Athlètes professionnels et autographes: un art qui se perd?

Je ne crois pas avoir jamais fait la file pour demander une signature à joueur professionnel, mais plusieurs partisans, souvent parmi les plus jeunes, tendent désespérément un bout de papier ou un objet sur lequel on souhaite conserver un précieux souvenir. Pour les collectionneurs, ces griboullis peuvent atteindre une grandeur valeur. Cet article du New York Times se penche sur un art qui se perd. Les joueurs actuels signent bien souvent des trucs inintelligibles et il faudrait recourir à des experts pour retrouver l'auteur de la signature. Comment expliquer le phénomène? Voici le reportage de Tyler Kepner.

 "Today’s players, many born in the 1980s, were not. Children learned print and cursive then, as now, but handwriting was generally less of a priority in curriculums.

 “In the ‘80s, we started to have people basically say, ‘Oh, handwriting’s not important, because in five or 10 years everything in the world will be computerized,' ” Gladstone said. “But I don’t think we’re yet at the stage of typing our names onto baseballs.”

 Players with clean signatures often cite an instructor or relative as their inspiration. For Robertson, it was his grandmother, Martha Robertson, who implored him to sign his full name, instead of “DRob,” when he reached the major leagues in 2008. For Andre Dawson, a Hall of Fame outfielder who played from 1976 to 1996, it was his aunt and first-grade teacher, Alice Daniels, who kept him after school to practice on a chalkboard.

 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/29/sports/baseball/in-an-era-of-squiggles-you-cant-tell-baseball-the-players-without-a-handwriting-analyst.html?ref=sports