Detective Work

A thought crossed my mind today about my recent Return to Sender envelope from Red Schoendienst.  Both Return to Sender, and Red Schoendienst have capital letters "R" and "S" and share five small letters - e, d, o, n, t.  I wondered if my envelope had been written on by Mr. S himself.

So I did a bit of sleuthing...

This is the writing on the envelope I received.  Notice the way the "R" is drawn with a looping pen-stroke, and the "S" is written in classic cursive.

Here is Red's signature on a baseball card that I found with a quick Google search for images of his autograph.  Both the "R" and "S" are pretty close matches.  I also noticed that the small "e", "n", and "t" are very similar between the two.  The most different letter is the "d" in his last name, but the "d" in his first name matches pretty well!

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that my envelope was written on by none other than the living Hall of Famer himself.  If this is the case, it makes me wonder why he feels that he has time to sign "Return to Sender" (14 letters), but not "Red Schoendienst" (only 15 letters!).

It is quite possible that this baseball great is tired of people profiting off of his autograph.  I'm sure these players are constantly harassed by people hoping to make a quick buck or two on ebay, or in collector shops.  Sad, but I guess I see the frustration there.

Mr. Schoendienst, if you are reading this, can you deny or confirm?