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Interesting piece about letters the writer's father would send to ballplayers who was a freelance writer and he couldn't afford to travel during the Depression. It would be interesting to see a broader piece or perhaps a book on the letters received. Take some time to read the comments section too as they're quite interesting too.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/bo...18winerip.html
Man, what would that letter go for on Pawn Stars?
Great article. My, how times have changed. If someone sent out a questionaire like that now I doubt there would be any responses. Mainly because as a society we have become very leery of things that might invade your privacy. Rightly so I may add. That is a true treasure the author has in those letters. Also very cool that Jonathan Eig wrote in a comment. He wrote Luckiest Man which is a great biography of Gehrig. He pointed that at the time Gehrig did his questionaire he was probably suffering from the earliest affect of ALS. Gehrig did have interesting, although short, answers.
When I was a kid I sent out hundreds of letters to players home addresses asking for autographs. I was a pretty successful in that I got Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Ted Willliams, Leo Durocher and Sadaharu Oh's among dozens of others to respond. Stan Coveleski and George Anderson wrote me short notes.
I wrote a note to George H.W. Bush and got a signed letter and picture back!
I did have some success as a kid mailing letters to players and getting them to sign my card and mail it back. I hit up Barry Larkin a couple of times. Raul Mondesi was one of my big success at the time.