BY JIM KNIPPENBERG
The Cincinnati Enquirer
This is how dedicated Jerry Springer fans are:
Cara Sturm, 17, nine months and one week pregnant and suffering contractions, stood in line 20 minutes Monday at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Norwood to meet him and have him sign her book.
"My doctor told me he was going to induce labor. I told him even if he did, I was going to be here."
She had Mr. Springer sign the book for her and Tori, the daughter she's about to deliver.
Jerry Springer, host of the nation's top-rated TV talk show, seen by 25 million people a day in 50 countries, spent an hour signing more than 100 copies of Ringmaster (St. Martin's Press, $23.95), the behind-the-scenes look at The Jerry Springer Show and the outrageous guests it digs up.
With glasses propped on his head, dressed in a black knit shirt, black coat and black slacks, armed with a black pen, he wrote anything people asked for (most wanted their name and something along the lines of "to my biggest fan").
This was a tamer crowd than expected.
Unlike the circus atmosphere on his show, there were no fights, no strippers, no transvestites, no love triangles, four-ways or five-ways waiting to erupt.
They were tame, but rabidly devoted, popping enough flash bulbs in his face to have him blinking ferociously by the end of the hour. Devoted like 49-year-old steelworker Buffy Baker, who drove in from Middletown, arrived at 5 p.m., bought three copies and then milled around three hours waiting for Mr. Springer's limo to pull up.
"I guess I'll give them as Christmas gifts," she said. "I just had to come. He's my favorite. My little Springer spaniel."
Devoted like autoworker Robert Sworniowski, who brought a favorite red shirt for Mr. Springer to autograph.
"It's a safety award shirt for 250 days without an injury. It's important to me, but I want his name on it," he said.
Mr. Springer accommodated him and everyone else who came with posters, books, T-shirts, publicity photos, magazine covers and caps.
