Replacing baseball legends: Stories you haven't heard about six Hall of Famers' final games

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Jeremy Affeldt is a three-time World Series champion. The left-hander pitched 14 seasons in the big leagues, making 774 regular-season appearances and 33 more playoff appearances.

Very few players have ever been more successful in the postseason; Affeldt fashioned a career 0.86 ERA and 0.702 WHIP in the playoffs, and his teams went an incredible 12-1 in postseason series, with the only loss coming in the 2007 World Series with the Rockies. Of course, he made scoreless appearances in all four games against the Red Sox. 

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But ask him about his favorite moments in baseball, and it won’t be long before you hear stories about his last game of the playoff-less 2009 season, when he replaced future Hall of Famer Randy Johnson in the final game of the legendary lefty’s iconic career. Affeldt threw two scoreless innings in that one, too. 

“For me, those are the kinds of things that I'll remember being able to do in my career, you know? The World Series, everybody remembers that,” Affeldt said. 

“What people don't understand is that things that we remember are not always the things that everybody else remembers. And the things that matter to us are not the things that matter to all the fans. So, like, that's a big deal for a kid who was watching Randy Johnson pitch, becoming one of my childhood heroes, to pitching and helping him seal his 300th Hall of Fame win, and then pitching in his last game right behind him? Those are the things that people, they just don’t understand that. But I do. I don't get to always talk about it but it's something that means a lot to me.”

Affeldt belongs to a relatively small circle of baseball players who have had the honor of replacing Hall of Famers in their final games. The Sporting News spoke to six members of this fraternity of players, and they all share Affeldt’s love of their moment, mostly because, as players, they recognize what it took for those legends to become legendary. 

“I’m a fan of baseball players. I'm a fan because I know how hard it is to do what they're doing,” said Brian McCann, who pinch-ran for Derek Jeter in his final game. “So you just appreciate it. It takes a lot of hard work to get to where a guy like Jeter got to. He’s an icon. The fans don't see the work that's put in, but as a player, you know how hard it is to to do and to get to where he got. You gotta dedicate your entire life to your craft and that's what he did. He did it from the minute he was probably 5 years old to the minute he retired. He gave everything he had to the game and to himself.”

Today, we’re going to hear the stories not of the legends — those have been told — but the stories of the players who replaced them. 

Brian McCann, an unlikely pinch-runner for Derek Jeter

Derek Jeter had just delivered the final hit — his 3,465th — and the final RBI — his 1,311th — of his Hall of Fame career, reaching out to spoil a nasty 1-2 pitch from Boston starter Clay Buchholz that was flirting with the outside edge of the strike zone. Jeter’s high chopper turned into an infield single in the third inning of Game 162 of the 2014 season and chased home Ichiro Suzuki, another member of the sport’s 3,000-hit club. 

All eyes at Fenway Park on that beautiful afternoon focused solely on the Yankees legend as he walked back toward the first-base bag. Well, all eyes except for those belonging to Yankees manager Joe Girardi.

“I just happened to walk by, I think,” veteran catcher Brian McCann said with a laugh, “and he just said, ‘Grab a helmet and go run for him.’ It happened kind of on the spot. They were going to pinch-run for him, and I wasn't playing.”

So McCann, at the end of his 10th season — his first clean-shaven year with the Yankees — grabbed a helmet and went running out toward first base. Jeter was waiting with open arms and McCann gave him a big hug, and then McCann disappeared from the moment, as far as anyone else was concerned. 

The stage belonged to Jeter, and the fans in the ballpark of his biggest rival gave him a long and well-deserved ovation as he exited a game for the final time. McCann, standing there in almost total obscurity, soaked in the moment. 

“I felt lucky that I was the one who got to go out there and pinch-run for him,” said McCann, who was in his Age 30 season. “I just remember running out and I was excited to watch him have his moment at Fenway Park. I don't even know if there was anything said. I just wanted to watch his exit and take it all in from my perspective. That was a cool moment for all of us, the fans, the players, all of us. That was really exciting.”

The Yankees were out of the playoff equation, so the final score didn’t really matter. If it had, maybe McCann wouldn’t have been the first choice as a pinch-runner in that situation, with the Yankees holding a 3-0 lead in the third inning of the season’s final contest. McCann was an outstanding player — seven All-Star nods in his 15-year career — but he wasn’t exactly fleet of foot. I asked whether that was his only career pinch-running appearance.  

“I don't think that was the first, but you know what? It's a good question,” he said. “I don't know if there was another time where it was one of those situations where it was like, ‘It's funny, let the slowest guy in baseball go out and run for you.’”

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Baseball-Reference game logs show that it was actually the second pinch-running appearance of his career; his first was in 2012, and he’d have one more in 2018. Fun fact: He actually scored on two of the three appearances. In 2018, he scored on an Alex Bregman home run. In the Jeter game, McCann moved to third on a double by Brett Gardner and scored on a sacrifice fly by Mark Teixeira. The Yankees went on to win the game 9-4, though few people noticed. 

Maybe if McCann had been standing farther down the dugout, Girardi would have sent someone else in to pinch-run for Jeter. But McCann’s glad it was him. 

“I feel like I appreciate it more,” he said. “To get to that level as an athlete, you have to dedicate everything to the game and not everybody is willing to do that. He clocked in for 20 years and put his best foot forward and he was going to figure out how to become the best player he could possibly become and one of the best players to ever do it.”

McCann paused. 

“You saw that video that year of everybody tipping their hat to him? I thought that was perfect because that's all you can do,” he said. “When you put in 20 years of work and you're an icon and you put yourself there, you just tip your hat to the guy. ‘You did it, you did it at the highest level. You did it the right way. You're just an awesome guy.’”

Wisconsin native Jim Gantner pinch-runs for his boyhood hero, Hank Aaron

Jim Gantner grew up in Eden, Wis., a village with a population many shades under a thousand folks about an hour north of Milwaukee, throwing baseballs against the garage while pretending he was one of his heroes on the Braves. One day he’d be Hank Aaron, another day Eddie Mathews or Johnny Logan. So, getting drafted by his home-state team in 1974 — the Braves had long since moved to Atlanta, and the Brewers called Milwaukee home — was an unforgettable moment, but not quite the equal of the day two years later when he was called up to the major leagues by the Brewers. 

The left-handed hitting infielder made his big league debut on Sept. 3, 1976. He grounded out in his first at-bat — against Detroit’s Mark Fidrych — but finished the game 2-for-4 with a run scored. True dreams-come-true stuff. On the field, sure, but mostly in the clubhouse. 

“When I came up, I was intimidated by Hank Aaron because he was an idol of mine, but he was really very friendly,” Gantner said. “You could talk to him on the bench. He was quiet, but if you went up and asked him about a certain pitcher or something about hitting, or how he hit and his philosophy at the plate, his eyes would get wide open and he was very helpful to us young kids.”

Gantner played regularly that month — the Brewers had been eliminated from the postseason picture long before his promotion to the majors — and after a three-hit game in the opener of a double-header on Sept. 28, his average stood at .283. He went hitless in his next three games, though, and was on the bench for the penultimate game of the season. 

“I was mad because I wasn’t in the lineup,” Gantner said, “but it turned out to be something very special.” 

Aaron, with his 3,770 career hits and 2,296 career RBIs, was in the lineup, batting cleanup. He grounded out his first two times up, then came up with runners on second and third. Aaron added one final tally to his hit and RBI totals, with an infield single that chased home Charlie Moore. Manager Alex Gammas turned to the rookie infielder and said, “Gantner, you’re pinch-running.”

It was a surreal moment for Gantner. 

“I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “Here I am pinch-running for this incredible ballplayer, this incredible person, and I’m shaking his hand, the first guy to do it. I was on cloud nine. I just thought, ‘This can’t be real.’ But it was.”

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Gantner’s career with the Brewers was as close to storybook as any kid from a small town in Wisconsin could have hoped for. He played with his home-state team for 17 years, finally playing the last of his 1,801 big league games for the Brewers at 39 years old, in 1992. Even though his Brewers lost the 1982 World Series, Gantner was fantastic, batting .333 with four doubles, a triple and four RBIs in the seven games against the Cardinals. 

So, yeah, he’s got stories. That one from his rookie year is hard to top, though. 

“My grandkid even did a story on it. That was cool,” he said with a laugh. “He had a baseball hat on and put glasses on like I had and stood in front of the class and told the story. He had to write about a famous person and it was Hank Aaron, and he threw me in there, too.”

Rookie Steve Dreyer steps in for an injured Nolan Ryan

Nolan Ryan was 46 years old when, in February 1993, he announced that the upcoming baseball season with the Rangers — his 27th in the majors — would be the final one of his illustrious career. The last campaign for the remarkably durable Ryan, who hadn’t made fewer than 27 starts in a non-strike season since 1970, didn’t exactly stick to the preferred script, though. 

The big Texas right-hander missed time with a knee injury, a hip injury and a pulled rib-cage muscle and had only made 10 starts by the time he returned from the DL in mid-September. But his brilliant outing on Sept. 17 against the Angels — five strikeouts and only one unearned run — gave hope that maybe, just maybe, he’d get the send-off he deserved. He was scheduled to make one road start in Seattle, then finish his career at home. 

That dream ended quickly in the Kingdome. Omar Vizquel led off the bottom of the first inning with a single, then Ryan lost the strike zone, walking Rich Amaral, Ken Griffey Jr. and Jay Buhner. He got ahead of Dann Howitt, but the 29-year-old left-handed hitter who struggled to hit at the big league level smoked a 1-2 offering over the fence in left field. It was only the fifth — and it would be his final — home run of his MLB career. 

Ryan fell behind the next batter, Dave Magadan, 2-0. His next pitch was a strike, but as he let go, he felt a pop and a burning sensation in his right elbow. Ryan knew what had happened, and an MRI confirmed the torn ulnar lateral ligament. He threw one more pitch, almost certainly the slowest “fastball” of his career and motioned for the trainer. 

Enter Steve Dreyer, a rookie right-hander. 

“We were down in the bullpen not knowing what was going on, and the phone rings and they tell me to get up,” Dreyer said. “I definitely was not expecting to get the call down in the bullpen. Going into a game, generally as a pitcher, you either know you're starting the game or you know you're going to be coming in at some point. So you get mentally prepared and physically prepared and do what you need to do. I hadn't done any of that.

“He walked off the field and when the crowd kind of figured out what was happening, they started cheering for him. He actually came out of the dugout and turned and waved while I was out on the mound starting my warmup pitches. Obviously I realized, ‘Oh my gosh, this is a monumental occasion, and not necessarily a real positive one.’ That was his final pitch, his final moment. And so I knew that it was part of something, so to speak, historic.”

Because Ryan left with an injury (skip to 2:15 in the above video), technically Dreyer could have taken as long as he wanted/needed to warm up on the mound. But in the stark reality of the moment? 

“I felt like all eyes are on me and I’d better hurry up, otherwise the crowd's gonna start booing me,” he said. "I was kind of self-conscious that way, to be honest with you. I wouldn't say I wasn't ready, but I'm positive I did not take as many warmup pitches as I normally would have.”

So maybe it’s not surprising that Dreyer’s first pitch to Magadan was ball four. Because Ryan had thrown most of the pitches in the at-bat, he was credited with his MLB-record 2,795th career walk — after he threw the final pitch of his career. Of course. That was actually the fourth time in Ryan’s career he’d left mid-batter and the reliever delivered ball four, with the walk credited to Ryan.

“I was a rookie and up until that point, I had been up and down in terms of my performance,” Dreyer said. “I had some good games, I had some not-so-good games. So I knew that I needed to shift my focus and try to get this next guy out because if I let Magadan score, that run gets credited to Nolan and I didn't want to do that. I was trying to win a job for the next season, so I was able to shift focus.”

Dreyer escaped the inning without any more damage. He shut down the Mariners in the second, third and fourth innings, too. He finally was pulled with one out and one on in the fifth inning. 

Amazingly, replacing Nolan Ryan wasn’t the only “final” moment Dreyer had with a Hall of Famer in that 1993 season. He was also the last person ever to get George Brett out.

“Crazy couple of weeks,” Dreyer said with a laugh. 

He started Game 162 against the Royals, throwing eight solid innings. Brett went 0-for-3 against Dreyer, with two fly outs and a ground out. But in the last at-bat of his career, in the ninth inning with players from both teams — including Nolan Ryan, in uniform  — standing outside their dugouts to watch, the future Hall of Famer singled up the middle against Tom Henke. 

Tony Graffanino pinch-runs for Wade Boggs, sans pomp or circumstance

Not every final moment for a Hall of Fame is full of pageantry, tears and celebration. 

Tony Graffanino pinch-ran for Wade Boggs in the final game of Boggs’ career, on Aug. 27, 1999. The 13-year big league veteran didn’t realize that was Boggs’ final game until Jan. 20, 2022, when I reached out to for this story. 

“When I got your email I was like, ‘Really?’” he said. “Even after the fact I didn't even realize it obviously until I got your email. I had no idea.”

Boggs’ exit deserved more fanfare, but circumstances are sometimes cruel. 

He’d secured his spot in Cooperstown long before he returned home to play with the expansion Tampa Bay Devil Rays for the 1998 season; a career batting average of .331 really left very little doubt. Boggs entered the 1999 season just 78 hits shy of the hallowed 3,000-hit mark. He marched along through his Age 41 season, rapping out hits at a .300 rate, and he reached the plateau on Aug. 7 with a home run at Tropicana Field against Cleveland lefty Chris Haney.  

“That, I do remember. And it was awesome,” Graffanino said. “I was actually batting behind him in that game. I was on deck, so I got a pretty good view of the whole thing. That was surreal. To see a guy go deep? It was just like, ‘Holy cow!’ I mean that was super special.

“I'm shaming myself, maybe I should know baseball history better, but at the time I had no idea if anybody had ever done that before. Guys get their 3,000 hit, but hitting a homer? To be able to soak it in for all that time as you jog around the bases. He was probably floating.”

Thing is, Boggs had injured his knee on a slide against Seattle five days earlier, but so close to that magical 3,000-hit mark, he played through the pain. It didn’t slow him down at the plate; from Aug. 3 to 26, Boggs batted .385 in 45 plate appearances. 

So when he walked with one out in the ninth inning of Tampa Bay’s game at Cleveland on Aug. 27 — the Devil Rays trailed 2-1 — Graffanino was sent in to pinch-run, and nobody really gave it a second thought. Certainly, Graffanino didn’t. Boggs was a 41-year-old veteran with an aching knee and Graffanino represented a much better chance to score the tying run. 

But an MRI taken that day revealed a torn medial meniscus, and that would require surgery. Still, Boggs didn’t look at it like a career-ending injury. He was batting .301 on the season, so he clearly still could contribute at the plate. 

"It's not like this is something they have to take a gamble on, whether or not I'm going to be healthy for next year," Boggs said, as reported by the Tampa Bay Times. "It's not like blowing out an elbow or blowing out a shoulder. It's just a piece of torn cartilage that needs to be trimmed up.

"It's an outpatient procedure; I'm not staying in the hospital. You zip in, they change the oil and you zip out. The procedure is just so simple and all the rehab now is just leg weights. The rehab and me working out will work hand-in-hand. So now I get a month jump on starting my workouts.”

But in early November, Boggs announced that he was retiring. No fanfare, no standing ovation as he walked off the field. 

“He's just a professional,” Graffanino said. “Just a guy that went about his business, did his work. You can see why he had the success that he had.”

Jeremy Affeldt takes the mound after Randy Johnson’s final strikeout

Jeremy Affeldt knew Randy Johnson’s reputation long before the two were teammates in San Francisco in 2009. He’d idolized Johnson as the tall, menacing-looking lefty learned to harness his powerful arm and developed into a star in Seattle while Affeldt spent his teenage years across the state in Spokane. And he’d watched from across the diamond in the bigs, as Affeldt’s teams faced off with Johnson’s squads from 2005 to 2008. 

Both left-handers signed with the Giants as free agents after the 2008 season; Affeldt as a key piece of the bullpen, in the prime of his career at 29, and Johnson as a 45-year-old starter with 295 career wins in a Cooperstown career.  

“I was just super nervous to play with the guy because you had all you heard all the things, how he's angry and he plays these drums and listens to heavy metal music and screaming all the time,” Affeldt said. “And he doesn't look nice, you know?”

Affeldt, who was entering his eighth big league season, showed up a week early to spring training: new organization, new teammates and the need to acclimate to the weather difference between Spokane and Phoenix. Affeldt was putting away his gear when a towering figure appeared next to his locker. 

“Hi, I’m Randy.”

Well, yeah. The future Hall of Famer needed a warmup partner. 

“It was the weirdest thing ever because, I mean, I'm eight years in and ... I've been in World Series already and I literally got nervous,” Affeldt said. “I was like, ‘You want to go throw?’ And he's like, ‘Yeah, I want to go throw. Let’s go throw.’ And it was the weirdest thing playing catch with him because I'm playing catch with one of my heroes, you know? And we're on the same field, wearing the same Giants stuff.”

Affeldt was also suddenly very aware of the challenges of playing catch with one of the tallest players in MLB history. The target is different. 

“I threw one down near his shins because I was just nervous and he just like let the ball go,” Affeldt said. “He looked at me and he was like, ‘Man, I'm like 6-10, you can't throw that. You can’t throw it up higher?’ I'm like, ‘I can, Randy. All right, all good man, I'm just a little stiff.’ So he’s like, ‘All right, well don't hurt me, man.”

Affeldt quickly learned to love his tall teammate, everything from his intensity on the mound — which had not dampened with age — to the way he’d ride his bike to the ballpark to the way he’d dress to the pranks he would pull in the clubhouse. An example: 

“I'm not even embarrassed by it because it’s clubhouse stuff. I was going to the bathroom, sitting on the toilet in St. Louis and he dumped the whole five-gallon bucket of water on my head. I’m on the toilet and he just dumped it,” Affeldt said, laughing. “And I was like, ‘What just …?” I honestly think I had my phone to on me, too. It was such a shock and then I kind of started laughing. I came out of the bathroom and Randy's right there. He's laughing. He's like, ‘I got you! I totally got you!’ I'm like, ‘Yeah, you did, Randy. But you're not supposed to tell me who did it. Like, that's kind of the whole deal, man.’ The whole clubhouse thought it was the funniest thing ever because, you know, he’s Randy Johnson and he just walked into the bathroom with a bucket and dumped it on me.”

So, Affeldt knew his fellow left-hander’s place in history when the end of the 2009 season rolled around. He’d already contributed to one big moment in the Big Unit’s season; on June 4 he was one of four relievers to help preserve what was a 2-1 lead when Johnson left the game. The Giants wound up winning 5-1 for Johnson’s 300th career victory

A month later, though, he landed on the 60-day DL with a rotator cuff injury. He came back in late September as a reliever and made four appearances heading into the final series. 

“Going into that last game in San Diego, it was over,” Affeldt said. “He’d come back but he wasn't even healthy then. He’s just not going to end his career on the DL. He wanted to throw. He just wanted to say that he finished pitching on the field, and we all knew it.”

Johnson entered Game 162 in the seventh inning. The Padres used a passed ball on a third strike, two bunts and a foul pop-up to score an unearned run to tie the game 3-3, but with the go-ahead runner on third base, Johnson caught Adrian Gonzalez looking for Strike Three to end the inning — with what else but a slider on the inside corner — and bring a fitting close to his Hall of Fame career.  

“That’s a great way to end your career, for the strikeout king,” Affeldt said. “It was an honor for me to come in after him. It was great and I was so thankful I got to do that. Shoot, I was thinking as I was running in, ‘I came in for this guy's 300th win, too,’ which was nerve-wracking because he only went through (six) innings and it was a one-run ballgame.”

Affeldt pitched two scoreless innings, then Pablo Sandoval homered to lead off the 10th to give the Giants a 4-3 lead and Brian Wilson pitched the bottom of the 10th for the save. Affeldt got the win. 

Johnson officially retired the following January, after 22 seasons, 4,875 strikeouts and 305 wins. On his first year on the Hall of Fame ballot, he received 97.3 percent of the vote. 

“We are playing with our childhood heroes. I could be in the big leagues for 10 or 12 years and I get to play with this guy? It’s like, ‘Holy crap, this is Randy Johnson!’ I had played against him, faced off against him,” Affelft said. “But I had never been the same clubhouse, put on the same uniform and gone through the gauntlet that we run in 162 games, experienced some of the things that you don't get to experience with a guy unless you're on the team with them. 

“He signed a bottle of liquor to me and I haven't even opened it. It's signed and I’m never opening it. It sits there on my shelf and no one touches it.” 

Chico Walker runs out to relieve Carl Yastrzemski of his left-field watch

Carl Yastrzemski set the MLB record for most career games on Sept. 17, 1983, when he played his 3,299th game to move past Hank Aaron and into first place. Two days and two weeks later, the Red Sox legend played his last game, with Cleveland visiting Boston. 

Yastrzemski became a legend patrolling left field at Fenway Park, but hadn’t played a single game out there since 1980, spending all his time either as the Red Sox’s DH or first baseman. But on Oct. 2, the final game of his final season and the end of an era for baseball fans in New England, he was back in left field one final time. Jim Rice, the everyday left fielder was at DH for the game, and went 2-for-4 with a homer and three RBIs. 

That lineup configuration meant somebody had to be the player who replaced in Yaz one last time in left. Enter Chico Walker. 

“Most everything that particular day was pretty much pre-planned,” Walker said. “Yaz would go out for his last inning and after they did the warmup tosses with the other outfielders, before the pitch is thrown, I'm to run out on the field and congratulate him and replace him in his last game.” 

And that’s what happened. Yastrzemski went 1-for-3 with a third-inning single and sixth-inning walk. He popped out for the third out of the seventh inning, then trotted out to his spot in left field. The entire ballpark knew what was happening next, and as soon as Walker popped out of the dugout and started to run out to left field, the fans went crazy. 

“It was awesome, an awesome feeling and it's something that I will never forget,” Walker said (skip to 16:30 to see Walker running out). “Running onto the field, I pretended to myself that the fans was cheering for me. I know they were cheering for Yaz, though.”

Walker made his big league debut in 1980, but by Yaz’s final game he had only played 28 games in the majors. He was blocked positionally by Rice in left field, and other factors were at play, too. Walker had 58 home runs and 97 stolen bases in Triple-A from 1980 to 1983. 

“In the New England area, having played in Pawtucket the previous couple of years, I was someone they was familiar with, a guy with a lot of speed and someone they had been waiting to see for a long time,” Walker said.  

Walker played one more year in the Boston organization — 130 games at Pawtucket, three in the majors — and signed with the Cubs after the 1984 season. Pete Rose passed Yastrzemski on the games played list in 1984.

One final story … 

I wanted to offer a little peek behind the curtain at how this story originated. 

If you follow me on Twitter, you know I’ve regularly posted packs of junk wax baseball cards for the past few years; heck, I even now have a Twitter feed (@myjunkwax) dedicated to the cards. The stats and facts and stories that are shared in the comments blow me away on a daily basis. It’s a daily ray of light. 

On Jan. 9, I posted a pack of 1987 Topps — January was 1987 Topps month on the feed — and Jim Gantner was there on the top row, his signature glasses atop his mustache and smile. The card has long been one of my favorites, primarily because it’s actually a reverse-negative image; you can see the Brewers’ logo on Gantner’s hat is backwards. 

Lou Olsen, a lifelong Brewers fan from Kenosha, Wis., replied with a story, then a picture of a baseball signed by Gantner, with the words “Hank Aaron’s last baserunner” written below his signature. Olsen wrote, “If you ever get a chance to meet ‘Gumby,’ you should.”

The idea of talking with Gantner about pinch-running for Hank Aaron was a no-brainer. Of course I wanted to. So I headed over to Baseball-Reference — how most good story ideas start — and started going through pretty much every single Hall of Famer who retired after 1960 to see how they exited the final game of their careers. A list was born. I reached out to several teams, trying to track down these guys. Every player who responded was thrilled to chat. It’s been a minute since I enjoyed reporting a story more. 

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I’d told Gantner in a text message the quick version of how the story idea originated. So after we talked about Hank Aaron, I asked him about the autographed baseball.

“Do you sign a lot of baseballs like that?”

“No!” he practically shouted into the phone, laughing. “Where’d you see that baseball? I think I’ve only signed the one ball like that.”

I was not expecting that response. The idea of the only baseball he’d ever signed like that in his life — leading to memorable phone calls with a half-dozen retired ballplayers, about a half-dozen Hall of Famers — showing up in my Twitter feed was a bit mind-blowing.   

So, of course, I had to ask Olsen about the story. 

“He was going to be at a charity thing, in the basement of a church of something. I knew at those sorts of events you could be a little more brave asking them to sign something more interesting,” he said. “I had met him a few times before and I was feeling particularly brave, so I decided I was going to ask if he’d do it. Maybe I’d catch him on the right day.”

Olsen, a self-described Brewers nerd, just went for it. 

“When I asked him, his face just lit up. It was cool. He said, ‘That’s what you’d like me to write on the ball?’ Then he proceeded to tell the story of that day, how Hank got a base hit and they called Jim to go run for him. He said it was a very humbling experience, having that connection to Hank Aaron.”

And, of course, the Gantner ball is on display at Olsen’s house right where it belongs — next to a couple of autographed Hank Aaron baseballs.

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