Secretariat Sold for $12.05

I was THIS close to owning a piece of Doug DuBose.

I saw his autograph on ebay and immediately bid. This was no ordinary autograph on a helmet, jersey or compact mirror. No, it was on a 3x5 card. This was from the patron saint of my own corner of the web and it was thorough, very thorough:


Buoyant double-d's leading the way, Doug offered this autograph hound both his Huskers number and his 49ers number, just to be safe and not alienate any potential buyer of course. But he wasn't through yet.

As tickled as the fan must have been to have a DuBose signature in his hot little hand, I like to think that as he walked away DuBose called out, "Hey, kid!" (Whether or not the autograph seeker was actually a kid or not is irrelevant. You always call people who want autographs kids.) "Come back here, I got another one for ya."

Confused, autograph seeker slowly walked back to DuBose's corner of the universe and handed over the card. DuBose grabbed it and then made the autograph seeker turn around so he could use his shoulder blade as a desk. He could feel DuBose writing something more than just his name, which made sense because, well, he already had his name on the other side of the 3x5 card.

This perturbed autograph seeker. What is he writing? My back is starting to hurt. Why is Doug DuBose offering to sign MORE autographs than I requested? It's not a sharp pain, more an annoying pain.

Finally, Doug Dubose finished, turned the autograph seeker around and handed him this:


Again, the buoyant double-d's led the way but this time there was a new message: "#22 in your Program, #1 in your Heart." That old chestnut.

The autograph seeker read it and looked at Doug.

Doug shrugged.

Autograph seeker shook his finger at Doug jokingly and then both laughed hearty, chest-heaving, Japanese animation from the 80's, laughs.

The moral of the story is that I almost bought that experience last night, but I forgot that I had bid.