Day with your Favorite Player

[joelsabi]

Just wondering how much are you willing to pay to spend some time with your favorite player. I have seen some mlb auctions for meet and greet auctions of players. Then there are golf charities auction where you can play a round with your favorite player. theres also fantasy camps.

Maybe some here have already done this or had an opportunity to spend time with their favorite player(s).

[godwulf]

Re: Day with your Favorite Player

Or...how much would you be willing to pay not to spend the day with, say, Barry Bonds?

I was actually thinking today that I would love to get Greg Colbrunn together with my entire collection of 34 Colbrunn bats (or Matt Williams, with my two dozen+ Williams bats) and just go over each one in turn, getting his help in dating them, talking about which were his favorite models, etc. That's the kind of "quality time" I might be willing to pay some money for.

Having lunch with somebody like that, or playing (yeesh!) golf with them, would be okay, I guess...but I want to talk about The Game and pick their brains about my stuff, more than I want to eat with them, or ride around with them in their car picking up their dry-cleaning.

[suave1477]

Re: Day with your Favorite Player

Or...how much would you be willing to pay not to spend the day with, say, Barry Bonds?

I was actually thinking today that I would love to get Greg Colbrunn together with my entire collection of 34 Colbrunn bats (or Matt Williams, with my two dozen+ Williams bats) and just go over each one in turn, getting his help in dating them, talking about which were his favorite models, etc. That's the kind of "quality time" I might be willing to pay some money for.

Having lunch with somebody like that, or playing (yeesh!) golf with them, would be okay, I guess...but I want to talk about The Game and pick their brains about my stuff, more than I want to eat with them, or ride around with them in their car picking up their dry-cleaning.

Godwulf this couldn't of been said any better.

Yeah the meet and greets and golf tournaments are cool but you don't get actual quality time with the person to really pick there brain in detail.

Meet and greets usually add out to about 5 minutes of shaking someones hand getting to ask them 1 or 2 questions, posing for a picture and getting an autograph.

Golf tournaments usually add up a couple of hours possibly talking about baseball but more concentrating on the game of golf and the player probably standing there thinking "I can't wait to get this over with" and not being able to sit and show the items off to the player that you have collected.

[frikativ54]

Re: Day with your Favorite Player

It really depends on whom I would be meeting. As far as my team, the Astros are concerned, I don't know what we'd talk about. Honestly, I'm not sure I'm worth Lance Berkman, Craig Biggio, or Bagwell's time. I did run into Bagwell after a game in Arizona eating with Ausmus, and it was pretty much my Dad introducing me to Jeff Bagwell, my Dad walking away so I could high-five Bagwell for his homer, and chatting with Bags for 2 minutes, before I returned to my table. It was a great experience. But what would I bother him for an afternoon about?

I might like to meet Jim Thome, but again, what's the point of an entire afternoon? I would like to have a few questions answered by some ballplayers, but how many players would talk with me about the stuff I'm interested in (politics, photography, wildlife - not hunting, but taking photographs of local animals like squirrels and raccoons)? If I had to pay money to talk to people, I'd rather talk with a noted author, intellectual, or politician. And many times you can do that for free, as I have in the past, without forking over a dime.

I watch baseball as a diversion, and I love the game, but talking to a baseball player just to talk to him would be a waste of my time and his time as well.

[Fnazxc0114]

Re: Day with your Favorite Player

one thing good about the rangers winter caravan is they have q and a sessions with a lot of players. like frik i dont know that i would be into spending a whole afternoon with the players. about the only question i ever had had to with when they get paid. josh hamilton answered for me. they get paid like everyone else on the first and 15th, and they dont get paid during the off season.

[nomarmauerfan]

Re: Day with your Favorite Player

If you check the archives, you will find my story on my day meeting my favorite baseball player of all-time, Don Mattingly in February 2008. With the flight, hotel, and autographs, it cost around $1000...and, I wouldn't change it for the world! The Evansville newspaper even wrote a story about it.

Mike

[stradermays]

Re: Day with your Favorite Player

I grew up a huge Darrell Porter fan. My grandmother was into ceramics and made a Royal with number 15 Porter on the back. The year on the bottom was 1979. Darrell was a huge baseball card collector and thru a mutual business partner, a private meeting was set for him to come to my house to view my personal card collection in 1994. He signed my figurine (seen in the picture), his book "Snap me Perfect", and he gave me a game used bat. He purchased several thousands in cards and we talked baseball for hours. I had just finished 4 years of college baseball and was hoping for a spring training try out, so we had plenty to talk about. The bad part, we kept in contact for the next 4 or 5 years and as he drifted off, back to his addictions, we lost touch. As you all know, he died from an enlarged heart, a side effect of acute cocaine use, a few years later. While I charished the time I spent with one of my boyhood hero, I also regret seeing him as human. Sometimes heroes should be kept as fantasies in our minds and hearts and worshiped based on how we want them to be, not how they really are.

[metsbats]

Re: Day with your Favorite Player

I was fortunate to be able to spend a day on two separate occasions with my favorite 86 Met Ed Hearn. Back in 2004 I drove him from Long Island to Oneonta to a speaking engagement at a Cooperstown baseball camp. That was 6 hours round trip in my minivan, watching him speak, caddying his books for him at the camp, and a free dinner at Brooks BBQ (evidently former baseball players from WS championship teams and their guests don't have to pay for meals )

The second time was in 2006 when I was supposed to attend the MLB Bat dinner with him. Unfortunately he wasn't feeling too well that day and he just ended up spending a few hours hanging at my house instead before I drove him back to his hotel near Steiner Headquarters.

We spent most of the time talking about family and life issues. Got a few interesting comical stories about the 86 Mets too.

[geoff]

Re: Day with your Favorite Player

He is not my favorite Player but he was a Oriole.Back when I was a Teenager I hung out with Randy Milligan all Day one Day.My GrandFather used to run a overnight Summer Camp and Randy was doing a Paid event at a local Mall for him trying to get Parents and Kids there to Sign up to go to the Camp.Randy was there to Talk Baseball and Sign Autographs with the Parents and there Kids.I remember I sat there all Day next to Randy and we just hung out and talked Baseball and he was even showing me how to swing a Bat and how to Stand in the Batters Box.He had a Bat with him.I am sure now it was one of his Game Used Bats.I should have asked him for the Bat.I remember he signed a few Cards of him I had.My Grandfather also had a Redskin do the same thing the next year.For some reason I did not go to that event.I will never forget that Day.

[TriplexXxSports]

Re: Day with your Favorite Player

I drank a considerable amount of Vitamin Water to win the fishing trip with Brian Urlacher. Of course, I never won, but I am healthier now, and with the money well spent, I could of taken a weekend fishing trip in the Ozarks with my old man.

[skyking26]

Re: Day with your Favorite Player

I've known my collecting interest, Dave Kingman, since 1992. We have had dinner together upon some of his signing visits in Chicago over the years. Dave's a busy guy, so a "day" probably would not happen, and his interests are hunting and fishing so that puts us in different corners too, but we hung out for 3 hours last March, had dinner and watched college hoops in a hotel bar in Chicago. It is VERY COOL to have that opportunity, and to here a few stories about baseball in the 70's and 80's. I enjoy each minute of it. Dave's a good guy....

[frikativ54]

Re: Day with your Favorite Player

I've known my collecting interest, Dave Kingman, since 1992. We have had dinner together upon some of his signing visits in Chicago over the years. Dave's a busy guy, so a "day" probably would not happen, and his interests are hunting and fishing so that puts us in different corners too, but we hung out for 3 hours last March, had dinner and watched college hoops in a hotel bar in Chicago. It is VERY COOL to have that opportunity, and to here a few stories about baseball in the 70's and 80's. I enjoy each minute of it. Dave's a good guy....

What's the story behind you knowing Dave Kingman?

[joelsabi]

Re: Day with your Favorite Player

While I charished the time I spent with one of my boyhood hero, I also regret seeing him as human. Sometimes heroes should be kept as fantasies in our minds and hearts and worshiped based on how we want them to be, not how they really are.

Now you making me wonder whether I want to meet my favorites or not. Wonder if anyone else shares stradermays sentiments.

[frikativ54]

Re: Day with your Favorite Player

Now you making me wonder whether I want to meet my favorites or not. Wonder if anyone else shares stradermays sentiments.

I know exactly what you mean. It's so weird to spend a lot of time following a guy and then to meet him in person. The first time I met Jeff Bagwell, I thought "Wow - he's human!" That's also how I felt when I went to the Bagwell jersey retirement. It was almost as if my memories from Houston would have been better off as just memories of flying into town when I was in 7th grade. It was almost as if I didn't want to revisit them, even though I enjoyed the ceremony.

[frikativ54]

Re: Day with your Favorite Player

Instead of my day with a player, I would prefer an interview with that athlete. The kinds of questions I would ask him would be more appropriate for a journalist than someone hanging out with a professional athlete. There's a certain amount of deference you need to show to a ballplayer when you meet him as a public citizen, which is different from interviewing him as a reporter. Anyone else with me?