Results tagged ‘ In-person ’
Mailday and in-person successes
Today’s entry is all about balls — two of which came through the mail, and two of which were obtained in person during my recent roadtrip.
Let’s start with those that made for a great mailday last week. Here’s the first one:
Sensational Blue Jays prospect Kyle Drabek, who coincidently had his first MLB start last night, signed this ball for me in about a month, care of his AA team, the New Hampshire Fisher Cats. I could’ve grabbed him for another autograph during my trip last weekend, but didn’t bother fighting the crowds as I am happy to already have him on a ball. Drabek was lights out for the Cats this season, winning 14 games and being named the Eastern League’s pitcher of the year. Hard to say where he’ll be in the spring (could be AAA Las Vegas) but expect him to be in Toronto by next August, I’d say.
Here’s the next ball I got in the mail:
This one’s pretty cool. It’s signed by Hall of Famer Duke Snider, who played for the Brooklyn Dodgers, among other teams. His credentials? An eight-time All-Star, two-time World Series champ, 407 career HRs and six-time top 10 finisher in MVP voting. Pretty impressive, and this addition brings my Hall of Fame ball collection up to five.
And I as mentioned, I got two balls signed while in New Hampshire. As a Jays fan, it’s always cool to see a farm team of the big club, and watch tomorrow’s stars up close. This year, I saw two Toronto affiliates: Short season class A Auburn, and AA New Hampshire.
Anyway, here’s the first ball:
It’s one of the strangest signatures in my collection, and belongs to future Toronto shortstop Adeiny Hechavarria. He’s the 21-year-old Cuban shortstop that Alex Anthopoulos signed this spring. It was exciting to get his signature. He signed for a bunch of people at the edge of the dugout, and I was slow getting my ball and pen out. By the time I got there, he’d turned around and left, but I called out to him and he came back. As he approached, he bumped a pair of groundscrew rakes that fell over with a giant bang, and he just shrugged and signed my ball.
Next up is my second ball of the game:
This one is signed by Jays third baseman Edwin Encarnacion (not Encarnashone, Buck Martinez) who was in New Hampshire recovering from a sprained wrist. I was kicking myself for not having a Ginter card for him to sign, but it’s always great to add another Blue Jays to my ball collection.
The morning after the game, as I left my hotel, I ran into Encarnacion outside the hotel’s lobby. he was waiting for a shuttle to take him to the airport and back to Toronto, and has his Jays duffel bag with him. I said good morning, and he said hello, but I didn’t hit him up for another autograph because it was early and I don’t like being a pushy autograph hound.
All in all, a pretty great week for balls for my collection, with more to come!
Snagging
As mentioned below, I was able to snag 10 balls at the Mahoning Valley Scrappers game, and two at the Toronto Blue Jays game. (And, yes, my wife also got two in Toronto.)
Here are the Scrappers balls:
It’s pretty neat to see the different kinds of balls that are used by the team. You can see Official Major League Baseballs (top row, far left), Official New York-Penn League balls (bottom) and even a rare Official Minor League Baseballs (top row, second from left). I’ve never seen an Official Minor League Baseball, which encompasses many levels of baseball, in the past. Normally you see league-specific balls (International, PCL, NYPL, etc.), so this was a neat find.
And here are the four balls from Toronto. You’ll notice they’re in great shape compared with the balls used in the Minor Leagues.
In-person successes
As mentioned here, my recent six-game roadtrip was awesome. Here’s what I saw:
- Aug. 6: Columbus Clippers at Buffalo Bisons (AAA)
- Aug. 7: Minnesota Twins at Cleveland Indians (MLB)
- Aug. 8: Minnesota Twins at Cleveland Indians (MLB)
- Aug. 9: Aberdeen IronBirds at Mahoning Valley Scrappers (A)
- Aug. 10: Boston Red Sox at Toronto Blue Jays (MLB)
- Aug. 11: Boston Red Sox at Toronto Blue Jays (MLB)
All in all, it was great. I’ve now seen nine games this summer, with hopefully a few more to go in September.
As I said a couple entries ago, I did pretty well ball-wise on my trip. I didn’t get anything in Buffalo, nor in my first Cleveland game. (It wasn’t for a lack of trying.)
But early in the third game of my trip (the second Twins/Indians game) I got down to field level and managed to get three Twins to sign a ball for me.
All three signatures are from pitchers: Jesse Crain, Matt Capps and Scott Baker. Oddly enough, they’re the first three pitchers on the Twins in alphabetical order. Anyway, all three have good numbers this season. Crain is 1-0 in 55 appearances with an ERA of just 2.75. Capps was an all-star this season and is 4-3 with 31 saves and a tiny ERA of 2.68. Scott Baker is 10-9 as a starter, with an awesome strikeout-to-walk ratio: 121:31.
The next day, my wife and I drove to Niles, Ohio (an hour outside of Cleveland) for the single-A Mahoning Valley Scrappers (the Cleveland Indians affliate) game. I love single-A games. The ballparks are small and intimate, the players are extremely friendly and it’s good opportunity to get balls. Here’s how I did:
Scrappers manager Travis Fryman signed this ball. Pretty cool, huh? I was hoping to get Fryman’s autograph while I was down there, given his great MLB career. (Five-time all-star, 223 career HRs, 1,022 RBI, .274 average, Gold Glove, Silver Slugger, etc.) If the ball looks dirty, that’s because it’s an official New York-Penn League ball I snagged during batting practice. Here’s the other side of it:
In addition to Fryman’s autograph (he signed less than five minutes before the national anthem … you wouldn’t get that in the big leagues!) I bought a Scrappers team ball and tried to get it signed by as many players as possible. I did pretty well, with 14 players. As you can read about here, I also got team balls autographed during games in Rochester and Auburn.
Anyway, here’s the Mahoning Valley Scrappers ball:
That’s pitcher Takafumi Nakamura under the team logo.
And here’s starting pitcher Mitch Talbot on the sweet spot. If his name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s an Indians player who was in Mahoning Valley for a rehab start. A bunch of us got to talk to him before his start, which was cool, and once again something that’s tough to do in the bigs.
Next, we’ve got Dan DeGeorge, Brian Heere, Jordan Cooper and Casey Gaynor. DeGeorge and Heere were both starters in the game I saw (at second and centre, respectively). The other guys are pitchers.
Then there’s infielders Aaron Fields and Tyler Cannon and pitcher James Reichenbach.
Finally, left fielder Chase Burnette, pitcher Kyle Smith, IF/DH Kevin Fontanez, someone I can’t recall and outfielder Jordan Casas.
All in all, pretty good. It’ll be exciting to follow the progress of these guys and see if they turn into the next Indians star, or end up being traded elsewhere.
Rochester and Auburn in-person successes
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:
malcolmmacmillan
Recent Comments