A Gift from Beantown!

You might or might not remember a blog entry several months back about the 2004 World Series Champion Boston Red Sox Masterpiece card that I mailed in to the Red Sox, care of Theo Epstein. I had this wacky idea that it would look pretty cool to get the auto of the guy who engineered that team.

Unfortunately, as anybody new to the hobby eventually learns, most TTM's never come back. And unfortunately I really liked that card!

One day I was trolling around Redsox.com and I came upon a "contact us" link. I am a firm believer of "what's the worst that could happen" and decided to contact the Red Sox to see if they knew what became of this card.

I sent the email and moved on with everyday life. Never thought about it again, and actually forgot I had sent it at all when suddenly one afternoon last spring, a representative from the team named Jackie sent me an email out of the blue with a response to my email.

She and several others actually LOOKED for the card, but unfortunately it was not to be found. She asked if there was anything they could do, to which I responded that just the fact that she took the time to contact me back about a CARD was good enough.

Nevertheless, we got talking more about being west-coast fans and going to Seattle when we could to catch our team, and the story about naming our son after Jacoby and Dustin.

Then a couple months later I got ANOTHER email from Jackie that there was a surprise on the way from the team. I could not believe it! A few days later this came...

WOW! A signed 8.5 x 11 photo of my two favorite Sox (plus Manny's arm). Jackie told me that she circulated the photo herself and that both players were pretty inquisitive about little JD and were happy to sign a gift for him. Jackie was extremely generous with her follow through and showed amazing customer service by going above and beyond. What an awesome job that must be!

THANK YOU BOSTON RED SOX!