Category: Uncategorized

Today Carl Pavano was signing autographs at the Sports Authority in Roseville.  He was signing from 11-noon so I requested to take a long lunch.  I headed up at 10am and got there at 10:15.  I was around 70th or so in line.  When I got to him, I asked him if he could sign my Target Field “Firsts” ball with “1st Pitcher” or something like that and he said he isn’t doing inscriptions.  That was fine by me.  What was really neat was Sports Authority allowed two autographs per person.  That was a nice gesture.  I gave him a 2010 Allen & Ginter card and he signed it.  He then noticed the little case I had with a couple other cards and said he would sign those too.  I told him it was two per person and he said that was fine and opened the case and signed three of the four cards that were in it.  The fourth card was stuck in it otherwise he would have signed that too.  That was really cool of “The Mustache Man!”.

Today Denard Span was signing autographs at a Best Buy Mobile store in Maplewood Mall so Caden, Cami and I headed down with hopes of getting Span and then Cuddyer who was appearing at a local grocery store.
Apparently Denard’s driver did not know about all the road constuction going on and Span arrived 45 minutes or so later than he was supposed to which dashed our chances at getting Cuddyer as well.
We waited and when it was our turn to get his autograph, Cami got her ball signed with “To Cami, Best Wishes” and Caden and I each got a card signed.  Denard commented that it was the first time he saw the 2010 Allen & Ginter card and liked how “retro” they look.

Today the Twin Cities Sports Collectors Club had a show in Bloomington where they had a couple former hockey players show up to sign autographs.  I am not into collecting hockey but one of the guys was Steve Christoff.  Steve was a star on the 1980 US Olympic Hockey team and since the show where I got a couple autographs on the cover of two of the Sports Illustrated magazines, I thought I would add Steve’s to them.  With Steve was Tim Harrer who was the last person cut from the 1980 team.  You could get one autograph of each guy for $10.  Cami wanted to come along so we headed down.  We ended up getting there an hour before they were to sign so we went in and looked around and bought our tickets.  We found a seller selling boxes of Topps series 2 baseball cards so we bought a box and went to the car to wait.  We opened each pack while waiting.  Cami thought the cool cards were the ones that had cool pictures on them rather than WHO was on them.  We had a lot of fun ripping the packs open.
It was then time to head in to get the autographs.  We got Steve’s first.  He signed a photo and the two SI’s and then we got Tim to sign a couple photos from his days with the Gophers hockey team.  He signed one “To Cami”.  She liked it.
We then raced home and Caden and I headed to meet up with Tony and Brandon to go to the Saints game.

Today was the annual Twins Autograph Party.  I was curious to see how it would turn out with it being held at Target Field for the first time.  When tickets first went on sale, I asked Amy if she wanted to go with me and she said she would.  That was well before her back and hip surgeries.  Thankfully, my buddy Shane was available and volunteered to go with me and help me out.  Shane has done a lot of autographing with me.  We go back to the fraternity days and both have been to a whole lot of different ballparks together.
I woke up with the plan on heading down at 7am.  When I woke up I had a bad sinus headache so I took a couple Tylenol and went back to bed for a little bit.  I ended up getting up and heading down to the ballpark and got there around 8:30 or so.  They were not going to announce which players were at what station until 9am so it really did not matter what time I got there before that.
When they announced who was signing at what station, men, women, boys and girls all took off running to station 1 where Mauer was.  Since I was in the middle, and refused to run like that, I ended up waiting in line for Jim Thome.  While in line, I met Tom W and enjoyed chatting with him.  Shane showed up and we went through the line.
The weather was real sucky for an event like this.  Since it was raining you could not get your stuff out until you got inside the tent which slowed things down tremendously.
After Thome, we headed to the Delmon Young line.  From there we decided to check out a couple lines and they were all longer than time would allow so we headed to Killebrew’s line.  We got through that and headed inside to eat at Hrbek’s.  The food was awesome and exceeded our expectations.  After that we walked around the ballpark and I headed home.
Here is a wrap up of my autograph results:
Jim Thome:  Sweetspot OMLB blue ink/Target Field team ball under logo
Brian Duensing:  2010 Topps Heritage team card
Kevin Slowey:  2 baseball cards
Delmon Young:  4 baseball cards (cool guy to sign two for each of us)
Trevor Plouffe:  2010 Topps Heritage team card
Harmon Killebrew:  2 baseball card
John Castino:  baseball card/Sweetspot OMLB blue ink with 79 AL ROY
At one point I looked at Shane and said “This sucks.  I am not even having fun (because of the cold rainy crappy weather).” He just smiled.  For someone to give up a whole day and spend it with a friend in crappy weather and not ask for anything in return shows what kind of guy he is.  I cannot express my appreciation in words on a silly webpage.  Thanks a ton Shane!