2000 QC River Bandits Roox, Terry Tiffee

NN Terry Tiffee

Here is one of my favorite autographs. The reason why I like this card is because Terry Tiffee is the only person I have personally known to make it to the Major Leagues. Tiffee and I were teammates with the 1998 Pratt Community College Beavers. Not only were we teammates, we were also close friends during the two years we went to school there.

In 2001, my buddy Dustin and I made our inaugural ballpark roadtrip. We saw games at Camden Yards, Veterans Stadium, Yankee Stadium, Fenway Park, Skydome, and Wrigley Field. The game at Wrigley was a day game, so after that we high-tailed it to Davenport, Iowa to see Terry play for the Quad City River Bandits. We hit some heavy traffic leaving Chicago and ended up getting to the game in the fourth inning (which worked out fine since we got in for free). After the game, we met up with Terry and he gave us some balls and stuff. We would have went somewhere to hang out, but Terry's folks were in town that weekend.

Once his season was over, Terry was heading to Liberal, Kansas to see his girlfriend (now his wife). I was going to school at Kansas State at the time and he called me up and asked if he could crash at my place for the night. My roommate at the time also played at Pratt, so we were more than happy to have him stay. As soon as he got to our place, he gave us both a couple of cards that he had signed. It was pretty cool seeing an actual baseball card of someone you knew. That will probably be the last time that that ever happens to me.

I like how Terry signed this card. He made the bottom of the two "f's" in his last name look like the # sign and then put his number after it.

As mentioned before, Terry is playing for the Quad City River Bandits in this card. The River Bandits are still around today, although they did briefly change their name to the Swing of the Quad Cities for a bit. One difference is that they are now affiliated with the Cardinals instead of the Twins.

How is this for foreshadowing? When we were at Pratt, Terry actually owned a River Bandits hat.