Pujols and Rolen Greed?

[sammy]

I personally don't care anything about any of these modern whiners.

Not a single one is worth anything near what they receive.

All of the best ball players are dead, or retired more then 30+ years ago.

[stkmtimo]

I personally don't care anything about any of these modern whiners.

Not a single one is worth anything near what they receive.

All of the best ball players are dead, or retired more then 30+ years ago.

I agree 100%. Pujols is an arrogant jerk as evidenced by the way he handles himself on the field and the way he disrespected Ryan Howard after Howard won the NL MVP.

I'm not sure about Rolen as much but this story proves the obvious.

Tim

[hblakewolf]

[quote=stkmtimo;31738]I agree 100%. Pujols is an arrogant jerk as evidenced by the way he handles himself on the field and the way he disrespected Ryan Howard after Howard won the NL MVP.

I had an opportunity to meet Rolen twice when he was with the Phillies. I called in a favor and had a field pass. After Rolen was finished with B.P., I introduced myself and asked him to sign his rookie jersey and spikes. He looked at me as though I was from the moon! He made a face similar to when you vomit and smell it yourself! He shook his head in disbelief, and walked into the dugout. My freind asked his friend (coach John Vukovich) to help us. We gave both items to Vukovich, who took them into the clubhouse and had them signed.

What was interesting is the fact that the Diamondbacks were on the field, and I did not even realize who was standing next to me-Luis Gonzalez! I spoke with him for a brief minute, and he was as nice as could be! I told him I was a huge collector of game used equipment, and that I recently purchased his Tigers game worn helmet. He got a big laugh out of it.

I watched Rolen before, during and after BP while he was with the Phillies. He rarely signed. I also attended the ALCS auction, and visited him at his autograph station. Again, he looked as though he was pisse* off the entire time, and when I asked him to sign his rookie bat with "Rookie Gamer", he said, "Yah, right....." and refused.

After these two incidents, I sold everything of Rolen's.

Just my two cents worth.....


Howard Wolf
hblakewolf@patmedia.net

ALWAYS BUYING PHILLIES, PORTLAND BEAVERS AND PORTLAND MAVERICKS JERSEYS

[RobSteinmetz]

According to the article, Tri-Star's VP said that they had problems with "a lot of the key players". Shame on Pujols, Rolen, and all the other players who would not lower their fees so Tri-Star could manufacture more World Series memorabilia to sell to the public for a profit. The least they can do is give us the opportunity to cough up $1,500 for a team-signed baseball.

The nerve of those players.

[kingjammy24]

Shame on Pujols, Rolen, and all the other players who would not lower their fees so Tri-Star could manufacture more World Series memorabilia to sell to the public for a profit. The least they can do is give us the opportunity to cough up $1,500 for a team-signed baseball.

hi rob,

i don't know what happened in this specific case nor have i any idea of the personality of pujols or rolen. i'm just curious about the general notions you're conveying here.
i understand that the gist is that if tri-star is going to make a mint, then the players shouldn't subsidize that profit by lowering their fees. ie: if there's pie to be had, then everyone should get their fair share. i suppose there's some merit to that, however:

1) tristar has been doing shows for a long time with the biggest names in sports. that suggests that they likely consistently cut equitable deals. i have a hard time believing that they cut deals that appeased clemens, montana, marino, emmitt smith, magic johnson, ad nauseum but for some reason low-balled pujols. given their history of landing the big fish and their strong desire to get pujols, it's difficult to think that tristar offered anything less than fair/full market value.

2) at the end of the day, everyone was worse off because the player wouldn't lower his fee.

- fans won't be able to get a team/pujols/rolen signed ball.
- pujols foregoes the tristar money.
- pujols could've donated that fee to his charitable foundation. in that case, his charitable foundation lost out on the money.
- tristar (and the middle class folks who work there) lost money

by a player not lowering his fee, who won? the only benefit that i can see that came out of it was that pujols now has some more leisure time.

if that's the case, then in the grand scheme of things, what's wrong with players lowering fees? sure tristar might make slightly more but does that really matter given that a) the entire fee was chump change to a guy who's already made $33mm and b) his foundation would've received a hefty donation and c) most people at tristar are working folks who could use the money more than pujols? i mean, so what if tristar would've made a bigger profit than pujols. at pujols' level it's all just monopoly money anyway, so hypothetically speaking, does it really matter if he missed out on an $80k difference and tristar made it instead? i think the benefits for everyone would've outweighed the monetary loss to pujols.

sometimes i don't understand the penny-pinching ways of some ballplayers. they get so irked at the thought of someone making a couple bucks off them. so what if some collector makes an extra $50 because eddie murray signed it on the sweet spot? is murray so hurting for cash that him making $50 for someone who likely needs it more than him is a bad thing? is he so broke that he really needs every single nickel he's got comin to him?

reminds me of manny ramirez personally selling his jerseys to sportsworld for whatever it was..$50k or some such. a guy who's made over $126mm concerning himself over making another $50k. unbelievable. personally, i think it'd be more fun to take each of those 25 jerseys to fenway and toss em all into the crowd. of course, that'd mean i'd lose out on $70k and some fans might earn some cash for themselves from my items. can't let that happen. i need my almighty cut. do some of these guys know something we don't?..can you really take it all with you when you die?

rudy.

[MVP]

Rudy:

Amen.

-Henry

[staindsox]

Rudy,

I think that was the single greatest posting I have ever read on this forum. Awesome!!!

Chris

[RobSteinmetz]

Rudy,

I'm not a show promoter, so I won't pretend to know what is involved in these types of negotiations. The point of my post was to remind folks that this signing was intended as a means of generating profit for Tristar. Just as I'm sure there are many folks who are upset because they've been deprived of owning a team signed ball, I'm confident that both Pujols and Rolen had valid reasons (financial or otherwise) for not participating in this signing. But, because I'm not in their shoes, I won't rush to judgement.

[allstarsplus]

There is certainly a free agent mentality in the autograph/memorabilia market. TriStar deserves to make money just as Pujols and Rolen. At some point you say to the Free Agents -----NO!!!! The deal has to make sense all the way around. On team signed balls, it is a common practice to take a smaller price on the autograph. Is Pujols worth more than the WS MVP Eckstein?

I remember when St. Louis Sports Collectors had Pujols to a show in 2001 at something like a wholesale of $45. In 2003, Tri-Star was at $125 for a wholesale price on a ball. Last year I was quoted a wholesale of $180 from ESP.

The $200 level puts him in line with Jeter, Clemens and Bonds for the current player top dollar range.

Its always nice having a WS ball with all the players, but maybe Albert didn't think he was worthy of signing it as he hit in the WS 3 for 15 and with that .200 batting average.......OUCH.......

Andrew

[Cardinals5]

Hello all,

I attended the Cardinals Winter Warm-up this year and saw an awesome 2006 Cardinals Opening Day roster team signed ball for sale. The seller, Cardinal Authentics,is affiliated with the Cardinals. They run the store located in the outfield of new Busch stadium and sell game used items such as balls, bases, scoreboard numbers, World Series used Champagne bottle, etc. Their price was $2,995 for this ball and it included an awesome Pujols sig. They had more than one ball as well. They put everything on sale the last day of the Winter Warm up, marking everything 15% off. So this ball could be has for around $2500 but I never saw any takers.
Something else I noticed during that event...the Pujols and Musial signed framed print that is limited to 1000 pieces, did not sell in St. Louis even though the seller had it priced at $500. This piece originally was priced at $1500, then $750, now on ebay for $600-$650. The creator of this piece paid Pujols $175,000 and Musial $125,000 respectively to sign 1000 pieces. So he has $300 plus framing cost in this piece. My point here is that that price is not all that unreasonable for a Pujols signing. Maybe Pujols has soured a little since that signing. The bigger the star gets, the more likely the star will become soured on signing autographs, even for pay. The money doesn't impress these young multi-millionaires anymore. It's really ridiculous that we continue to pursue their autographs!

This really gets my blood pressure up!

Steve