Wish You Were Here

Greetings from the Steel City, Pittsburgh. I'm in town for the weekend taking in the MLB All-Star FanFest. 2 words: It's awesome. Any baseball fan would love it here. Everything is baseball and everyone is a baseball fan. I did get to check things out but I spent most of the day standing in line. Man my dogs are barking. I'm also a little past tired. Since I didn't get to sleep last night until 1am, and I got up at 5:45 to make the 3 hour trek from Buffalo to Pittsburgh, I'm also beyond tired. I left my phat palatial estate around 6am and rolled into "The Burg" minutes after nine. I dropped a 10 spot on parking, walked to the convention center, flashed 'em my ticket and pladow I was in. I think the tiredness has me a little loopy.
By the time I was inside and had finished my business, I drank a big Coke on the drive, I made my way to the MLB Legends Autograph Pavilion and got in line. It was about 9:27. The first pairing was coming out at 10am. The way it works here is 2 guys come out, sign for two hours, and then 2 more come out to sign, and so on and so on. There are 5 sets of guys, every 2 hours, starting at 10am and the last pair comes out at 6pm. I wasn't crazy about the first pairing, Chuck Tanner and Manny Sanguillen. So I waited, in line, until 12pm when Earl Weaver and some old Pirate whose name is escaping me came out. I already had Weaver and I didn't want the Pirate. But, I did bring my signed Weaver ball and had him add his induction year. He did! Score. I walked out of line at about 12:15 and made my way to the back of the line and started it all over again. 2pm rolled around and the pairing was Al Oliver and HOFer Orlando Cepeda. I don't know the exact time I made it up there for that but I'll guess it was around 2:30. Cepeda signed the ball but wouldn't add his induction year. He said they wouldn't let him. "LIAR," I yelled. Just kidding, but he did lie. He added it for the gentleman that was 2 in front of me. There is a word I want to call him. It begins with a D, ends with a K, and it's not duck. But he showed, so I was grateful. The next pairing at 4pm was Doc Ellis and Fred Lynn. I thought I had some time to kill so I walked around and checked things out all and all, it was pretty cool.
I went to the 2nd level and found the MLB.com setup. They were their radio shows live and it was neat to watch. I got there about 5 minutes before the current show ended. Jimmy Leyritz was on stage. After the show, he was happy to sign a ball for me. Perfect timing. Thanks Jim. They had some PCs setup so you could check out MLB.com. I of course went to MLBlogs and said to myself, "Self. You should live-blog an the action from FanFest." Unfortunately, they had no keyboards. It was all point-and-click. Oh well. Time to go back to the line.
It's about 3:15 and I'm pretty far back. Lynn and Ellis hadn't come out yet so I thought there might be a chance to get Lynn. I knew if I didn't, he'd be an hour down the road from me in early August and I could get it there, free of charge. I was really in line for the 6pm pairing, Luis Aparicio and Bill Madlock. I got to the front of the line around 5:05 or so. I wasn't sure if I went and got Lynn's autograph if I'd get back to the front of the line before 8pm. Odds were good, but I figured why risk it. All hope wasn't lost. I did get a little kid to get it for me. He actually knew Fred Lynn. He's a friend of his Gramps. Cool kid. Thanks for hooking me up. 6pm rolled around and i got Aparicio to sign a ball with his induction year. Madlock signed a ball and was kind enough to add that he was a 4-time batting champ. Ron Leflore also came out and I didn't really want his, but we made eye contact and I felt bad so I got it. It was know about 6:15 and I was done getting autos for the day. Time to walk around some more.
I spent about an hour walking around checking things out. Pretty cool stuff. I'll blog more about it later. I'm currently at a Holiday Inn Express and there's a dude here who wants to use the free Internet hook-up I'm talking advantage of. Step back bro and wait your turn. I figured it'd be best to find a room instead of driving back tonight and coming back tomorrow. The only drawback of today's events was that Gary Carter didn't make his appearance. Oh well.
Tomorrow I'll be doing this all over again. The autograph targets are Andre Dawson, Harmon Killebrew, Buck O'Neill, Juan Marichal, and another name that's escaping me. Right now I'm going to walk across the street to the BK Lounge and get myself a sangwich. The cool kids out there will know what that means.
Wish you were here.
J