Every year the Yankees have a luncheon during spring training to benefit the Boys & Girls Club of Tampa and all the players, except that day’s starter, must attend and sign autographs. Over the past couple years, the two most difficult autograph signers to obtain has arguably been Anthony Gose and Masahiro Tanaka. It is widely known that Tanaka only signs at the Luncheon and avoids signing otherwise. Unfortunately for Sports Illustrated collectors, Tanaka was on a regional issue as part of the 2014 Baseball Preview. I had an issue and figured I would never get it signed. A couple weeks before the luncheon, I received a message via SCN from Joshua S (jslaw) that he was going and was seeing if I was interested in anyone. He offered a fair price for Tanaka and others so I jumped at the chance. He has taken REALLY GOOD care of me over the years during spring training and the Marlins season and is one of just a handful of guys I totally trust with getting me autographs. I sent him a few things and hoped Tanaka would not be that day’s starter.
I received a message after the event to send my email address to Joshua so he could send me a pic of what he got. He came through big time. I was pumped. Today I picked up the package as it was insured and I had to sign for it. In it was the following items all beautifully signed exactly where and how I would have liked it.
Masahiro Tanaka 04.24.2014 Sports Illustrated
Alex Rodriguez 02.16.2009 Sports Illustrated
Jacoby Ellsbury 03.31.2008 Sports Illustrated (now signed by four of the six cover guys)
Mark Teixeira ML Debut ticket with “MLB Debut”
Nathan Eovaldi SS baseball
I cannot express in this post how excited I am to have a Tanaka autograph in the collection. Maybe next year I can add a baseball! THANK YOU JOSHUA for all you do for me and my collection!
Author: Kevin
Vacation Mail Day
One part of coming home that was actually fun was seeing all the mail piled up in the house. My in-laws are awesome and not only watched the crazy dog for us but also got the mail each day and kept watch of things at home. Going through the mail yielded the following items:
- Joc Peterson signed baseball I sent in to a private signing with this top prospect via Lojo Sports
- Bill Mazeroski to complete my 1961 Dell Sports Baseball Magazine. It has Maz, Whitey Ford, Bobby Richardson and Hal Smith on it and looks awesome.
- Roger Clemens, Frank Thomas, and Juan Lagares signed baseballs via a promotion Leaf Authentics ran at a nice price.
It was a nice run of mail to go through!
Florida Baseball Autographs
While in Florida, we, as a family, went to three baseball games. I drove to watch a fourth game when Amy and the kids and my nephew decided to go kayaking. Over those four games we did not actively pursue autographs but if the opportunity came up, we did go for it. I have purchased a pack of 25 baseball autograph cards that worked well for players I had no idea of or had nothing for. I did bring along some Sports Illustrated magazines but they did not get out of my backpack even once. I did manage to get a baseball signed by one player for me though and a pair of autographed cards for Cami while she got a pair of the cards signed herself. Most of the time we showed up to the game just as first pitch was about to happen so there was not much of an opportunity for autographs.
We ended up getting the following autograph cards:
Aaron Barrett- 03.11.2015- Nationals
Tyler Moore- 03.11.2015- Nationals
Chris Stewart- 03.13.2015- Pirates
Steve Clevenger- 03.14.2015- Orioles
I got Dylan Bundy on a baseball at the Orioles game.
While we did not get many autographs, we had a great time seeing all the ballparks and watching a lot of baseball in the sun!
“Astronautically” Awesome!
Today we went to Kennedy Space Center in Florida. While checking out the day’s events I noticed a former astronaut would be signing autographs in the gift shop in the afternoon. I did not tell Cami in case it did not work out time-wise. We did our bus tour and checked out a lot of things and I asked if she wanted to get an autograph of an astronaut and she was really excited and said yes. So, the two of us headed to the gift shop and went right up to John Blaha and got four photos signed. On Cami’s he wrote “Cami, Shoot for the stars!”. We went to the check out line and paid for the photos and we back with Amy and Caden before they knew it! It was awesome to finally add an astronaut to the collection!