Rance Mulliniks

For reasons I will probably never to be able to completely explain, Rance Mulliniks was my favorite baseball player when I was a kid. Even though he started with the Angels, my favorite team, by the time I had started following baseball he was on the Blue Jays. But instead of choosing Tommy John, Rod Carew, Brian Downing, Reggie Jackson, or any other Angel, I chose Rance as my favorite player. On my 8th birthday my parents took me to an Angels-Blue Jays game in Anaheim and Rance hit a home run, the most thrilling baseball moment of my childhood (not counting the time my brother almost spilled coffee on Johnny Bench, obviously.)

When I was seven I mailed him his rookie card, told him he was my favorite player, and asked if he would autograph it for me. A couple days later when I told my mom I had done this, she explained to me what a self-addressed, stamped envelope is (I had no idea, I had just mailed the card and letter to the Blue Jays in an envelope), and told me that I would probably never see that card again.

But a week later, I got an envelope in the mail with this autographed card in it. Rance, or a member of his posse, had autographed the card, addressed the envelope to me, and put a stamp on it. (I'm joking of course about his posse, although it's a nice image to think that Rance had an actual posse, like maybe instead of going to strip clubs or recording rap albums they would go out in the off-seaon and round up criminals in the Tulare area.)

So if you ever read my blog, Rance (talk about delusions of grandeur), thanks again. You made a seven year old kid very happy, and I will be glad to reimburse you for the stamp 22 years later.