Blog > Remembering RJ "Jack" Smalling - The Man Behind the Baseball Address List
Sunday, June 28, 2026
Posted by jaygross
Some sad news to share - RJ "Jack" Smalling has passed away. His son confirmed it on Facebook this weekend. If you've been collecting autographs through the mail for any length of time, you know exactly who Jack Smalling is.
Jack was the author of The Sport Americana Baseball Address List - and I'm not exaggerating when I say these books were THE bible for autograph collectors in the 1980s and 1990s. Before the internet, before sites like SCN, if you wanted to send a card to a player to get signed, you needed their home address. And Jack was the guy who had them all. He somehow tracked down mailing addresses for virtually every player who ever appeared in the Major Leagues and published them in his books.
I've actually mentioned Jack on this blog before. When I wrote about Phil Rizzuto passing in 2007, I talked about how Scooter was the first guy I ever wrote to for an autograph - and after getting that signed business card back, I went out and bought Jack Smalling's baseball address book. And the rest is history. So in a very real way, this site might not exist without Jack's work.
That was the experience for so many of us. You'd get that book, flip through the pages, find your guy, copy down the address, stuff your card in an envelope with a SASE, and drop it in the mail. Then you'd check the mailbox every day hoping something came back signed. Those were great times.
20 Editions
Jack published 20 editions of the Baseball Address List over the decades, with the last one (#20) coming out in 2019. 20 editions! Each one updated with new addresses and corrections. Think about the work that went into that, especially in the early days before computers and databases were common.
More Than Just the Books
Jack was based in Ames, Iowa and he was also a serious collector and dealer. He had a HUGE collection of signed cards and index cards, and he sold autographed items through newspaper-style sale lists and mail-in auctions.
graphhound1 actually made the trip out to see him: "I used to talk to him on the phone every now and then and made the trip to Ames, Iowa and spent several hours at his house going through what seemed like an endless stock of signed cards."
And I love this story from bigdog24: "I remember before the days of the internet, using snail mail to send your orders and auction bids. You never knew if you won until you received the invoice and auction results by snail mail. Later, new technology allowed you to fax your bids. Evidently this fax machine was in Jack's bedroom and I got scolded for faxing after hours... LOL"
What SCN Members Are Saying
When bluejay50 posted the news on our message board, the responses really poured in. Reading through them, you can see just how many collectors got their start because of Jack:
- siggy: "Got my first list from him in 1977... For 2 thirteen cent stamps you could get 3-4 cards signed of guys like Koufax, Maris, Satchel Paige, Unitas, Starr etc."
- jwise71: "Mr. Smalling was a true pioneer in the hobby in the analog days. I bought one of his very early Baseball Address Lists around '83 and started mailing... An amazing legacy."
- TD30forHOF: "I couldn't have started my lifelong hobby without his work. His books started me down a 35 year path."
- devilsfan15: "Before Jack, I only sent requests in c/o teams and occasionally, the HOF. I told the guy at my local baseball card store about some of these successful TTM requests and he pulled out Smalling's latest book and gave it to me for free. From that day forward my collection exploded."
- Penguinblewis: "He used to buy signed cards in bulk back in the day and I wrote to him once about selling some duplicates. He wrote back with his phone number and told me to give him a call... He told me 'I buy those all the time, send them to me and I will send you a check.' It was so different back then."
- tha-rock: "I ruined my eyesight trying to read the microscopic font of his sales lists, but it was a treasure hunt every time they arrived... A great hobby pioneer and a face on the Mt. Rushmore of baseball autograph collecting."
- stevkatz14: "The GOAT. All the books, the newspaper style pricelists, he was the greatest."
- kingofautographs1: "Absolute hobby legend. Probably the best asset to the autograph collecting community of all time."
Sites like SCN eventually brought address sharing and success tracking online, but Jack Smalling was the OG. He was doing this work for decades before any of us had a website. The TTM hobby as we know it might not exist without him.
RIP Jack. Thank you for everything you did for this hobby and for all of us.
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