Sign Please
By JOHN ARLOTT THERE are few more draughtily deserted places than a football ground when the play is over and the crowd has pressed its jostled, shoulder-to-shoulder way, out through the side-streets to the buses. Yet, for an hour after any match, you may find a last pucker of activity concen- trated outside the players' entrance, where the autograph hunters, books and leaky fountain-pens poised, wait for the stars of this week-end.
The " football-going public " cuts across the social strata and it was not surprising to see a minor, but optimistic, film- actor leaving a recent match where he had probably been a guest of a director of the club. One of the autograph- collectors recognised him and, hurrying over, presented his book silently but commandingly under his nose. Forty others followed and, with urgent cries of " Oo is 'e ? " extorted their dues also. It was the actor's sense of public relations, no doubt, which enabled him to give no sign of realising that only one of his momentary fans knew his identity.
Autograph collecting on any wide scale is, 1 suppose, about as old as this century. Certainly The Cricketer's Autograph Birthday Book, with the pages facing the players' biographies left blank for signatures, was published in 1906 with some small sale. Certainly, too, autograph collections dating from about 1900 appear for sale far more frequently than any from an earlier year. , In my own early days of watching cricket, I would tuck away my grubby score-card at the close of play and, with my book of pastel-shaded pages, wait by the exit to collect the autographs of the cricketers as they left the ground. There might even be as many as half-a-dozen of us, similarly humbly engaged, touching our school-caps with a respectful request for the signature of those distant and mighty creatures.
Lancashire had, in those days, a player on their staff whose name was L. Horridge: he was twelfth man in the particular match I recall, and he was also much of the stamp of George Duckworth. 1 had begged and been given Mr. Horridge's autograph three times—once without the final " e " and twice with it—before I eventually realised that the wicket-keeper who had been throwing his body through the air to take the bowling of McDonald was the prosperous-looking man with the rolled umbrella whom I had ignored on the assumption that he was a wealthy supporter. At the same match, I thrice deliberately persuaded Maurice Tate to sign for me; on the second and third occasion in the hope that he would speak to me. He did, in fact, say " Good night "—with a smile worth a book of autographs. In the matter of footballers' autographs, I was an utter snob: I collected only internationals, with an occasional exception in the case of one who had been given league honours or, if he seemed to have a promising future, an international trial match selection.
That is to say, like most of my kind then, I collected the autographs of people whom I admired specifically. Now. unless increasing age has narrowed my view, the search is, for autographs in ¶eneral-of anyone with any claim to eminence or notoriety. Thus, there is the collector whose obviously uniform letter, making only a brief concession to flattery, runs : " Dear Sir, I collect the autographs of people eminent in all walks of life. Will you please sign with your normal signature on the accompanying slip and return it in the enclosed stamped envelope.
Yours faithfully, The " star " industry of Hollywood has, undoubtedly bred the terser " Dear Sir, Please send an autographed photograph of yourself. Yours truly, ..... "
Meanwhile, the camp-followers of cricket—with the inevit- able " Oo is 'e ? " in their ears—find themselves signing a page headed " Speedway Riders," " Umpires, etc." or even ' Others." Nor is the old cap-touching, If you please, sir " technique still in use. The press of urgent young bodies holds the prisoner to the wall, while books, score-cards, programmes, tickets, old postcards and margins of daily papers are thrust at him with a curt " Sign," " There," silence or, even, " Haven't you got a pen ? "
" It will," Patsy Hendren once said, " be worse when nobody wants it." In his day that may have been the fact: it is less clearly so now. A lesser league football eleven can expect some twenty autograph books on the dressing room table on match days: there is no word of request or thanks : there they are : it is assumed that they will be signed. While the recently departed Australian cricket side were still on the boat to England, they signed five thousand team-sheets for distribution to those who asked for autographs. They estimated that another eighty requests were made at the dressing-room on each day of the tour. Meanwhile, their hotels were picketed day and night in every town they visited: they were accosted in the street, at meals, in the cinema. Boys ran on to the ground between the fall of wickets in Test ma.tches to ask the fieldsmen for their signatures, and on two occasions the police had to be called to clear a way for the team to reach the pavilion at the close of play. Both Hassett—who was in bed at the time—and Johnston—who was shaving—were visited in their hotel bedrooms at eight in the morning by a complete and unannounced stranger who demanded their autographs without apology for the intrusion. On that tour, Lindwall must have signed his autograph at least three times for every ball he bowled and Harvey five times for every run he scored. The most popular twelfth man with each Test side was one capable of imitating the writing of the members of the team.
Yet every cricketer and footballer and speedway rider must feel that, because the game he plays is the centre of a little world, he ought to sign those books in case they belong to future cricketers, footballers or speedway riders. Sidney Barnes, the Australian batsman, carried a rubber name-stamp with him on the 1948 tour of England.
They were, perhaps, fortunate days, thirty years ago. " What a wonderful innings, Mr. Hobbs," I said, if you don't mind me saying so! As he signed " J. B. Hobbs " in a small neat " hand on the corner of the page, he looked kindly at me. " Oh, I don't know," he said, " do you play yourself ? " " Yes, sir "—where was this exciting conversation going ? " Then I expect you'll get some hundreds yourself, too.' That was one reason why it was a little hard to look unconcerned when my mother told me she had given my autograph book away to a little boy because I had grown " too big for things like that." It is, too, one of the reasons why even the damning case which, I fancy, I have outlined, ought not to damn.
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