They swarm hotel lobbies, armed with binders full of baseball cards. More and more are on a mission, one that can mean money and not all of it come by honestly. Players find themselves in the middle of a dilemma. To say no means to sully your image. To say yes more often can mean unwittingly supporting a sometimes-shady cottage industry.
Autographs are big business, and the rules are far from being established.
After storming to a pair of victories in the World Series' first two games in New York, the Braves saw their dreams turned around by a home run from unlikely hero Jim Leyritz. When New York stormed off with a six-game triumph, little did we know what a run the Yankees were beginning and how inexorably Leyritz the utility man would become linked with October heroics. Kirby Puckett was having some vision problems, a minor concern it seemed. But the hero of the 1991 World Series and the most popular player of the Twins' franchise would never play again. Beset with glaucoma, Puckett soon would realize that the problem couldn't be corrected, at least not well enough to be a successful major league hitter, and what would turn out to be a Hall of Fame career was over.