Author: Mario Alejandro
You gotta love the World Wide Web. I spent the majority of two years writing non-stop about every sports cards and baseball related topic in my head without ever expecting anyone to read. Along the way, this little blog caught on and the rest is blog history.
One of my favorite activities was covering Florida Marlins games with my then lovely wife, Tatiana. We went to a seemingly endless number of games to support our team but every once in a while I’d be just a little more excited about the opposition coming into town.
One of those instances happened in 2008 when the Colorado Rockies came to Dolphin Stadium (or whatever it was being called at the time) with a coach from my all-time favorite club, the Bash-Brothers Oakland A’s era. Mike Gallego wasn’t a superstar but he was a big part of those teams and I was dying to get an autograph or photo with the guy, now a coach.
Unfortunately, after the game when calling his name Mike did not hear us and walked straight into his team bus. I was disappointed to say the least and when I got back home wrote a not so scathing story about my experience. It wasn’t anything as bad as the Madison Bumgarner saga but it was a bit rude.
You won’t believe my surprise when out of the blue just a couple of days ago I received an email from none other than Mr. Gallego himself, a 13-year veteran of the game I love. I expected a few harsh words so you can imagine my shock when this email was a simple apology from Mike!
Mike assured me that had he heard a fan calling out for his attention he would have loved to come over for a bit. He says that since his playing days have come and gone, there just isn’t as much fan fare as there once was and the last thing on his mind was that someone would want an autograph or photo.
First off, I’d like to publicly apologize to Mike. Sometimes fans expect more than they are entitled to when going to a game and I am very guilty of this myself. While I have never been rude or disrespectful and would never consider myself an “autograph hound”, I did attend every game from 2007-2009 expecting every player to pose for photos or sign.
Secondly, I’d like to ask every collector and fan of the game to pull out their Mike Gallego cards and take them to the stadium next time he’s in town (Wikipedia says he’s a coach with the A’s now). He’s a good example of what more players, current and retired, should be like. You can’t please everyone but clearly Mike is trying.
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