Today Cami and I headed to Byerly’s in Edina for an appearance by Alexi Casilla. Cami brought her ball along and I brought a 2010 Topps card. We were suprised at how long the line was but it moved pretty good. When we were waiting in line, a couple people behind us was Ben W. Ben and I have traded quite a few times via Pat Neshek’s website. It was nice to see him. He is really a nice guy and a great collector. When we got to Alexi, we asked if he would write “To Cami” on it and even provided a sheet of paper so he would know how to spell it. His assistant said name only today and Alexi apologized and signed her ball. He signed my card and we went back to get some of the Joe Mauer malts to bring home. While walking back there I heard a mom tell her son that there was a Twins player signing autographs. I had brought an extra card along so I gave it to her to have Alexi sign it for her son. She thanked me, we checked out with our malt cups and Cami wanted a Caribou Carmel Iced Mocha so dad bought one for her and we headed home.
The ‘Stache Man!
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!”.
Span
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.
Do you believe in Miracles?
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.