P. A., a man of great ideas...

As is the norm at the card shop on Saturdays, Pete, P.A. and I sit at the counter and discuss all things baseball. From the relevance of Bert Blyleven to how old the Red Sox are getting, we always have friendly debates.

P. A. has decided to branch his collection into memorabilia. We discussed last week the possibility of doing some 'through the mail' autos as well as checking out various Hall of Famer's charitable organizations, websites and museums to see where and how we can get some legendary players' autos.

I counted that I had 17 autographed baseballs when I packed my card room into boxes. I, then, added no less than 9 more this summer as I was living in Greenville. This summer, notable autographs were picked up from Orioles Minor Leaguers Brandon Waring, Caleb Joseph and Billy Rowell, to name a few. I also picked up one from Orioles legend Boog Powell.

I already had an autographed ball of Brooks Robinson, and was asked not to bring anything to sign at the 'Evening With Brooks' dinner in October, but I was able to get my buddy Max, and my son Chris autographed programs from the event.

Yesterday, while waiting for the Yu-Gi-Oh kids to finish a round of their tournament, I decided to begin some research to see which Hall of Famers' had websites, foundations, museums, etc that sold memorabilia or allowed items to be sent for autos. Here are a couple I took a look at:

The Bob Feller Museum: http://www.bobfellermuseum.org/
For $50 you can get an autographed baseball from Bob Feller which says 'HOF '62' You can also pay a little more for various other inscriptions such as 'I struck out Lou Gehrig', 'I struck out Ted Williams', 'The Heater From Van Meter', etc. They also have a huge selection of autographed memorabilia from various other Hall of Famers and other former players.

Stan Musial's Official Webpage: https://www.stan-the-man.com/
You can get a Stan Musial autographed baseball from here for $100.00. Personally, I think that isn't bad at all for an autograph from one of the greatest of all time.

The Yogi Berra Museum: http://www.yogiberramuseum.org/
Currently, no autographed items are up in the shop section of the webpage.

Brooks Robinson's Official webpage: http://www.brooksrobinson.com/
You can send in items for a fee during certain times of year. The next time items will be accepted is April 2010.

Whitey Ford's Official webpage: http://www.whiteyford.com/
The shop section of the webpage is currently unavailable as upgrades are being performed.

So, there you have a few of the sites I looked at this weekend. My question now is:
Which living Hall of Famer's autograph would you want the most if you had the chance? My answer would be Stan Musial, followed by Hank Aaron.