Yesterday afternoon I headed out to Last Licks Massapequa for our appearance with "The Franchise" Tom Seaver. As I have said in the past I have no love for driving in Long Island. The traffic is bad enough without sub-par weather but when it rains or snows it becomes unbearable. Normally it takes me about forty-five minutes to get to the store. Yesterday I made it in a cool three hours and ten minutes...it was ridiculous. One of the great things about the Massapequa store is the overhang outside the store. If the appearance was at any other store it would have been quite difficult to bring in my product in the rain. In Pequa I am able to pull right up in front of store and unload rain-free. Yesterday I was not the only one that was late to the appearance. Tom Seaver's car was an hour behind me so when I did finally pull up to the store the customers all thought I was Tom Terrific (it was funny at the time). Anyway Seaver did finally arrive at about 7:00 to a thunderous ovation. He immediately began signing for the public and really had a great time talking to the kids and taking photos. Over the past few years Tom has become somewhat of a fixture behind the counter at our Last Licks stores. Every time I look away for a minute Seaver always seems to wander off to scoop ice cream for customers..it's awesome. Once I was able to get Tom focused again we began knocking out the private items. "The Franchise" signed a ton of strong items including HOF inscription baseballs, MLB baseballs, pitching rubbers with three inscriptions (3!) and even dual signed some interesting Joe Namath pieces (both '69 champs..both played at Shea...check the auction this week as the items are awesome) The bulk of Seaver's signing time was dedicated to autographing one of my all-time favorite pieces- the Nolan Ryan, Jerry Koosman, Tom Seaver locker-room 16x20. Nolan and Jerry signed these a few weeks ago so this gave us an opportunity to complete this round. We finished at about 10:00. I then proceeded to pull my car under that incredible overhang again (it does not take much to make me happy) and re-loaded up the car. I finally arrived home at about 11:30 (again Long Island traffic gets me again)
Tomorrow is our appearance at Last Licks Armonk with John Wetteland and Charlie Hayes. Check back for a recap.