Greg “Touchdown” Jennings

A very simple day of shopping like we would normally do at home. You know, run out of the basics so you go and get them. Pretty simple. Oh and a chance meeting with Greg “I catch alot of touchdowns” Jennings later on in the evening.

I tell you, this weather that we are all of a sudden having sure is going to make these very simple days like today, a whole lot more difficult. I know it’s nowhere near as cold as we are being told it will be but man, when it’s windy the cold just goes straight through you.

We’re starting to spend more time inside obviously but getting from the outside to the inside is tough. I keep worrying that the 90 seconds it takes to get from the car park to the mall entrance is just long enough to snap freeze us in an instant. I never realised just how important parking close to the front door of the mall can be.

I went back down the mall this evening to an autograph session with Greg Jennings. I’m not a big autograph hunter but with Greg catching TD’s 400, 420 and 421 he will always hold his place in history.

Autograph signings sure are something else in this country:

1. It’s like you’re on a conveyor belt. Step up to the table, hand your ball to the assistant, tell the assistant what you want inscribed (not the player, the assistant) the player does so and you’re done, next in line please. As impersonal as that is, I can see why it has to be this way. Throw 20 seconds worth of chit chat into every signature and he’d be there all night.

2. You have to pay for autographs here. That shocked me at first. In fact it shocked me so much that the first time I was confronted by it I refused to do it. How, with the career some of these guys have and the money they make could they possibly ask Joe Average to fork out $35 for an autograph ($10 extra if you want an inscription) and feel good about themselves? To alot of people $45 is a good chunk of their pay packet.

Greg, whilst busy was great though. I was able to get a photo with him and when I decided the gold marker I asked his assistant to use couldn’t be read properly, he re-signed the ball in black. Now there’s a good guy.

Thanks to my experience so far with autographs in the US I have put together a small “For and Against” argument with regards to having to pay for them.

Against - At one signing, the ex-players agent (the player refused to talk ‘cause his agent was there) would not allow his client to sign an autograph ‘cause the man didn’t have enough cash on him. He had purchased a $40 book for him to autograph but the agent wouldn’t allow it and the player wouldn’t speak up. I was disgusted by that. This poor guy was shattered. He said that he had to wait until he was paid again before he had enough money but would leave something of value whilst they waited. Obviously that wasn’t good enough. The saddest thing is that on all of the signs advertising the session there were lots of “Come and meet _____ _____” but there was no mention of it costing anything to get the signature.

For - In saying all of that, online auctions are a terrible curse on the worth of a signature these days. I wonder how many of the signed items from tonight will end up on eBay or any of the like. At least by charging a fee, on top of the cost of the item being signed, they are in some way limiting the number of items being resold. I know it’s big business but when people are getting autographs for the sole purpose of making money on them, why shouldn’t you have to pay? A store has to pay for it’s stock after all.

I guess in the end it’s a personal thing. I certainly don’t mind as much as I used to.