‘Hi, I’m here to sign your jersey’
Crosby thrills N.S. fan with surprise visit
Darryl Pottie is a big Montreal Canadiens fan, but he also loves the Pittsburgh Penguins’ Sidney Crosby.
So Pottie, who lives in Enfield, N. S., decided to take a wild chance when he learned Crosby would be back in his home province last month for his day with the Stanley Cup in nearby Cole Harbour.
Pottie took a big sheet of plywood and wrote: “Sid please sign my jersey,” hanging a Crosby No. 87 Penguins sweater from it. At night, Pottie would bring the jersey in the house, hanging it from the front window and leaving a light on just in case Crosby might drive by after dark.
Pottie left the sign up for a week, but then about two weeks ago he needed to use the piece of plywood for something else, so he took it down.
“I never really thought too much about it,” Pottie said during a phone interview from his home Sunday. “I figured Sid’s a pretty busy guy, so I certainly wouldn’t blame him one bit for not stopping.”
But last Friday, while Pottie was at work in Dartmouth — about a 30- minute drive away — the doorbell rang at his house. Pottie’s wife of 26 years, who was on vacation and wearing a bikini at the time, went to answer the door and couldn’t believe who was standing there. Sidney Crosby. “We don’ t ge t many visitors … it’s in the country,” Patricia Lingley- Pottie said over the phone Sunday.
This wasn’t one of those staged Tim Hortons TV ads where Crosby serves unsuspecting customers their double- doubles from behind the counter. It was just Sid — all alone, wearing a baseball cap backward and a T-shirt. Even though the plywood sign was gone, Crosby obviously remembered the house.
“Hi … I’m here to sign your jersey,” Lingley- Pottie recalled Crosby saying.
“I said: ‘I’m in my bikini … just give me a few minutes,’” Lingley- Pottie added with a laugh, saying she opened the door a bit and then left her 21- year- old daughter, Madisyn, to entertain the surprise visitor while she raced to the bedroom to change.
“I was running to the bedroom and all I could hear Madisyn saying was: ‘ Come on in … and don’t mind the mess,’ ” Lingley- Pottie recalled. “I was like: ‘Oh, God!’”
Lingley-Pottie quickly put on some more clothes and returned to speak with Crosby, who was already in conversation with Madisyn. They couldn’t find the Sharpie pen Pottie had kept handy in the house when he had his sign up outside, so Crosby went back to his truck to get one and then returned to sign the jersey.
“I’m at work and then I get an email from my wife, saying: ‘ Look who popped in,’ ” Pottie recalled. “And it was a picture of my daughter with Sidney Crosby in my living room. I just started screaming: ‘He’s in my house! He’s in my house!’ ”
Crosby ended up spending about 20 minutes chatting with Pottie’s wife and daughter, signing more autographs and posing for photos before leaving.
“He was just a normal guy,” Lingley- Pottie said. “Polite and genuine. He was relaxed.”
Pottie admits he was disappointed at first that he wasn’t there when Crosby showed up, but that feeling didn’t last too long.
“I got thinking about it when I came home and I looked at the jersey and I thought this is incredible … this is just incredible,” Pottie said. “I’m just so happy and elated that he took the time to come up my driveway, to knock on my door, to sign my jersey and talk with my daughter and my wife. They were on the top of the world, as you could imagine.”
One of Pottie’s friends, Andrew Titus, put up a Facebook post on Friday about what had happened — along with a photo of the sign that had been outside the house — and by Saturday afternoon it already had more than 2,000 shares. Media members started calling Pottie’s house and his wife said the family thought long and hard about whether they should answer them.
“We respect ( Crosby) and we were so honoured, I didn’t want to do anything that he might not appreciate,” Lingley-Pottie said about the player’s unannounced visit. “But I think because it is a good story … I think we’re good.” No kidding. Said Pottie: “I’m such a huge fan of Sidney Crosby’s and for him to take his time to do this when he’s being pulled in a million different directions I’m sure … for him to remember this house and take his time and pull in the driveway and knock on a stranger’s door and say: ‘ Hi, I’m here to sign your jersey’ … I mean that’s incredible.
“It shows j ust what a down-to-earth, great person he is,” Pottie added. “At the end of the day, he’s just Sid Crosby, hockey player, international superstar, greatest player on earth … and a really nice guy.