2003 Bowman, Jerome Williams

#BDP27 Jerome Williams

Here is a card that I got signed at an Oklahoma Redhawks game in 2008. Jerome was playing for the Las Vegas 51s at the time, back when they were a Dodger affiliate. There was a lady down by the dugout getting autographs that was joking with me and Jerome. She was saying that he has such a long name that he should charge five dollars a letter for his autograph. Or maybe she wasn't joking and this is just what his free version looks like because I can only make out a "J". Either way, Jerome was a friendly person.

I'm kind of lucky to have this card and the next two signed. I pulled all three cards out of the couple of packs of Bowman that I bought in 2003. I got this card signed before I knew about checkoutmycards.com (where the previous nine cards were purchased from). Before finding that site, I had to get cards signed that I actually pulled out of packs. Since this is the only Jerome Williams card I have, I feel fortunate to have pulled it.

2008 was my first year collecting autographs since my TTM days in the '90s and checkoutmycards.com wasn't the only thing I did not know about. I also did not know about prepping cards. As a result, this card is not prepped and yet it still came out looking great. Nonetheless, I still prep any card that is chrome or has any gloss at all on it. It is better to be safe than sorry (or in this case, lucky).

Jerome pitched in the Majors from 2003 to 2007. He spent time with the Giants, Cubs, and Nationals. This year, he is pitching for the Uni-President 7-Eleven Lions of the Chinese Professional Baseball League (Taiwan).