Tagged: fun

May 8, 2010

May 8, 2010 @ Citi Field

I went to Citi Field on Saturday May 8 to see my Mets host the San Francisco Giants. My dad, who knows people, got front row seats behind the Giants dugout for a very, very discounted price. When I looked at the weather forecast for this day, I noticed that there was going to be some early morning rain, so I decided to sleep in a little. We got there at around 11 AM, and everything was soaked and the tarp was on the field. The only action I could find was down the right field line where some Mets were stretching. My dad stayed at our seats with the camera. The picture on the left is taken by my dad from the seats. The one on the right is from my phone.

Shortly after that , Fernando Nieve started signing and I got him to sign a ball on the sweet spot with someone else’s black pen. That autograph, along with my others can be seen at the bottom of this entry. This picture was taken by my dad from a long distance away.

After that, I returned to my seats and noticed that Giants reliever Dan Runzler was having his photo taken, presumably for his next baseball card.

After that, when he was walking into the dugout, I asked him to sign a ball, and he did. I don’t have it on tape. But apparently I need to work on my pen throwing. Shortly after, another Giants reliever, Denny Bautista, had his picture taken by that same man.

After that, when he entered the dugout, he was talking to someone he knew in spanish, and I asked him to sign the ball that Runzler had just signed, and he obliged. My dad got it all on tape and I put the video up on youtube. He dropped the pen even though I threw it right to him

After that, things slowed down for a little while until Juan Uribe signed a ball for me at the dugout after the national anthem. He signed so quickly that my dad could not even take out the camera. That left me with 4 autographs at game time. Once the game began, my father and I were clearly visible on TV. This is a screen shot of Henry Blanco batting in the 2nd inning. I am circled in grey. My father is circled in purple. He wore the A’s hat so he could stand out in the crowd.

The game started with the Mets jumping off to an early lead. Jason Bay got a sacrifice fly off Todd Wellemeyer in the first. In the 2nd, Angel Pagan got a triple down the left field line past a diving Mark DeRosa. After 3 innings, the Mets were up 3-0. But let’s take a rewind to the bottom of the third inning. With 2 outs and David Wright on first after a walk, rookie Ike Davis stepped in to face Todd Wellemeyer. Why am I telling you about this? Keep on reading.

As you can see, the count went to 2-2. Ike rolled over on a pitch and hit a ground ball to Pablo Sandoval, commonly referred to as Kung Fu Panda, who threw the ball to Aubrey Huff at first base to end the inning. Huff jogged toward the dugout with the ball in his glove. I stood up and raised my arms and tried to get his attention. He reared back as he was going to throw the ball into the crowd. In the very blurry screen shot below you can see Huff, circled in blue, about to throw the ball over the dugout, while circled in the other blue circle, I am up and ready for the throw.

Huff threw the ball up, and it went right to me, and I made the easy one handed catch. The seat next to me was empty, and since I was in the middle of the row, there was no competition. Ball #1 was in the books, my first game ball. Some people only count live game balls, like foul balls or home run balls, as game balls. I think if the ball was used in the game, it counts as a game ball. I was pretty happy. I think the only reason Huff threw it to me was because I was wearing a Giants hat. You can see a close up picture of the ball below.

After that, I didn’t really care what happened the rest of the day. But in between innings later in the game, I noticed someone in the dugout that I had not seen earlier in the day. It was Tim Lincecum. I was looking for him pre game but just never saw him. I took a bunch of pictures of him, but here is one of the best ones.

During the rest of the game, it was fun to see Ike Davis’ stats on the Jumbotron because I felt like I owned the groundout to 3rd base.

As you can see by the line score, the Mets blew a late inning lead, but the game went to extras, and for the second straight game, the Mets won it on their final at bat. This time, it was catcher Henry Blanco going yard just over the left field wall to send all the Mets fans at Citi Field into a frenzy. This is the first time in MLB history that a team has won back to back games thanks to walk off homers by catchers. On the way out, I noticed the Mets were selling game used batting helmets. $75 for a Lance Broadway “game used” batting helmet, I think not. By game worn I mean sitting on a shelf.

They had a whole mess of game worn stuff, and it was all really overpriced.

Here are today’s autographs.

Fernando Nieve Juan Uribe

Dan Runzler

Denny Bautista

And finally, here is ball I snagged today, my 18th lifetime and first game ball.

As you can see, it is pretty rubbed up with mud and there is a distinct spot, right near the MLB logo, where Ike’s bat hit the ball.

This is probably going to be my last game for some time because I am nearing the end of the school year.

That is all for this entry. I hope you have enjoyed it. Feel free to comment.

Thanks for Reading,

Howie

October 24, 2009

Card Show

Sorry I have not posted in a while. Today I attended a card show. I usually went to these a lot when I was a little younger. This was the first time I’ve been to a card show in years. My father and I got there at about 12:30 pm and we immediately went to the back of the gym where former Mets Jack Fisher, Davey Johnson, Bruce Berenyi, Ron Darling, George Foster, Keith Hernandez and Kevin Elster were signing autographs. They all, cost a certain amount of money, except for Jack Fischer who was free with your paid admission. I bought 8×10 photographs of Foster and Fischer. How it worked was you would buy a card that entitles you to get 1 autograph from that player. You would give it to a person sitting next to the player then get the autograph. They gave you a card of Fischer with your admission. How the signing worked was there was 1 large table where all the players were sitting and signing. I went to George Foster first, but the line for him was so short and I thought he wasn’t there yet. It turns out that the line for a former MVP, World Series Champion, and All-Star, was well, no one. I just walked straight up to him and got him to personalize the photo I had just bought and I got a (slightly blurry) picture with him.

It was surprising to see him decked out in Reds gear at a New York card show.

Then we waited on line to get Jack Fisher. Thanks to a quick read on wikipedia earlier in the day, I found out that he was the Mets pitcher in the first ever game at old Shea Stadium, so I brought a Shea Stadium commemorative baseball with me and got him to sign it and an 8×10 with some inscriptions that I asked him to do. My father took a video of him signing, and you can check it out HERE. That is a good trivia question to stump your friend. Who threw the first pitch ever at Shea? Jack Fisher

After that, we browsed the rows and rows of dealers. Recently, I was denied in the mail by Jeff Reardon, he returned my cards back unsigned, so when I saw a signed 8×10 of him as a Met for only $1, there was no way I could refuse, so I grabbed a dollar from my pocket, handed it to the dealer, said thanks, and walked away with this Jeff Reardon autograph:

So, we looked around at the many dealers, saw some interesting stuff. Didn’t buy anything though except for a box of Topps Ticket To Stardom Baseball which contained 20 packs of 12 cards each and in one of the first packs my dad opened up, he saw this:

Pretty nice. On the back it was numbered 338/489. Now here is the reason why the box is called Ticket to Stardom.

If you can’t tell, those are actual tickets from games in 2008. After that, we noticed the line for Davey Johnson, manager of the 1986 Mets, was small. So we bought a picture and a card needed for an autograph, and got on line. There was only one problem, we were on the line for Bruce Berenyi, and we didn’t realize that until we saw Davey Johnson get up to leave, so we ran over to him right before he was going to walk out the door, and got him to personalize an 8×10 for me. Here is a proof shot taken by my dad along with the photo itself.

That was it for the card show. Very successful.