Whenever I went to old Candlestick Park for a Giants game, I would kill post-game time I would normally spend in traffic checking out the players as they went to their cars or the visiting team bus in a fenced-in area. If you were lucky, a player would stop by the fence or stop his car as he left to autograph a program or a card or whatever (this was before collecting cards became a multi-million dollar biz).
Nolan Ryan was with the Astros during that time, and after a Giants-Astros game, a small crowd was waiting for Ryan to emerge from the clubhouse in hopes of getting an signature. Like most of the players, Ryan ignored the shouts to come to the fence, and was headed for the bus when someone in the crowd screamed a name that none of us recognized. Ryan's head spun around quickly, craned his neck to see who had said the name, and he walked to the gate. The crowd cheered.
Turns out the name was that of someone who worked on Ryan's ranch in Texas, and as he was chatting with the guy's friend, Ryan would sign reflexively everything that was handed to him. Unfortunately, I had neither pen nor paper at that moment.
However, that same day brought me one of the creepiest feelings I have ever felt. There were some local teenage girls waiting outside the gate, ranging in age from 14-16, but they were Astros fans. I asked why they were fans of the Astros when they lived in the Bay Area. They said they were the sexiest guys in the league, and that if they couldn't talk to them at the ballpark, they would meet them at the airport.
Ewwwwww.