Today kicked off my most favorite weekend of the year, Twinsfest! This weekend I see old friends and new friends and hang out at the ballpark all weekend long spending money on autographs and making new memories.
I took today off so I can finish preparing for the weekend. I was woefully under prepared this weekend and this did bite me in the end but not too bad. Typically I get the kids out around 1 or so and we drive right from school to the ballpark. Since it was so cold today, we waited to head to Target Field until it was closer to the start time. The doors opened at 4pm so we planned on getting to the ballpark around 3:30. As we were walking to the ballpark, we noticed the skyway, where everyone waits, was empty. I said “Wow! We are lucky! Nobody is here!” to the kids. WRONG. The Twins did the right thing all three days and let people enter to get out of the cold and wait in the lobby areas. Pretty cool. We entered and went to the area away from the elevators where everyone was waiting. Once we were able to get in, we went to the Joe Mauer line. It was Caden, Cami, Caden’s friend, and I and we were like number 45 in line. Joe was his awesome self and signed Cami’s card as well as my card and commented how cool the Topps Now cards were to commemorate events. When Caden and his buddy got to him he signed both cards for each of them. Cami then took off to get Tony Oliva and others at that table and then to get her Zack Littel hat signed. I went back in line for Joe… two more times. Within an hour of Friday’s Twinsfest, I had eight Joe Mauer cards signed. Twinsfest was off to a great start for me!
Caden then left me to hang out with his friends and get his own autographs. The only time he looked for me was when he needed more money. Cami and I went our own ways too for the next stations. One station Cami went to had Tony Oliva. Cami met Tony O years ago and he remains one of her favorite former players. She never got to see him play so her interactions are limited to autograph and ballpark events but he never fails to make her smile. Cami got a card signed she had and told me the highlight was a short conversation in Spanish. Her exact words were “I had a conversation with Tony in Spanish!” I told her to tell her Spanish teacher and get some extra credit. Cami went to get a card signed by Rod Carew and a photo of Bert Blyleven. I went to get my call ball inscribed by Dan Gladden. I had sent a baseball to a signing for him to write his call of the walk off winner of the 2009 Game #163 and the ball was awesome but it was missing the inscription to tell you what it was! Dan grumpily signed the inscription so then I went to Scott Leius who signed a card for me. Next up was Kent Hrbek who signed a 1988 Baseball Illustrated magazine. The last person at the table was Scott Erickson who was cool and signed all three cards on my sheet for me. The kids continued to run around and do their thing and I went to the station that had Byron Buxton and others. The first person at the table was Joe Nathan. I congratulated him on being inducted into the Twins Hall of Fame (they announced it earlier today) and asked him to sign the ticket with “Final Save 377” which he did. Next up was Michael Cuddyer. Man, Cuddy is one heck of a guy. I had a ticket from the game he hit a cycle in when he played for the Rockies and it was a make up game so the ticket is from a game with a different date. Because of that I wanted him to put the date on it. He signed it with Cycle and the date although I wrote down 2018 for the year. He got to the year and looked at it and said “You have the wrong year on this.” He saved the ticket! He wrote in 14 and the ticket looks awesome.
Byron signed both of my cards and I went and met up with Tony S and his son Spencer. It is a highlight of each Twinsfest to meet up with Tony and chat tickets. He has helped me with my ticket collection more times than I could count. This year, after I showed him the Cuddyer cycle ticket, asked if I collected cycle tickets too. I told him really only Twins ones or players connected to the Twins at some point. He then pulled out a beautiful ticket from Paul Molitor’s cycle game against the Twins and gave it to me. He is just amazing. The kids did their thing while I did mine and we met up and headed home. The kids helped get some cards I needed signed so my day 1 tally was pretty good.
Michael Cuddyer ticket w/”Cycle 8/17/14″
Joe Nathan ticket w/”Final Save 377″
Taylor Rogers MLB debut ticket
Jonathan Schoop ticket w/”MLB Debut”
Joe Mauer cards: 9/30/18 Topps Now card, 7/21/18 Topps Now card, 9/25/18 Topps Now card, 2018 Players Weekend Topps Now card, 2017 Wild Card Topps Now card, 4/12/18 Topps Now card, 8/24/18 Topps Now card already signed by Rod Carew (he commented it was cool that Rod had signed it), 2018 Allen & Ginter
Jorge Polanco 2018 Gypsy Queen, 9/12/17 Topps Now
Byron Buxton 2018 Opening Day Topps Now, 2018 Topps Heritage
Tim Laudner 1987 Topps Team Card
Al Newman 1992 Topps Stadium Club
Nick Gordon 2017 Topps Heritage Minors
CJ Cron 2018 Opening Day Topps Now
LaMonte Wade 2018 Bowman Chrome
Alex Kirilloff 2017 Bowman