding the game still going.

i remember not leaving game 162 early.

I've repeted this many times I'm guessing but here goes again.

-A Jay Canizaro signed joke broken bat.  Was given to me after a game by Bill Mueller/his mother.  It was my birthday (probably around 7) and a foul ball was hit back towards the 1st base side.  It was well above the stands but as I watched it it hit one of the light poles (or perhaps one of the plywood squares fixed to them, I'm n ot sure) and bounced right back towards me.  It hit the row behind, I tried to get it but the couple (in their mid to late 20s) behind me got it.  And they wouldn't give a kid the ball!  We happened to be sitting beside Bill Mueller's mother (why she was in the general admission and not the box seats I'm not sure) and she said that she would get me a signed ball and maybe the bat as well.  So we met with Bill Mueller near the exit to the stadium and I got the bat and a signed ball.

-Related to the first, my little league coach used to hand out packs of cards to us after each game and one time I got a Bill Muller rookie card.  I was able to go to a signing that Bill was at and got it signed as well.

-And of course when I was a kid I went to get signatures at Municipal Stadium.  Usually I used balls I could find in the parking lot, home runs hit that weren't already collected when me and my dad got there early.  I've got 6 balls in various stages of coverage of signatures.  Signatures I can read:

Bill Mueller
Benji Simonton (2)
Yorvit Torrealba
Chad Zerbe (4)
Bobby Bonds, Jr.

Those were good days.  The greatest collectible I've got is days my dad came home a little early, we drove to the stadium, drove around the parking lot quickly to see if there were any batting practice home runs left, and then go on in.  We'd get stuff from the BBQ, sit along the fence and watch the teams warm up.  Then it's off to the seats when he'd get a beer and sit in the stands and I'd be along the dugout getting signatures.  We'd watch the game and I'd sometimes go down to the RF stands trying to get a foul ball and see if any other kids were down there.  Learning baseball from the old man the whole time though.  Those were the days.

Don't know where the ball is, but sometime in the early nineties or late eighties, my dad caught a foul ball hit by Bob Dernier. He stepped out into the aisle, it hit him in his bare hands, skipped straight into his chest, then back into his hands, so he got a nice round of applause and an usher stopped by to give him a patch to commemorate the occasion. He ironed it on to a Giants hat he still has somewhere.

As for me, I've got a souvenir cap from a game I attended but don't remember at all--because I was a year and a half old at the time.

Some time after the game, my dad saw a pile of these caps on sale for, like, two bucks each, so he bought ten. About three years ago, I found a couple of them in our basement, and I've since worked this one into my sartorial rotation.

This is way esoteric and is related to the SF Giants peripherally, and isn't really memorabilia but it's very important to me. A seminal, sentimental symbol of my progress so far. I framed the very first press pass I ever got, last April at San Jose Municipal Stadium. It's a small orange rectangle with the SJ Giants logo, WORKING MEDIA in print, and then my name written in black Sharpie. It, along with my press pass from Raley Field from later that summer, are framed and hanging over my bed.

As for traditional baseball memorabilia, cards and balls and whatnot, I can't think of Giants stuff that I have. I have some bobbleheads. Omar, Winn, Moises from this year's giveaways. I have an Ichiro bobblehead as well as the Giants bobblehead set that Carl's Jr. gave away a few years ago. I have a few signed balls (Ken Macha signed a ball for me at A's Fanfest in 2002, the aforementioned Prince Fielder baseball, not his testicle), some quirky things friends got me from Ebay like game programs from the 1980s, tickets I saved from memorable games such as  my ticket from the AAA All-Star Game in Sacramento in 2005, the World Baseball Classic semis and finals tickets, and the stub from Bonds' 714 game. Just stuff that's important to me, I guess.

just let me finish work, go home, scratch that, watch the nat'l championship, go home, find it, take a picture, download it to my computer, upload it to flickr, then post it here.  totally worth the wait.

1. Will Clark & Robby Thompson signed rookie cards.

OBTAINED: Scottsdale, spring training 1987.

STORY: I was 15 and an even more die-hard fan than I am today (a bit more spare time back then...), so the process of going to Giants spring training and actually getting signatures from my two favorite players was amazing and larger than life. Robby Thompson couldn't have been cooler. I met him at the hotel where I was staying, and told him we share the same birthday. We waited for me to run and get his card from my room, then we  talked for a good long while... or should I say he talked to me (I was too nervous to say much).  

The Will Clark encounter was disappointing, on account of his surliness, and I'll leave it at that.

2. Kruke & Kuip signed Giants pennant

OBTAINED: Montreal, regular season game, 2004.

STORY: Last season for the Expos in Montreal, and as per usual, I time my annual sales trip to coincide with the Giants visit to "the big O." After suffering through a brutal, bottom-of-the-9th, Wilkerson grannie where the Giants yet again snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, I linger after the game to drown my sorrows in a final beer. On my way out, I buy a Giants pennant for my bar back home.

Long story short, Kruke & Kuip are on the same subway car as me, see me with a Giants pennant, and we get to yakkin' for a good 15 minutes. Fun memory- Kruke is absolutely as cool and energetic in person as he comes across on the radio.

3. Sixteen Will Clark rookie cards.

STORY: Thought that Nuschler was a sure-fire HOF. The cards are  probably worth less now than when obtained/purchased them in 1987. Value probably spiked in 1991.

4. SF Giants cap signed by Rich Aurilia.

OBTAINED: 2003 Spring Training, Scottsdale, Kiva Grill.

STORY: "Double date" - Girlfriend & I dined with him and his hot wife. Told lots of stories about Estes, Meuller, and J.T. Snow. Richie was nice, yet I would describe him as "intense." In a good way.

5. Wayne Gretzky signed hockey stick, from his rookie year.

STORY: My mom won it in a raffle, during his rookie season. Yes, Gretz was that good- his stuff was already being raffled off as a rookie. The Great One. Some guy offered my mom $1000 for the stick at the time, right after she won it. Thank goodness she said no, and now it proudly hangs in my bar, next to the Giants pennant.

 POST-SCRIPT:

• I caught a Barry Bonds foul ball in spring training, got it signed by John Miller, Dusty Baker, and Barry Bonds, then gave it to my boss at the time, Trip Hawkins, who is a serious collector of Giants stuff.j
• I also caught a Larry Walker home run ball when I was 19, during my one and only visit to beautiful Wrigley field. I wanted to keep it, but was heavily pressured to "throw it back!" by the Cubbie bleacher creatures, so back onto the field it went.

Back in Elementary School I was sitting along the first base line, and right after the game ended none other than THE Giants' master First Baseman - Mr. Todd Benzinger - threw me the large orange and white Wilson batting glove he was wearing under his fielding glove. Still have it.

At one of the Mother's Cookies card games ('95 I believe) I got Rod Beck to sign his card for me.

Quite the collection.

I got John Burkett's autograph on a baseball at the Dugout Store at Stanford circa 1990.-91 I put into one of those plastic ballholders and was quite proud. It was the first autograph I'd ever gotten myself.

Unfortunately, during my college years I left it on a window sill that apparently got quite a bit of sunlight and the signature completely faded by the time i noticed it, which I'm completely bummed out about...still.

I'm also rather proud of my substnatial Will Clark baseball card collection, which I put together myself and didn't STEAL from anyone!

I remember getting a John Burkett autograph at  a card show in 1992 or 1993.  That, and my Adell Davenport signed glove, circa god-knows-when, are my prized giants possessions. </pathetic>

Dave Flemming and Jon Miller signed a piece of my dad's notebook paper and it says "Happy Birthday" to me on it and "Thanks for being such a great Giants fan." I believe Flemm wrote that last bit.

Ticket stubs for every game I went to get used as bookmarks in the various baseball books. My most favorite is SF vs. NYM, August 26, 2005. Also see above for Bonds 714 game.

Oooh, I was looking for a place to put my own Schmidt bobblehead. Anyway, I don't have much for Giants paraphernalia, but I do have various Will Clark rookie cards and Barry's ball:

Let's play i Spy!

My memorabilia collection includes:

-Autographed baseballs from Ernie Banks, Ricky Henderson, Steve Garvey, and Buck O'Neill

-Autographed Bob Feller cap

-Autographed photos of A-Rod, and Willie Mays

-Barry Bonds and Willie Mays bobbleheds

-Salute to Cal Ripken Jr's last game in Anaheim

-Schedules from the 1999 season (final at Candlestick) and 2002

-Commemorative pins for Bonds 500th and 600th home runs

-Commemorative pins for the first interleague matchups between the Giants/Orioles, Giants/Indians, and Giants/Red Sox

-Rookie baseball cards of Ozzie Smith, Rickey Henderson, Tom Glavine, Barry Zito, Mark McGwire, and Sammy Sosa

-Baseball card containing a piece of Orlando Cepeda's jersey

-Program from the 2002 Giants/Angels world series

-Ticket stubs from the Division Clinching game in 2000, Final Game at Candlestick, Bonds 600th home run, and Game 3 of the NLDS in 2002.

-Barry Bonds foul ball

-Front page of SF Chronicle day after Bonds 70th and 71st home runs

I'll give a nickel to the person who finds the most.

I wrote to Will Clark in 1989 and asked him to sign a baseball card, which he did. It's a Fleer All-Star  card, and the back lists all of Clark's 1988 accomplishments.

Later in life, I married a girl from New Orleans. Coincidence?

As a young man I worked at the Round Table Pizza in Linda Mar in Pacifica and Darren and Royce came in for lunch on occasion.  I always like D-Lew and there is still a soft spot in my heart for Royce as I hope to see him play well into his sixties, I see it as a way to hold on to my youth.  Oh, and I always envied that Chevy (Typhoon?) that he drove....

I don't have a lot of Giants memoribilia yet, because admittedly I haven't been a fan for very long.  But I did make a cool discovery last summer while digging through some old toy boxes in my grandparents' basement.

Out of a shoebox with a few hundred baseball cards from 1985, I discovered this gem:

I don't know if this counts as memoribilia exactly since it's just an unsigned baseball card, but I think it's still pretty cool, especially considering I was only five years old at the time and about as rabid a Cardinals fan as a five-year-old can be (I had a habit of throwing out any baseball cards that weren't St. Louis).  Also cool because I think Kuiper sort of looks like a "Repo Man"-era Emilio Estevez on this card.

That's about it for major Giants stuff, although I do have a signed Barry Zito ball I bought two years ago at the A's Root Beer Float day.  It wasn't meant to be Giants memoribilia at the time, but, uh, yeah.  I guess it is now.

Neifi.
Perez.
Game.
Used.
Bats.

My Mom worked as a flight attendant/stewardess and in 1979 had the Giants on a trip back to SFO from New York. One of the results of the flight is that she tried to set up Ed Halicki with one of her friends, so she invited him over to our house for dinner once the season was over a few months later (in the meantime she introduced me to him after a game at the 'Stick and he gave me a ball...Ok, got the memorabilia/crap part out of the way).

The night he came over was Game 6 of the Pirates-Orioles World Series. It was a really interesting night for an 11-year old baseball fanatic: on the one hand I got inside info on how to pitch to Willie Stargell and Jon Milner, on the other hand I got to see my mom and her friend laugh their asses off in the kitchen at the prospect of her friend dating him (they shoot horses, don't they?).

I still have the ball, and look at it now as a reminder of one of those transitional moments in life, when you still love something but see it from a new perspective.

My two favorites are a Barry Bonds signed bat and ball that my girlfriend got me for Christmas years ago, and an original Battle of the Bay Poster from the '89 World Series.

1987, 7 years old I'm at Spring Training with my dad.  A family friend is a guy in the front office, who invites us down to the dugout before the game, meet some players, walk around.  Basically create the greatest day of my life.  So we go down, sitting there in a chair waiting is the one, the only, Say Hey Kid, Willie Mays.  Willie was of course a staple of Giants Spring Training, I have a number of balls and cards signed by him, but this first ball was amazing.  "To Miles, Best Wishes, Willie Mays".  The side story to the ball was when he called over Mike Lacoss (who seemed about 7'5" to me).  He introduced "Buffy" to me.  Come to think of it, LaCoss was kind of a jerk, wanted money to throw a pitch to me.  Anyway, the ball was made more magical as the Giants were playing the Cubs that day.  I also got Ryan Sandburg and Will Clark on that same ball.  Roaming the stands that day was Orlando Cepeda, who also obliged by signing the ball.  Then I had to go and ruin it by adding the legendary Trever Wilson to it.  In anycase the ball is still sitting on my desk now, at age 27, and has traveled with me to every city I've lived in.