So, about a month ago I quietly sent out a handful or TTM requests to some players who admittedly were longshots.  These were guys I did not expect to get ANYTHING in return, but figured it was worth a shot since it was pretty early in the year. Well, the first one returned, and lo and behold it was longest shot of all, Yu Darvish.

The Iranian-Japanese right-handed pitcher has been one of the best pitchers in baseball since he came to the Major Leagues in 2012.  So, on Friday night, my wife and I were having dinner at a local establishment, sitting at the bar, and in the background I heard that Darvish had a perfect game going through 7 innings. Surprise!

Then out of nowhere, my wife tells me that I got a small envelope in the mail at my mother-in-law’s house and she  pulled it out of her purse.  It’s the Darvish return envelope! (Worth noting that my wife has no idea who the envelope is from, other than “Y.D.,” the initials that I placed on the envelope

I rip it open at the bar (kinda funny to watch me do this I bet) and instantly see that my 2012 Topps Darvish rookie card is within the envelope, but is unsigned.  Behind the Topps card is an over-sized card often given away by clubs, and it’s signed … digitally.

Bummer.

Let down.

Waste of time.

Whatever term or phrase you want to describe this situation I suppose could be justified.  But what you cannot say is that Darvish is a bad guy for not signing.  There are lots of players — let alone mega superstars — who simply do not signed through the mail and their requests simply go un-returned.

So while I did not get a real Darvish autograph in this attempt, it was still a cool story, given the circumstances. And I do appreciate the return.

On a side note, a day later I received this TTM return, I did receive a real Darvish autograph, one that I purchased on eBay a week earlier.  It’s the pictured 2012 Topps Chrome Rookie Autographs, graded BGS 9.

This entry was posted on May 12, 2014 at 2:58 pm and is filed under TTM Success with tags baseball, baseball cards, Iranian, Japanese, Rangers, Texas, Topps, Topps Chrome, TTM, Yu Darvish. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.