The big one is Joe Pepitone. Despite it being a stickergraph, love this nickname inscription.
A Brooklyn native, Pepi had a solid career, playing with the Yankees in the 60s, then the early 70s with the Cubs. Seems like a colorful character. His interviews are often amusing and he gets mentioned in Ball Four a few times.
Nick Pepitone had a decent collegiate career at Tulane University, but didn't turn pro. Looks like he's from Texas. Not sure if he's any relation to Joe. I think I must've picked this card up at a card show from the 7-for-$5 bins a while back.
And thirdly we have actor/comedian Eddie Pepitone's signature on a Joe Pepitone reprint. He was gracious enough to go along with my goofy request when I met him after his performance at a stand-up comedy show. I talked about it in post when I first got it, four years ago.
So there you have all 3 cards in my "Pepitone auto" minicollection. I'll be on the lookout for any other Pepitones.
Speaking of fun names, here's a non-Pepitone bonus card for the post...
Spanky!
Nickname greats. Wow, that's an excellent idea for an auto set, especially is all the autos include the nickname like Spanky's!
ReplyDeleteWhen you said you had three Pepiton autographs I was hoping Eddie would be one of them. I was pleasantly surprised at his autograph!
ReplyDeleteNickname Greats autographs rule. Gotta wonder what goes through a person's mind when they're signing a card with someone else's photo. I remember going 'graphing years ago and I accidentally gave one of the SJ Sharks a card of someone else. My buddy pointed it out to me... but it was after the guy signed it. The player never said a word or even blinked. In fact, I'm going to dig through my Sharks autoraphs and see if I still have it.
ReplyDeleteJoe P will always hold a special place for me....read his autobiography when I was a wee lad in jr high.....let's just say a majority of the content was not very kid-friendly! Made Ball Four read like a Disney children's book.
ReplyDeleteJoe Pepitone is a third cousin on my mother's side, Pepitones from the upstate NY town of Herkimer. Because of that, I have a nice PC of him including all his Topps issues, some lesser known cards like the 1970 Kellogg's, and an 8 x 10 autographed photo when he was with the Yankees. Never met him in person, but I've been to an Old Timers game when he played. He always gets a great hand at those games.
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