As I recently mentioned here, I made a Minor League Baseball roadtrip two weekends ago to Rochester, Auburn and Syracuse. It was awesome for many reasons, including the number of autographs I obtained at each stadium. As mentioned earlier, I got a Jed Lowrie autograph during the Pawtucket/Syracuse game at Alliance Bank Stadium. That was the lone autograph obtained in the ‘Cuse, but I did really well earlier in the weekend at Rochester and Auburn.

Let’s start with Rochester. I bought a Red Wings team ball from the store at Frontier Field, and even though it’s a cheap, synthetic ball, wanted to get any many sigs as I could.

Here’s the logo on the ball: (I like how the team logo is slightly inset in the ball, instead of just stamped on.)

I hovered around the home dugout, where I was sitting anyway, and quickly got Rochester manager Tom Nieto on the sweet spot:

I also added (from top to bottom) Brian Dinkelman, Trevor Plouffe and Anthony Swarzak:

Then Jose Lugo, Glen Perkins and Pat Neshek:

And finally, Anthony Slama, an International League all-star who’s since been called up to Minnesota:

Though I got Pat Neshek on my team ball, I wanted to get him on a separate ball as well. Neshek is arguably the biggest friend to the autograph hobby in baseball — among current players, anyway. He signs everything you send him in the mail, and even keeps a blog about his life in baseball and his love of autographs, baseball cards, etc. It was cool to talk to him for a few moments, as he’s signed for me a few times in the mail. I told him I was from Ottawa, and we talked about the AAA Lynx for a moment. Here’s his sig:

 
As you can see, he takes time and effort to add stitches to the loop in “P” to make it look like a baseball. And he does this every time — pretty cool. And here, you can see he’s written “2007 MLB All-Star Final Vote!” He joked that his arm was getting sore from all the signing after having pitched, but was really personable and fun. I wish I’d had a photo taken with him, but I’m happy with these two balls he’s signed.

Pretty good, huh?

Well, Auburn was even better, numbers-wise. And yes, I realize that Auburn is only A ball, but it’s cool for me because they’re the affiliate for the Blue Jays, and a bunch of current Jays went through Auburn early in their careers. Let’s hope I have a few future MLBers in this group.

Here’s the ball, which was quickly signed by Dayton Marze and Matthew Johnson:

It didn’t take long before I added Lance Durham, Yudelmis Hernandez, Sam Strickland and Jack Murphy (Strickland was the night’s starting pitcher, and it was pretty cool he was signing):

 
The autographs just kept on coming. In a matter of minutes, I added Tyler Powell, someone I can’t recall, Steve McQuail, Matt Nuzzo, coach C.J. Ebarb and Canadian Marcus Knecht (more on him later):

 
Then, Daniel Webb, Shawn Griffith, John Roberts and another guy I can’t recall. He signed #15, but #15 on my roster was Markus Brisker and this sig certainly doesn’t say Markus Brisker:

While all the Doubledays autographs were great, I was especially happy to land Marcus Knecht, a Torontonian who was a Toronto draft pick this season. He was the best Auburn player on the night I went, and fans were telling me he wouldn’t be a Doubleday for long. He’ll likely be up in long-season Lansing within in the next month. Another cool note about Knecht is that he played last summer in the Canadian semi-pro Intercounty Baseball League, a league in which I do the colour commentary on the TV broadcasts for the Ottawa team. Unfortunately, Ottawa’s season finished on the road while I was on my trip. I spoke to Marcus for a few minutes about the IBL, and was hoping to talk about it on the air.

Lastly, I did well in terms of snagging baseballs, too. I got nine batting practice balls; some were in pretty rough shape, a couple were decent and the rest were somewhere in the middle. Auburn’s Falcon Field is a great place for snagging during BP. These are my first New York-Penn League balls, and while I wasn’t able to get one during the game, I’m glad with my BP balls. Pictured below are seven of them, as I gave two away to other fans: