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In sports the autograph is fundamentally a province of baseball, though all athletes are besieged in some measure. Football players who are able to write their name often do so. "I won't sign anything flimsy," says golfer Lee Trevino, who recalls autographing a $5 bill once for a persistent woman in a restaurant. " 'I'll treasure it forever,' she told me. Of course, I got it back from the cashier in my change." The only autograph basketball's Tom Van Arsdale ever solicited was from an Indiana high school kid, Oscar Robertson, when Van Arsdale was even younger. "He was eating a hot dog. I'll never forget the way he shoved it in his pocket to free his hands. Mustard and all." They became teammates in the pros.
Certainly not all autograph seekers are innocents. A collector in England nearly kept sprinter Florence Griffith Joyner from a starting line last season. "I told him I would give him an autograph after the race," she said, "but he grabbed hold of me and wouldn't let go." Reggie Jackson often conducted debates of this kind with his public, including a beery brawl in Milwaukee that escalated when a shredded Jackson autograph got sprinkled on his french fries.
During Henry Aaron's 1974 stalk of the lifetime home-run record set by Babe Ruth (who dispensed autographs cheerfully and without charge but never could fathom their allure), Aaron took the alias of Diefendorfer in an attempt to throw off his pursuers. He registered that way in out-of-the-way havens and avoided the company of his Atlanta Braves teammates. But a small boy with a ball-point pen still found him in a cavern of the stadium. "Are you a Brave?" the boy asked. Aaron was charmed. "Sure am, son," he replied with a great laugh. "May I have your autograph?" "Of course."
It would be a better story if he had signed "Henry Diefendorfer," but the truth is he wrote "Hank Aaron." Too bad. Diefendorfers are going through the roof.