Once upon a time, many years ago, in the sweltering heat of a Kansas City summer, I tossed a ball to Phil Coke, and he very obligingly signed a baseball for me. Now, being a fool, the only pen I had with me was ballpoint, and the signatures I collected from Coke (and Gene Lamont!) are both moderately smeared, and Phil gave a sort of apologetic shrug to the next person to ask for an autograph as if to say “I don’t know, man, she gave it to me.”
It was mortifying, but hey, I still have that slightly smudged ball, signed by a relief pitcher that almost no one will remember in another ten years, but that memory will stick with me until my dying day.