Is Jack Clark Really Everyon's Favorite - National Card Show Autographs and Kellogg's Baseball Cards

It's never been a goal of mine to meet my favorite players.  I loved to wait for autographs after the game, but it was really just for the fun of getting the autographs.

I've been the National Card Show about 20 times, starting in 1983 or 1984.  Except for two, the only autographs that I've gotten at all of these shows were the VIP autographs that came with the VIP pass.
Who were those two?  Bob Beamon and Dick Fosbury.  It was great to pay the nominal fee involved to get their autographs because my son and I talked to them for about 20 minutes since we waited until no one was around.  Fosbury even let us hold his shoes and Olympic gold medal.

There have been some fun experiences with the VIP guests who generally were having fun signing.  Jack Clark was one of the more memorable ones.  I hate waiting in line, so I ran the risk of not getting an autograph by waiting until the line got smaller.

As I got closer to the front I could start to hear the comments being made to Clark by the fans.  Did I mention that this show was in Baltimore and many (most?) people were getting his autograph just because his autograph ticket was included in our admission price?

Clark played for five teams, but he's known mostly for his days with the Giants and Cardinals.  The comments were all the same, from people not wearing Clark jerseys or Cardinal/Giants gear.  All I heard was things like "you were my favorite player".... ", "I named three of my kids after you", "I voted for you as president", etc.

So, it's my turn and I happily say "I never liked you as a player".  He wasn't phased much, but my son was a bit surprised.  After hesitating, I  added "you were always killing the Cubs".  It ended up being a nice conversation since we were at the back of the line.

I was surprised when checking out his career statistics.  He only played in over 143 games in two seasons.   Not counting his first two partial seasons and his last season, he averaged only 127 games per season not counting the strike season.

If he plays 30 of those 35 games per year, that would we another 2.8 seasons.  Extrapolating from his normal 162 game totals from baseball-almanac.com, he could have added another 78 home runs.  That still puts him in company with Dave Kingman and Darrell Evans, neither who is knocking on the door to Cooperstown.