Wednesday, February 10, 2010

1987 Donruss, David Cone



#502 David Cone

The Royals presented a once in a lifetime opportunity at Fanfest. They had a special line that had the three Royals Cy Young award winners signing in it- Bret Saberhagen, David Cone, and Zack Grienke. But, not just anybody could get in this line. You had to posses one of the 200 "golden tickets" to get into it and the only way you got a "golden ticket" was if one was stashed in one of the three thousand Grienke sack packs that were given out at the door. I was lucky enough to get one.



I had one ball on me for the day that I wanted to get Grienke to sign. But, once I pulled the ticket, I knew I had to get those three players to sign it and inscribe their Cy Young years. There was one BIG problem, though. Bret Saberhagen never showed up for the signing. Only the Royals could pull that one off.

As you can see on the ticket, the session was supposed to start at 2:30. By 2:45, it hadn't even started. Five minutes later, Grienke and Cone came out to start the signing. Then it was announced that Saberhagen was in route and he would be signing as soon as he got there. So, basically, if you were in the front of the line, you were screwed out of Saberhagen's autograph. Luckily for those people at the beginning of the line, everybody got screwed out of Saberhagen's auto since he never showed up. It was a complete joke.

But, I did get this card signed by 1994 Cy Young award winner, David Cone. I saved the ball for another day. I think that this card was sent to me by dayf a couple of years ago when I won a contest on APAD.

This is my first autographed card of David Cone, but not my first autograph. Here is a signed postcard that I got from him as a TTM return in the late '90s.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cone was one of my favorite players when I was younger - I almost forgive him for being a Yankee later in his career, but mostly I try to forget about that.

Play at the Plate said...

Congrats on getting that golden ticket even if Bret didn't show. Cone's signature is very nice.