SoCal Autograph Odysses

Statistics only tell a very partial story when it comes San Diego icon Tony Gwynn.  Of course any baseball fan can spew the numbers from memory; 3141 hits. A .338 lifetime hitter, 15 time all-star, 5 time Gold Glover,  first ballot Hall of Famer (with 97.6% of the vote).  Perhaps the stat that has always stuck out in my mind is the one in which someone calculated that if Gwynn had zero hits in his last 1100 something at bats, he still  would have a lifetime average over .300.  Mind boggling.  The problem is, these numbers only do justice to Tony Gwynn the player, not Tony Gwynn the person.  San Diego is a sports town with a history of losing teams, and few stars.  When we are lucky enough to find a great player we can get attached to, they leave for greener pastures elsewhere.  Tony Gwynn did not, and for that reason he is arguably the most beloved figure in our sports lexicon.  Everyone remembers what he did for the city.  Sto...

As I've made mention on this blog before, hockey is my favorite sport.  The Los Angeles Kings have been my favorite team in any sport since I was a kid in 1988.  As such, I follow just about all things Kings on Twitter.  You can imagine then that when I saw one such Kings sponsor, the San Manuel Indian Bingo and Casino having a giveaway on Twitter, I did what they asked to be eligible.  I retweeted a tweet.  Took me about three seconds total to do so.  Turns out I won a signed puck from Kings captain Dustin Brown, which arrived in the mail yesterday. This is a pretty awesome prize if you ask me.  What makes it even better is I won it the day before Dustin Brown raised the Stanley Cup over his head for a second time!  On a side note, I have been to San Manuel and had a blast.  I live in Northern San Diego County so it isn't exactly close, which shows you what I actually think of the casino.  I'd recommend anyone going if they want to...

Spurred on by my relative success with the Tigers just a few days before, I decided to attend the first game of a four game series between the Rockies and the Padres.  The Rockies are pretty well regarded in the autographing community for their generosity in signing for people.  This is including the bigger names like Troy Tulowitzki and Carlos Gonzalez, who often make a point to sign a couple of times every series.  One of my older posts on this blog actually alludes to a day I went down to Petco Park to do some pregame Rockies graphing for the first time.  It was a successful experience.  With that as a backdrop, I eagerly anticipated what type of success I might have heading into this game. What was immediately apparent upon arriving downtown, was the lack of people in comparison to a Friday night against a marquee opponent like the Tigers.  Lawrence (who I met up with at the ballpark after his long day of pregame graphing) and I were able to get right...

In the first Padres home weekend series of the recently begun MLB season, the match up was versus a team rarely seen in San Diego; The Detroit Tigers.  Since this is a team that rarely visits San Diego, and having never had the chance to try and get autographs from the team before, my friend Lawrence and I decided to attend the game.  It was a Friday afternoon, so obviously traffic slowed our plans.  We had intended to get to the ballpark as early as possible to try and see who we could get during Tiger's batting practice.  We still made it in time to watch BP, but the ballpark was pretty packed.  Here is a picture of the chaos; Only one two members of the Tigers signed during the entire course of BP, someone named Collins and Omar Vizquel.  I would have used a ball on Vizquel, but he only signed for about five or six people so by the time I got near him he was gone.  It was a big miss overall, but knowing that no one signed while you are there is b...

Up to this point, this has been a blog entirely dedicated to obtaining autographs in the realm of sports. I do, however, have some items signed by actors and bands, and I added to the latter collection over the past weekend. The band TOOL was in town, playing in San Diego at the Valley View Casino Center, fka the San Diego Sports Arena. TOOL is one of if not my favorite band and I never miss an opportunity to go to their shows when they are around. Here are a couple of shots I took during the performance.  My friend Lawrence and I were seated right down the middle up high, allowing for an excellent vantage point.  Obviously I am biased, but not only does TOOL have incredibly complicated and great music, the shows themselves with images in the background and lasers are just a sensory overload... Of course, this is a blog about memorabilia so of course I did pick a little something up while attending the event on Sunday.  Keep in mind I am a huge fan of Maynard Ja...

Yesterday I delved into my first autograph excursion in quite some time.  During the offseason of baseball, I tend to take long hiatuses from my hobby to better recharge my batteries for the upcoming season.  It sounds kinda peculiar to hear that having a professional athlete sign autographs for you can be tiring, but it really is.  A lot of preparation goes into getting ready for each event.  When you add travel time and a lot of standing/walking with a backpack on to the equation, by the end of the day you feel drained.  However, after a long idle time, I was rearing to go and heard a couple weeks ago that Dodgers FanFest was going to change its procedure when it came to obtaining autographs from the team at the event.  I have heard that in the past the FanFest was pretty disorganized, though to be honest, I had never attended one.  This year was going to be the first year that you had to purchase tickets to each signing "session" that you wanted...