More Information About The Slimeball Who Tried To Use His Kids To Get Mike Trout's Autograph

So this video was making the rounds yesterday, and to my surprise, MIke Trout was catching a lot of heat for "not signing for these poor little kids". Nate blogged it and said that Barstool Sports is an anti-adult autographer seeker company. Well said.

I wanted to talk more about what this video doesn’t show - the 40-year-old weirdos standing off to the side, who use their kids to do this shit. Make them stand out there all day and night, hoping and waiting to see pro ball players they can then search for photos of in their reams of binders, to ask them to sign. These kids probably don’t even know who Mike Trout is. (No offense to Mike Trout.) 

Autograph hawks suck. Ones who use their kids are the scum of the Earth.

And they're everywhere. That's the really nuts part. Every team has these weirdo's who follow them, and visiting teams. In the offseason, training camps, spring training, during the season- outside the hotels, airports, stadiums, restaurants, you name it. These players can't go anywhere without being hounded. 

Sure there are kids who want their favorite player to sign a baseball for them, or get a a jersey signed, or a picture with them. But this is about the grown men and women who whore their kids out to do this shit. It’s so bizarre/sad. Players purposely don’t sign for them because it never ends. 

(Sidebar - I've walked out of a bar in Chicago with Anthony Rizzo at 4 in the morning to get in a cab and watched a kid and his dad approach him with a picture and baseball and say, "Hey Kris Bryant you’re my favorite player can you sign these for me please?" Who the hell lets their kid stay up that late? And how do they know where these guys are at all times? It's insane.)

Here are two friends of the program who reached out to me after I tweeted about this last night to tell me I was basically dead on with my assumption- 

And this -

p.s. - I know I was a stud centerfielder and short stop when I was younger, but these autograph hawks in Cleveland didn't know that. So them accosting me when I was leaving my hotel earlier this summer was very uncalled for.

p.p.s. - one of my favorite autograph memories from when I was a little kid was getting to Fenway early for batting practice to try to get Roger Clemens to sign a card I had of him. He signed for a bunch of us kids but he did something very odd. He bent a corner on each card he signed. I had no idea why until I brought it back to where I was sitting and showed my father. Turned out he was making sure we couldn’t turn around and sell the cards for big money by devaluing the card by creasing a corner. Rocket gonna rocket.