When we last checked in on our little experiment, there were just three responses to the Great Baseball Autograph Experiment resulting in an 8-5 score in favor of the National League. Since then we’ve received just two more replies but what lacked in quantity more than made up for it in quality. Card number four was returned by Tigers pitcher, Max Scherzer. Max took the time to personalize the card to my daughter, Abby, with his signature in blue Sharpie (we’re finding blue Sharpie to be the pen of choice among our signers). That’s five for Max for the signature with 15 bonus points for the personalization. American League with what turned out to be a short-lived 25-8 lead. Response number five has been the absolute best one we’ve gotten to date. Cardinals pitcher, Jason Motte, completely embraced the game. Along with his signature in the famous blue Sharpie, Jason personalized the card, added a ‘God bless,’ and finished it off with a ‘2011 WS Champions!’ Ah, but he wasn’t finished. Also enclosed was a hand-written note from Jason, which reads:
Dear Abby,
Here is a 45 pointer.
– Signed (5)
– Personalized (10) & inscribed (10)
– This note (20)
Hope this helps!
Jason also signed the note.
Jason was right on with the 45-pointer although the breakdown is a bit different (five for the signature, 15 for the inscription and 25 for the very cool note). Thanks to Mr. Motte, the National League is back on top, 53-25.
My daughter’s smile (and quite frankly mine) spread wide across our faces when we got Jason’s envelope. To take this even further, I tweeted Jason just to thank him and he took the time to respond to THAT and tell us how cool he thought the game was. Now I have no idea how this whole thing is going to turn out but right now, Jason Motte is our MVP.
So we sit with five responses out of 30 envelopes sent just about seven weeks into the experiment. Our hope and enthusiasm has been bolstered by these last two envelopes. We’ve got about two months left in the season and still have 25 requests floating out there. That leaves a lot of potentially great things yet to come. We’ll keep you posted on the results with another update at the end of August.
We also hope you’re doing something like this with your family. If you are, let us know how it’s going.