Before I started this comment, I was sure he had spent the early 2000s with the Giants. I was going to say, "I don't remember Buford from his time with the Mets, because I was five then, but I remember when he was a decent slugger with the Giants."

Well, he never played with San Francisco, rather spending the late 1990s with the Red Sox and the early 2000s with the Cubs.

So that got me to thinking, who was I confusing him with? And the answer was easy to find—it was lifelong Giant Marvin Benard.

The Mets ended up trading Buford to the Rangers for someone named Terrell Lowery. Lowery never played for New York, having been taken by the Cubs in a Rule 5 Draft (tangential fun fact: Lowery hit .441/.548/.647 in his final big league season).

Anyway, Buford was hardly the player his father, Don, was, especially with New York. And, also unlike his father, he's a terrible autograph signer, responding to neither of the two requests I've sent to him, the first being in 2017 and the most recent in 2020 (his dad signed for me in 2018).