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Long before Milt Thompson dished out batting tips, he offered me a valuable hobby lesson.

I believe the year was 1989. I was in St. Louis, working on my book Redbirds Revisited. I was waiting in the Cardinals main office in “old” Busch Stadium.

I heard rubber pounding the pavement outside. A man in his 40s came sprinting to the door, shouting, “Sir, may I have your autograph?”

The “Sir” was faster, slipping in to the restricted office space without signing.

The receptionist greeted Thompson. She had his comp tickets ready for that night’s game.

“Sir?” he asked her with an impish grin. “You know anyone named ‘Sir’? My name’s not Sir!”

Sure, Thompson could have felt ornery, or feared that one autograph collector would attract a swarm of other seekers.

Still, his comment stuck. I’ve done everything possible in the years since to personalize every contact I make with every player and retiree. I’ve wanted to make every person feel unique. I research everyone before writing. My letter proves I KNOW them, but want to know them better.

Thanks, Milton Bernard Thompson!

This is the logo I remember from when I first started collecting autographs by mail in the early 1970s.

One of the first techniques I learned was adding ADDRESS CORRECTION REQUESTED under my return address.

Logos change. So do the times.

On a whim, I called my local post office. Essentially, the USPS voice said:

Your letter gets forwarded for one year. For the next 6 months, you’ll get your letter back with the new address label (if available).

No need to write ADDRESS CORRECTION REQUESTED.

I’ll try to verify this in the days ahead. However, I hope it’s true. Adding those words made me feel like a bill collector trying to track down a deadbeat.

Upper Deck knows it. Every autograph collector should, too.

There is power in a box score.

It’s sad to think that fans or collectors still send form letters to retirees. The letter writers don’t know what to say to a former player.

That’s where wwww.retrosheet.org comes in. You can read about ANYONE’s career, finding out their one best day — or only day — in the majors. Believe me, a player may be too busy competing, or simply trying to survive, in the bigs. They don’t have time to keep a scrapbook. I’ve heard from more than one ex-player amazed I can find that data.

The superb play-by-play website is a treasure trove for fans and collectors. Retrosheet helps us. Now, we can help Retrosheet.

I wrote to the website to offer my thanks to these baseball-loving volunteers. I received an inspiring reply from team member Mark Pankin.

“We have a list of the games for which we do not have (complete) play-by-play accounts:

http://www.retrosheet.org/wanted/index.html

If any of your readers has something, not just the box score–we have all of those, that describes plays, that would be helpful. Even accounts for part of a game may help us. Every so often, we get something from a fan who has attended one of these games and kept the scorecard or discovered a parent’s or grandparent’s old scorebook (in the attic. We have searched the newspapers in the major league cities, but once in a while someone finds an account in an older newspaper in a smaller city such as Peoria, IL or Portsmouth, OH. Libraries in the region may have them on microfilm and there are a few obscure online sources.

A word of warning: looking through microfilms of old newspapers can be both frustrating if nothing turns up and hard on the eyes. On the other hand, reading news from way back and seeing the ads in those days can be a lot of fun. By the mid-1950s with the advent of TV as a news source, most papers had stopped showing play-by-play accounts. Even online searches can be very frustrating. Thanks for your offer to help.”

The stats in a box score aren’t what matter. The batter-by-batter account reinforces that a long-forgotten player made it. For one game, they competed with, and against, major leaguers. They were in “The Show.” That player mattered.

Show you know that when you write to someone. Watch the quantity and quality of your responses increase when you do. Check your scorecard collection. Do you have game accounts you could share, missing links in Retrosheet’s mammoth research chain? Even if you don’t, send them your thanks.

They’re preserving baseball memories. OUR memories!

Baseball artist Ronnie Joyner is a throwback. His work harkens back to the 1960s and before, as he gives every former major leaguer a curtain call in history’s spotlight. The autograph collector and die-hard fan explained his vintage techniques.

Q: Tell me how to describe one of your creations. It’s unfair to call them ‘caricature art.’ Each artwork says and does so much more.

A: It’s been hard to describe my drawings in a concise way. Caricature, although that’s what a lot of people call them, isn’t quite right because my portraits are realistic. That’s why I just settled into “bio-illustration”. It, in itself, isn’t very descriptive, but it’s the best I can come up with. Where space permits, I usually define “bio-illustration” by saying “a realistic pen-and-ink or pen-and-pencil player portrait surrounded by biographical text and cartoons.”

Q: What medium are you working in?

A: The bulk of my drawings are done with pen and brush in black ink on DUO-SHADE board. Here’s the deal with DUO-SHADE. It is a newspaper production product that saw it’s use peak from the 1960s through the 1980s. Newspaper production artists and cartoonists used it because you could create camera-ready (old term) gray areas without the need to halftone the piece, thereby compromising the crispness of the solid black linework. Therefore the control was in the hands of the artist instead of someone who might not be very good at creating nice halftones with the stat camera (another old, antiquated term).

With DUO-SHADE, the artist inks all the solid black line-work, then paints a clear water-like developer on the areas where he wants tone to appear. That process brings out the thin 45-degree angled hatch lines that, in the case of my work, make up the tones of the face. These hatch marks are invisible on the DUO-SHADE board until you paint on the developer. There are two bottles of developer with DUO-SHADE. One brings out one set of 45-degree hatch marks, and the second brings out the opposite set of 45-degree hatch marks, thereby making that area an even darker tone. DUO-SHADE a great product that, although most people don’t know the technical reasons why, allows my work to have that vintage feel of the guys from past eras.

Sadly, though, DUO-SHADE was finally discontinued by the only manufacturer. You can blame computer technology for making it obsolete. I have enough stock to do another 25 drawings, then it’s over.

The other medium in which I do my bio-illustrations is pen, brush, ink and pencil on coquille board. These pieces look distinctly different from my DUO-SHADE pieces, yet they also have a vintage look because coquille board is also an old-school newspaper production product. Coquille board has a pebbly surface. First, the artist inks all his solid black line-work, then uses a deep black pencil to add the shading. The pencil shading sticks only to the high points of the coquille boards pebbly surface, thereby acting as an instant halftone device. It’s brilliant because, like the DUO-SHADE, it keeps the artist’s black line-work solid and crisp while giving him complete control over the “half-tone”. Broken record here — coquille board is also now discontinued (at least the “fine” grade that we use), and I have only a couple sheets left. There is still a “coarse” grade being make, but it’s too rough to give the look I really want, but I’ll use it in a pinch.

I have no idea what I’ll do once I run out of my old stock. It may be time to move on to a new approach, but I’ll do it grudgingly.

Q: How can collectors learn more about you or purchase your work?

A: Unfortunately, my work is most likely not seen unless you’re an SCD reader or a member of the Historical Societies of the Washington Senators, Philadelphia Athletics, Boston Braves or St. Louis Browns. I’ve built a website covering all of my various baseball activities, but I’ve never got around to posting it. People can be directed to the Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society website to see many of my bio-illustrations.

They sell prints there and all proceeds go to the society. I’ll always field questions, too, if people want to write me:

Ronnie Joyner, 7780 Traeleigh Lane, Charlotte Hall, MD 20622
rjoyner@tbiinc.com

Former players who’ve been given the star treatment by Joyner adore his work. One MVP called his bio-illustration “better than a baseball card.”

Tomorrow, the artist shares some of the praise baseball alums have bestowed.