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="soupcan"]I've met Bud Harrelson and shared that story here before.
He was in the seat next to mine at the game when Jackie Robinson's 42 was retired. He couldn't have been nicer. Very pleasant, disarming and eager to please (bad teeth though). I asked to see his WS ring. He took it off, handed it to me and then stood up and walked away! He was gone for at least a half inning. When he came back I gave him back his ring and said "Gee Bud you don't know me, I could've just taken your ring and disappeared!" He said "Eh, that's the '86 ring, nobody touches the '69." |
WOW.
just wow.
Fantastically awsum meeting.
I've got a Buddy story.
I've met Bud more than once.
I think I posted the most recent when his team was here playing the A.C. Surf.
First time wasn't really a meeting.
In the early 70's my buddies and I would either go wait by the Diamond Club (I did meet Willie Mays this way, walked him to his pink car.
Walked,HA! Trailed him by a few feet was more like it. But I shouted things to him and he glanced back and responded as he walked),
or, on getaway games (or even as an alternative to the club), go out by the Mets bullpen area.
In later years players would park in and drive out from there, but when I first started going to games I don't think this was the case. Maybe.
Thats the area I saw Gil Hodges driving into the game in his car once, before the game.
May have been this same game.
Anyways, the Mets would come out from there and climb on the bus on getaway days.
So I remember seeing the team come out, and got on line for the bus, climbing in. This was 1970 or 71.
All my favorites were there. Cripes, all the Mets were my favorites.
Agee in particular. I remember thinking he had such a kool mischievious smile.
Maybe it was his eyebrows that gave this impression, more than his crooked mouth.
Seeing Cleon I remember thinking, "What is that, a scar on his face? Never noticed that on my baseball cards."
Course I'd only been collecting cards a couple a years.
Well, I could go through the whole line describing what I saw and thought, but lets jump to Buddy.
Buddy and Tom terrific were together in line. They smiled and waved and I was like ,WOW, that's Buddy Harrelson!
And yea, that pitcher Seaver too. I knew Seaver was something , but I was never gonna be a pitcher.
I was gonna be a skinny little fielder like Buddy.
" Hey! Buddy! Buddy! Over here!."
Wow! He looked, smiled and waved!
"Guys, HE LOOKED AND WAVED AT ME!"
And ,of course, one of my cronies had to nudge me in the side saying," Nah! He was lookin at me!."
And that wasn't the clincher.
They all got on the bus. I tried to watch where they were sitting, but the windows were tinted, although this was not a fancy bus.
It pretty much looked like a city bus, but was higher. The windows were the same exact as NYC buses in those days, but tinted.
And one window slid open,...and...who was that?
It was Buddy! He peeked out and then stuck his whole arm out the window.
He had a stack of...what were they?--I was trying to see...
Whatever they were, he tossed them. He threw them way up into the air and they flew through the air like big pieces of confetti,
spinning and twirling and fanning out, falling like big rectangular identical snowflakes down into the crowd.
All us kids scrambled for them like they were one hundred dollar bills.
I got one! Lifted it, looked.
It was a postcard, bordered in orange and blue with little waving fans and a small Met pennant.
The center was clear white, except for.....BUDDY'S AUTOGRAPH!
"LOOK GUYS! I GOT BUDDY'S AUTOGRAPH!"
They gathered round me in a semi-circle, mouths agape, a collective gasp of awe escaping from them
like you hear these days when Tiger Woods hits a long drive.
"LOOK GUYS!", I pointed to the bus.
Buddy's arm had once again appeared from out of the bus window. His hand held another stack.
He tossed it. My pals were off and running, scrambling, falling over each other, falling over themselves.
Diving through and around people. One of them went right between someone's legs as he hit the ground
kind of lunge-crawling towards one that had settled there on the pavement.
Ha! I stood there and laughed with true glee.
I had my first ever autograph!
A Met!
BUDDY HARRELSON!
My friends weren't going to be out done when it came to such a prize and I feared for the other kids there as they attacked the crowd in quest of theirs.
I don't remember which of my friends got it, or if all got one for that matter. I do remember this: the second stack of postcards were not Buddy's autograph.
It was definitely Buddy who threw the second stack as well because I saw his face as he hurled them.
But scrawled on the second set of similar post cards was the name Art Shamksy.
UGH! I was caught napping in my joy!
I could have had Shamsky's autograph too!
And that guy has the coolest sideburns on the face of the earth!
Someday I'm gonna have sideburns just like him (never have)...
But I wasn't going to complain. I was ecstatic. I got Buddy's.
The skinny little guy like me.
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The craziest thing is that the most definitive thing Millan can say about his tenure is that he played alongside Buddy Harrelson.
