David Segui Autographed Card

When you're a kid, you can start following (or liking) a player for reasons as simplistic as having pulled their rookie card from a pack. Such was the case for me and then-Baltimore Orioles prospect David Segui, having pulled his rookie card in Donruss, Topps and Score.

First traded to the New York Mets, where he led the National League in defensive statistics for a first basement, he was then traded to the Montréal Expos early in the 1995 season, a big-name arrival after a summer that saw All Stars Larry Walker (Colorado Rockies), Marquis Grissom (Atlanta Braves), Delino DeShields (Los Angeles Dodgers), Ken Hill (St. Louis Cardinals) and John Wetteland (New York Yankees) walk away in free agency, the 'small-market'' team (though ironically second-most profitable market in hockey) not able to match the excessive salaries offered by (mostly) classic teams. All of which would go on to win championships in the near future.

Segui's end-of-career didn't go without controversy, as he was found to have used HGH (human-growth hormones) during his career, as well as anabolic steroids. But he had a doctor's prescription for the HGH, which he'd used for a long time to counter an insufficiently he'd always had.

His specialty, at bat, was doubles, notching 25-30 almost every season, with a peak of 42 in 2000 splitting his time between the Cleveland Indians and Texas Rangers.

I got him to sign this card for me in black sharpie (all I had at the time, and usually still the case - when they're signed in another colour, it's usually a sign that a player used someone else's for multiple items) in 1997:

It's from Donruss' 1997 Donruss set (card #187). I also had one of him wearing the Orioles' uniform, but I must have traded it away.