Today kicked off my most favorite weekend of the year… Twinsfest!\u00a0 The morning started at an orthopedic surgery center as Amy had surgery on her broken ankle.\u00a0 She knew Cami and I were going to be heading to Twinsfest around 1:30 and made sure her mom and dad were with us to take her home in case she was not done in time.\u00a0 As luck would have it, the surgeon came out five minutes after we left.\u00a0 She got home ok and celebrated Caden’s 16th birthday that night.
\nCami and I arrived at Target Field around 2pm and got in line to wait two hours until the gates opened.\u00a0 When they opened we headed to the Joe Mauer\/Royce Lewis line.\u00a0 From there we headed to the Torii Hunter Twins Wives line and got his autograph.\u00a0 After we were done with Torii, we headed to the Kepler\/Garver\/Grossman\/Hildenberger\/Rogers line.\u00a0 One of the items I got Kepler to sign was his Players Weekend Topps Now card.\u00a0 The nickname he had on his jersey that weekend was Rozyki.\u00a0 I asked him if he would sign the card with that and he said “I have never signed anything like that but will give it a shot for you.”\u00a0 From there we went back to the Twins Wives and got Eduardo Escobar.\u00a0 Eduardo is awesome.\u00a0 He took a nice photo with Cami because the line was so short.\u00a0 After that we went back in line in the Twins Wives line for Ervin Santana.\u00a0 After that we went to a private Meet & Greet that I was chosen for as being a season ticket holder.\u00a0 Ervin Santana was the first player there and walked around and shook everyone’s hand and said hello.\u00a0 Ervin was asked a few questions about ice fishing.\u00a0 Had he ever been ice fishing or ever been on a frozen lake.\u00a0 In both cases he laughed and said “No way.”\u00a0 He said he does not like the cold weather at all.\u00a0 Seeing him in the environment of not locked in a focused during a game was pretty neat.\u00a0 He was really funny and personable.\u00a0 Cami asked him if he was not a pitcher, what position would be play.\u00a0 He replied with “Center field.\u00a0 I am faster than Byron (Buxton)!\u00a0 You get to see him run because he has a lot of room to run.\u00a0 If I was out there you would see me run faster than him!”\u00a0 It was pretty funny and he seemed pretty serious about it.\u00a0 Ervin left and then Eddie Rosario came in to do a similar Meet & Greet.\u00a0 After seeing that we did not have an opportunity for an autograph with Ervin, I got to Eddie while they were still taking photos with Ervin.\u00a0 Eddie signed a couple cards for me.\u00a0 One of them was his Players Weekend Topps Now card.\u00a0 His nickname on the card was Banidou.\u00a0 I asked him how he got the nickname and he said it was a nickname between him and his brothers.\u00a0 Every Saturday of Twinsfest for the last number of years I would spend the day with my buddy Shane.\u00a0 Shane had some very serious health issues and was unable to make it this year.\u00a0 Cami felt so bad for Shane that she skipped getting Eddie to sign her photo and decided to get a baseball signed by Rosario for him.\u00a0 She wanted him to write “To Shane.\u00a0 Get well soon!” but he did not understand the name Shane so Cami wrote it on a sheet of paper and skipped the get well soon part.\u00a0 Cami is pretty cool to think of someone like that.\u00a0 During the Q & A part with Rosario, Eddie mentioned he is really looking forward to playing in Puerto Rico this summer as that is his homeland.\u00a0 Cami’s question to Eddie was what is his favorite ballpark to play in and he replied “Here!\u00a0 I LOVE playing here!”\u00a0 Oh, one thing both players said that was interesting was when they were asked what their favorite city to play in was.\u00a0 They both replied Chicago.\u00a0 We again lined up and I got a photo of Eddie and Cami.\u00a0 We headed out and went to the final line of the evening which was Rosario\/Polanco\/Duke\/Romero.\u00a0 On the way out I stopped by and chatted with my buddy Tony and his son Spencer.\u00a0 We headed home tired but excited for the next couple days.\u00a0 The final list of items for me are (including items Cami got for me but not including things she got for herself):
\nJoe Mauer:\u00a0 2017 Topps 404, 2017 Topps Now Road to Opening Day
\nRoyce Lewis:\u00a0 2017 Bowman BD-1, OMLB
\nTorii Hunter:\u00a0 September 30, 2002 ESPN Magazine, 2015 Topps 590, 2016 Gypsy Queen 347
\nMax Kepler:\u00a0 2017 Topps 405, 06\/12\/2017 Topps Now, 2017 Wild Card Topps Now, 2017 Players Weekend Topps Now
\nMitch Garver:\u00a0 8\/19\/2017 debut ticket w\/”MLB Debut” inscription
\nTrevor Hildenberger:\u00a0 2017 Wild Card Topps Now
\nTaylor Rogers:\u00a0 04\/14\/2016 debut ticket w\/”MLB Debut” inscription
\nEduardo Escobar:\u00a0 2017 Wild Card Topps Now
\nErvin Santana:\u00a0 2017 Topps 678, 04\/15\/2017 Topps Now
\nEddie Rosario:\u00a0 2017 Wild Card Topps Now, 2017 Players Weekend Topps Now
\nJorge Polanco:\u00a0 2017 Topps 684, 2017 Wild Card Topps Now, 2017 Topps Now Road to Opening Day, 08\/29\/2017 ticket (when he hit a HR from both sides of the plate)
\nZach Duke: 2015 Topps 293, 2015 Topps US178
\nFernando Romero:\u00a0 2017 Bowman BP134, 2017 Topps Heritage Minor 107, 2017 Topps Minors 149, OMLB<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today kicked off my most favorite weekend of the year… Twinsfest!\u00a0 The morning started at an orthopedic surgery center as Amy had surgery on her broken ankle.\u00a0 She knew Cami and I were going to be heading to Twinsfest around 1:30 and made sure her mom and dad were with us to take her home … Continue reading “Twinsfest 2018 – Day 1”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8,14,17,26,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baseballs","category-cami","category-ip","category-non-si-magazine","category-tickets","category-topps-twins-project"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kemmetmueller.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kemmetmueller.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kemmetmueller.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kemmetmueller.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kemmetmueller.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1691"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kemmetmueller.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2315,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kemmetmueller.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1691\/revisions\/2315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kemmetmueller.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kemmetmueller.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kemmetmueller.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}