Funny Fredonia camp story: I attended camp one day in the late ‘80s, when my oldest son was just a toddler. I brought a Wilson NFL football to get signatures as a keepsake for my son. In those days there were maybe 100 fans at the camp on any given day. Nothing like today. I was having great success getting quite a few signatures on the ball. Fred Smerlas was walking towards me as the players were headed in for lunch. He looked really intimidating, but I decided to take a chance and ask him if he would sign the ball.
Without saying a word he took the ball and my sharpie away from me and continued to walk toward the dining hall. There was a gate in a fence that the players went through that the fans were not allowed to cross. He went through with the ball and kept walking. I figured at that point the ball was gone. Then he stopped, signed it, and walked back over and threw it up over the fence to me and handed me the sharpie through the chain link. And just for a second he broke character and with a quick smile said, “Gotcha!”
Full circle moment, decades later when I started the Go Fund Me for Darryl Talley, once it went viral, Smerlas went on Twitter and tweeted out that he loved me. 😀