Autograph Hound's Blah Blah Blog

Monday, March 7, 2016

Rangers Caravan Dr Pepper Ballpark 2016

Tom Wilhelmsen

Jeff Bannister

I’m sure most ball teams do a barnstorming publicity blitz just before Spring Training. The team sends a few players to local towns to make appearances. The players sign a few autographs and generate interest in the upcoming season. After a long hard 3 months without any worthwhile sports to watch, fans get excited. The team is able to convert that interest into season tickets sales.

Steve Buechele

For a rather lazy baseball fan like me, this is a great way to gather some autographs. It’s even better when the Texas Rangers send 7 people to the Dr Pepper Park in Frisco. Frisco is my home town. I can drive to the event in 5 minutes.

Robinson Chirinos

The crowds were light this year. I got to the event too early but decided to hang out in my car and relax for almost an hour. The weather was great. Being January, you never know what the weather will be like. We were queued in the sun and the wind was mild. It was a good morning.

Sam Freeman

Once the event started things were smooth. They had three signing stations. Over the next 90 minutes or so I worked my way through the 3 stations and picked up 7 signatures.

Tom Wilhelmsen commented on my UofA shirt. I found out he comes from Tucson.

Alex 'Chi Chi' Gonzalez

When I commented on Jeff Bannisters’ MLB batting average, he gave a wry smirk. He has a 1.000 batting average. Something to be proud of, even it’s a dubious stat. He only has 1 plate appearance but he made something out of that; more than I’ll ever do.

Keone Kela

The other signers were:
Robinson Chirinos
Alex ‘Chi Chi’ Gonzalez
Sam Freeman
Keone Kela

Steve Buechele

I nice haul of autographs.

Friday, February 6, 2015

Rangers Winter Caravan Frisco, TX 2015

Even with this being in my backyard, I think it’s been a year or so since I’ve gone. This year the crowd was smaller (it’s been a couple of years since their World Series run) and I was able to cycle through each of the signing lines and get everyone I wanted. In the past, getting through 1 line of the 3 signing lines was all I could do by myself. This year, it looked like I could have gone through a second or third time.

I got in line a few hours early. I must admit, I drove past the location a few hours earlier and saw 2 people in line. I decided to be productive with my morning and run some errors. Yeah me.

I did get back to the event about 2 hours early. About 30 people were in front of me. It was cold and windy. I brought my heavy jacket and book and I read. I’ve been rereading Dune (this is one of my Desert Island books – if stranded – I want this book with me. And don’t tell me you like the movie.) and I knocked off about 50 pages. It’s nice to get some quality reading done.