When I was a kid, if you wanted an autographed baseball you’d go to a baseball game, getting to the park early, bringing a ball and a sharpie marker. Then you’d watch the whole game and afterward stand outside the player’s exit by their parking lot. The players would leave and you would yell to them over the fence telling them how awesome they were and could they sign your ball. Then they would wave, get in their cars and leave without signing anything and you would go home crying to your father the whole trip home until he stopped a memorabilia store while you waited in the car and bought you an autographed ball, except that he didn’t really buy one he just signed it himself in the parking lot. And that’s how we got autographed balls, and we liked it.
Nowadays everything is different. If you want an autograph you go on eBay. Even the balls are different. Kids today will no longer settle for a normal regulation baseball- everything has to have a twist. Like this Rawlings Recordable Autograph Baseball
First of all the baseball has a slot for 1.5″ photos to be slipped in. Secondly it has a chip inside that lets you record a 12 second audio message on it (which makes it much harder for Dad to fake sign it, btw). It’s re-recordable so if you meet an even better player you can record over the inferior player’s message. And if that’s not enough, you can actually sign the ball with a marker or pen just like Dad used to do in the good ol’ days.
