5th Annual CJ Wilson Throw Strikes Bowling Tournament 9-19-13

I decided to attend the 5th Annual CJ Wilson Throw Strikes Bowling Tournament this past Thursday. The event took place at Bowlmor in Anaheim from 6-10pm. Entry to the event was $50 and included food, drinks, and also a game of bowling with all proceeds benefiting patients at the Hematology Clinic of CHOC Children's and The Hemostasis and Thrombosis Center at Children's Hospital Los Angeles.

Thanks to my friends Victor and Scotty I was able to attend the event for free since they had an extra pass for me. I headed to Anaheim as soon as I got off work which is what explains why I am still wearing my scrubs in the pictures below. When I arrived CJ was already inside mingling with Angels fans who formed a line to get his autograph. Here is a photo of CJ and his teammate Collin Cowgill.

Here is CJ talking to the fans discussing information about his charity.

CJ was nice and cool with everyone as usual signing hundreds of autographs and also posed for pictures with fans. He's always been good to the fans since his days with the Texas Rangers so it's nice to see him have another successful season leading the Angels in wins this year.

CJ ended up signing three photos and six cards for me. For some reason I think he forgot to sign my 2013 Allen and Ginter Card.

Other Angels in attendance were Buddy Boshers and Collin Cowgill as I mentioned previously. Unfortunately I didn't have any items prepared for them to sign. A lot of graphers were hoping more Angels would show up like last year when Jered Weaver and Dan Haren stopped by but this year there wasn't much team support. Everyone in attendance was anticipating that maybe Mike Trout or Josh Hamilton would stop by but sadly they didn't show up.

After getting CJ's autograph I noticed that there was a raffle table set up. The table included really nice prizes such as an autographed Weaver jersey, Hamilton jesey, Trout jersey, Trout bat, Trumbo bat, and Kendrick bat. Other notable prizes included Beats by Dre headphones, Disneyland tickets, a signed skate deck by Ryan Sheckler, a signed Cole Hamels replica jersey and a signed Cole Hamels baseball. Each raffle ticket was $5 or three tickets for $10.

Normally with raffles, I go in with the expectation that I won't win since the odds are always slim. I figured it was for a good cause since all proceeds from the raffle went to charity so I ended up buying 12 raffle tickets. Only 11 tickets are shown below since I won one item at the raffle.

With the 12 raffle tickets I decided to strategize by looking for the can with the least amount of tickets. The Cole Hamels signed replica jersey and the Cole Hamels signed baseball had the least amount of tickets so I decided to invest two tickets on the jersey and one ticket on the signed baseball. The item I really wanted to win was the Trout signed Old Hickory bat so I invested five tickets for the bat, three tickets for the Trout signed jersey and one ticket for the Hamilton signed jersey.

Towards the tail end of the event CJ Wilson walked over to the raffle table and began to call out numbers of the winning raffle tickets for each item.

The moment of truth was when he called out my winning raffle ticket number 126443 when he was raffling off the autographed Mike Trout Old Hickory MLB Authenticated bat. I couldn't believe it. I had to look at my ticket twice to check if I won. The most popular item with the most raffle tickets was the Trout jersey and the Trout bat. I couldn't believe how lucky I got. My friend Lori took a photo of me with the bat as soon as I won it with my friend Joe who was nice enough to photobomb the photo.

After the raffle was over CJ signed more autographs and posed for pictures with fans. All of the raffle winners were able to pose for a photo with CJ. When we took this photo CJ told me to pose with a batting stance.

We also took a group photo of all the Anaheim graphers in attendance.

The graphers missing in the photo above are Tyler, Victor and Jeremy who all left early. I want to give a shout out to all the graphers including Victor, Scotty, Amber, Lori, Joe, Jeremy, and Tyler and a special thanks to both Victor and Scotty for hooking me up. If it weren't for you guys I would have never won the bat. I also want to thank CJ Wilson for hosting his charity bowling event and for being nice and cordial to the fans as usual.