Saturday, February 8, 2014

Padres Fanfest 2014 Part II

We headed back to Petco Park from Fowler Park. Luckily both stadiums were close to each other so we didn't miss much during our brief intermission. The next autograph line we went to was for Jedd Gyorko and Casey Kelly.






Casey was cool as usual and he signed three cards for me.






Jedd ended up signing a ROMLB on the SS for me and was nice enough to add the "Go Pads" inscription above my baseball.






Afterwards we went to the Cameron Maybin and Kyle Blanks autograph session.





Cameron jokingly said he doesn't like to sign Florida Marlins cards. I initially thought he was being serious so I told him I didn't know and that it was my bad for bringing the card. Luckily he was joking as he ended up signing the Marlins card as well as three other cards for me.






Kyle signed two cards for me





I ended up going to the Eric Stults and Eric Owens autograph session to help my friend David A get his cards signed. I had nothing for both guys. I did take this photo of the jersey that Eric Stults was wearing today.





If you look closely he is wearing his own signed jersey with MLB authentication. I'm guessing this jersey will eventually end up at a Padres charity event in a silent auction one day.

Afterwards we went to the Everth Cabrera and Dale Thayer autograph session. I didn't have anything prepped for Dale to sign so I ended up getting a standard Padres Fanfest card signed by him. Everth signed two cards for me.








Next up was Nick Hundley and Tommy Medica. I had cards for Nick and nothing for Tommy so I ended up with another Padres Fanfest card signed. Tommy for some reason signed the card backward.






Afterwards we decided to go to the Xavier Nady autograph session. There I ran into my friend Spencer who as no surprise brought his Yankee plaque with him. Spencer travels all across the country with that famous plaque getting all the significant Yankees on that piece. It's simply impressive. Here are two photos below of happy Spencer and stone-faced Spencer holding his famous Yankee plaque.






Xavier ended up signing two cards for me. As he was signing he asked me how the event was going and I let him know I had no complaints since the Padres always do a good job of organizing fanfest. Xavier mentioned that he has signed at several different fanfest events over the years and told me that the Pirates Fest is the worst since it is totally unorganized. I hope members of the Pirates organization never read this comment. Hopefully Pirates Fest is more organized now that the team is playing much better these days.






Afterwards we went to the Player Forum Q and A session near the home dugout to hear Yonder Alonso, Chris Denorfia, Josh Johnson, and Joaquin Benoit talk to the fans and answer questions regarding the upcoming season.





Yonder ended up signing a card for me once the player forum was over.





The last autograph session of the day was for Nick Vincent and Andrew Cashner. I had nothing for Nick to sign so I ended up getting a Padres Fanfest card signed by Nick and Andrew signed four cards for me one of which (not pictured) was for my friend Alex A who was too tired to wait in line.



Overall it was another awesome day of graphing in San Diego. It was fun graphing and chatting it up with everyone today. I want to thank the Padres as well as the staff for running another successful and well organized Fanfest this year.

2 comments:

  1. I have been to NatsFest, O'sFest and PiratesFest. Pirates one was very unorganized (was there this year since I just moved to Pitt for Grad School). I like your posts. I had a blog few years ago when I went to 79 games in one year (2010). Would love to be in California....so many great signings....not much in DC area where I spent 9 years....especially since Nats made it harder for autographs by putting up netting down first and third base lines and outside they put up a tarp and have police now (at request of Strasburg). I am looking forward to AZ for spring training!

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  2. Great job! I went for the first time and got 23 autographs. It is such an organized event, and for the first time, security was not bad.

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