{"id":22,"date":"2011-03-09T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-03-09T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/f9ec73de-b053-4c09-afb7-20fa3efe8669"},"modified":"2025-03-30T15:41:31","modified_gmt":"2025-03-30T20:41:31","slug":"a-princess-a-closer-a-japanese-import-and-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kemmetmueller.com\/?p=22","title":{"rendered":"A Princess, A Closer, A Japanese Import and Me!"},"content":{"rendered":"
I know this blog is about in person autograph events, and I will get to those in a moment, but for this year’s vacation to Florida, I was able to get reservations at Cinderella’s Castle for lunch. \u00a0Even though we did not get any of the Princesses autographs, you certainly could have. \u00a0They were all awesome. \u00a0They came around and spent about a minute or two at each table posing for pictures and talking to everyone. \u00a0Cami absolutely loved it. \u00a0She was on top of the world. \u00a0If you have a daughter that is in the “Princess” age range, you gotta get to the Castle. \u00a0The memories are incredible.<\/div>\n
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On our way to Venice, FL, we stopped at some spring training and team homes looking for schedules or just to take pictures. \u00a0The places we went to were: \u00a0Atlanta Braves, New York Yankees, Tampa Bay Rays Spring Training Home, Detroit Tigers and Tropicana Field. \u00a0I have to say that the Yankees is the nicest we went to but it is not close to Hammond Stadium!<\/div>\n
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My first Twins game was a game where I met Heidi & Bob and we watched the game together. \u00a0Amy and the kids stayed back with Melanie and Will and went to the beach and did a few other things. \u00a0When I got to Lee County Sports Complex, I noticed there was a “B” game going on at one of the other fields. \u00a0I decided to go check it out. \u00a0It was the Rays versus Twins with Liriano and Jeff Neimann on the hill. \u00a0I was standing at the backstop like I was at a little league game. \u00a0I was so close to the action. \u00a0It was really cool and I got some great photos. \u00a0I was enjoying that but it was not the place to get an autograph. \u00a0I went inside the main stadium and walked around looking for an opportunity to score a ‘graph. \u00a0I did not have any luck there but had great seats behind the plate in row 7. \u00a0It was neat seeing Joe Nathan pitch after being sidelined with Tommy John surgery all last year. \u00a0He looked really good. \u00a0Since I was on my own, I decided to stick around after the game was over. \u00a0I decided to check out where the players leave the parking lot to see if anyone was over there. \u00a0Sure enough, there were about 10 people there so I stood there with them. \u00a0The only one who stopped to sign while I was there was Joe Nathan. \u00a0He rolled down the window of his black Escalade and signed one per person for each person wanting an autograph. \u00a0Really nice gesture. \u00a0I got a 2010 Topps Heritage card signed by him. \u00a0I walked back to the main ballpark but nobody was hitting in the batting cages so I headed back to Melanie, Jason and Will’s house in Venice who were kind enough to let us all stay with them.<\/div>\n
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The second Twins game was us four and Melanie, Jason and Will. \u00a0We were behind the plate in row 14 for this game. \u00a0While I brought along some stuff for autographs, I did not get one as I did not want to make them wait around with me. \u00a0After the game we headed back to their place and chilled.<\/div>\n
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The final Twins game I went to was with Amy and the kids. \u00a0We got there just before the game started so there was not a chance for autographs. \u00a0We were in the same location as the day before. \u00a0The Twins played the Cardinals and did not fare well. \u00a0I hit a home run though! \u00a0Amy and Cami went for a walk around the stadium and Cami came back and told me she saw Joe Mauer and would take me there to show me. \u00a0I got up and she took me by the hand and we walked over where she said. \u00a0It was actually part of the stairs that overlooked the Twins bullpen. \u00a0She saw a catcher in full gear and thought it was Mauer. \u00a0It was Fernandez, not Mauer. \u00a0Heck of a try by my “Baseball Girl” though! \u00a0We walked back and Amy asked me if I noticed who the players were on Field Five stretching and running. \u00a0I did not but did see a small group of Japanese reporters gathered around in what appeared to be waiting for Nishioka to come out. \u00a0We \u00a0decided we would head over to check it out. \u00a0By this time the game was half over, the Good Guys were getting beat by the Cardinals and all the starters were out of the game so we decided to leave the ballpark and head over there. \u00a0While I was walking over, I noticed Ryo. \u00a0Ryo is Nishioka’s translator. \u00a0I know if Ryo was there waiting, Nishi was not far behind. \u00a0I then noticed that there was a person talking to the Japanese media now. \u00a0Putting both those together, I knew I was not leaving the area until Nishi walked by. \u00a0After waiting about 15 minutes, the media time was over and sure enough, my hunch paid off. \u00a0Nishioka walked over to Ryo who opened the gate for him and he walked right to me. \u00a0I asked him if he would sign my baseball and he took it and signed it right on the sweetspot for me. \u00a0Cami was with me with her baseball and he signed her ball too! \u00a0Cami and I each got a Nishioka autographed baseball! \u00a0Caden was tired and hot from the sun and did not feel like participating so he missed out. \u00a0After that we took a few pictures and left the ballpark and headed to Orlando. \u00a0We ended the trip by going to Animal Kingdom the next day before catching our late flight out of Orlando.<\/div>\n
Here is a map on where I got each autograph:
\nA = Joe Nathan
\nB = Tsuyoshi Nishioka
\n\n<\/div>\n
This was an awesome vacation. \u00a0The autograph quantity was weak but the quality was great.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I know this blog is about in person autograph events, and I will get to those in a moment, but for this year’s vacation to Florida, I was able to get reservations at Cinderella’s Castle for lunch. \u00a0Even though we did not get any of the Princesses autographs, you certainly could have. \u00a0They were all … Continue reading “A Princess, A Closer, A Japanese Import and Me!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kemmetmueller.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22","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=22"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kemmetmueller.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3575,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kemmetmueller.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions\/3575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kemmetmueller.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kemmetmueller.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kemmetmueller.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}