2019 Twinsfest- Day 2

Today was a great day! I got to spend all day with my buddy Shane. Shane and I have a tradition where we meet up at Twinsfest and spend all day Saturday together hanging out and talking and getting autographs, etc. Last year Shane was not able to make it because he nearly died due to health reasons. This year we resumed our tradition and boy was it fun!
I was to meet Shane and his wife in Plymouth around 8am to get him (he lives a couple hours North of the Twin Cities). I headed out of the house around 7am with the kids when I received a text that he was running about an hour late. So, I took that time to drive to Target Field and drop the kids off before I headed up to Plymouth. It was so cool to see Shane after everything he went through over the last couple years. Shane is a fraternity brother from college and our relationship is an example of brothers for life. I got Shane in the car and we headed to Target Field. I was able to push Shane around in his wheelchair all day which I was pretty nervous about. He told me later I bumped a few people with his feet. I knew of two and apologized but he said there were a couple more that did not say anything. I tried my best to be aware of my surroundings! Anyway, the kids got up to Joe Mauer’s line and was able to get through the line twice each. They got three cards signed for me and Cami got a photo of the last game signed for her photo collection. Cami stopped by where Shane and I were sitting at a table and she got to chat with us too. She went and bought four “Balls in a Bag” at the Twins players wives booth. We ended up with Trevor Hildenberger, Max Kepler, and a pair of bleeding Tyler Austin baseball. With the tickets, she ended up going and getting three items signed for her collection and gave me the remaining ticket. Shane and I decided to try something different this year and instead of work autograph lines, we decided to chill, hang out, and do things we have not done at Twinfest before. One of those things was doing the White Glove Tour of the archive room. We went to where the sign up area was and found there was still an opening for the tour hosted by Michael Cuddyer. This turned out to be one of the coolest “Hidden Gems” of Twinsfest. It was certainly the highlight of the day for things we did. Cuddy is one of the coolest guys around and he spoke candidly about a lot of things while sharing stories about his career and time in baseball. Cami had to leave by this point as she had a two day volleyball tournament so Amy drove down to Target Field to get her and take her to the tournament. Shane and I went around checking things out and just hung out. One of the places we went was we stopped to talk with Tony so Tony could see Shane who he always says hi to each year. While there, Tony gave me some more tickets (Tony is amazing). He gave me a ticket and a suite pass for a 5.24.2015 game (Brian Dozier hit a pair of home runs), an upgrade to my Puckett HR 72 to a full season version, Kris Bryant’s 100th HR ticket, and if all that was not enough, he gave me a bunch of Twins spring training tickets from 1996. Why is this significant you might ask? It was the last spring that Kirby Puckett played in before having to retire. My task over the next few weeks is to try to track down the date Puckett got his last hit and add it to the Puckett ticket archive. I will have to look for old spring boxscores in older newspapers, etc. It will be a fun project. Tony is awesome! Shane and I then went up to the Suite Level and got in line for Glen Perkins. I needed a few Perkins cards sign ed for the collection since he was not at last year’s Twinsfest. He did not disappoint. We got Joe Nathan to sign a couple cards, Eddie Guardado to sign a card and a photo Cami took and Perkins on five cards. The photo of Everyday Eddie had him as a coach with his arms crossed and one finger on his chin like he was deep in thought. I told him my daughter took the photo and it looked like he was a professor thinking about the meaning of life. He laughed with a loud robust laugh that showed he really enjoyed it. Afterwards Shane and I grabbed a table on the suite level to hang out and we ran into Caden (he needed more money). On his way out he called me and told me that Jonathan Schoop was at the Wives Booth and did not have a line so we went there with minutes to spare and Shane got a ticket from his MLB Debut signed with the inscription. We asked if he remembered how he did and he said “2 for 3 with a solo home run!” Pretty cool interaction with him. After that we listened to the WCCO Radio Show that was being broadcast from Target Field and decided to head out to eat dinner. We met up with his wife and one of his daughters and enjoyed dinner. Caden went to the hotel his buddies had and they ended up going to Top Golf before settling in for the night. It was a real fun day but the highlight was being able to hang out with Shane like “the old days”.
A summary of items signed for my collection, mostly by the kids for me, include:
Stephen Gonsalves ticket w/”MLB Debut”
Stephen Gonsalves ticket w/”1st MLB Win”
Cole DeVries ticket w/”MLB Debut”
Jonathan Schoop ticket w/”MLB Debut”
Trevor May ticket w/”1st ML Save”
Joe Mauer 2017 Allen & Ginter, 2018 Players Weekend Topps Now, 5/5/17 Topps Now
Jason Castro 2017 Wild Card Topps Now, 2017 Topps
Max Kepler 2017 Topps Heritage, 2016 Allen & Ginter
Mitch Garver 2018 Topps, 2018 Topps Heritage
Joe Nathan 2009 Topps Heritage, 2010 Topps
Eddie Guardado 1994 Topps
Greg Olson 1992 Topps, 1993 Topps
Jeremy Hefner 2014 Topps Heritage
Byron Buxton 2018 Gypsy Queen, 2018 Allen & Ginter
Michael Pineda 2016 Gypsy Queen, 2018 Topps
Glen Perkins 2016 Topps Heritage, 2016 Allen & Ginter, 2016 Topps, 2017 Topps, 2017 Topps Heritage