Who is the man: Chris Cannizzaro was coming off the most productive season of his 13-year major league career. In 111 games in 1970, he batted .279, 59 points higher than the previous year in which he was an All-Star.
Can ya dig it: See the two guys in the background? I wonder if the guy on the right is leaning over to spit?
Right on: If Cannizzaro was a player today, I shudder to think what his signature would look like. That autograph there is pretty awesome.
You see that cat Cannizzaro is a bad mother: Cannizzaro was the first Padre ever named to the All-Star Game.
Shut your mouth: Cannizzaro caught all 23 innings of a game the Mets played against the Giants on May 31, 1964.
No one understands him but his woman: Casey Stengel, known for mispronouncing, or plain just forgetting his players' names, referred to Cannizzaro as "Canzoneri".
(A word about the back): Cannizzaro is among 10 catchers to have two unassisted double plays in his career. Cannizzaro is one of only two catchers to perform the feat in back-to-back seasons. But Frank Crossin (1914) and Jorge Posada (2000) did it twice in the same season.
I met a guy once who talked about meeting mike Schmidt and getting his “signature.” Schmidt told him that is was different than his autograph, which he usually used when signing things for fans.
ReplyDeleteSince Topps used their card contracts to get these signatures, maybe that’s why some are so much neater than we’d expect!?