Hope you all had a great holiday weekend. Before I get into this week's excitement on the next post here is a recap of the last few days. Last Thursday was our first private signing with Jorge Posada in quite some time. After much debate we ended up scheduling the signing for late afternoon at Yankee Stadium. As I have said in the past there is nothing fun about doing signings at the stadium...especially close to game time. I loaded up early in the day as I knew it would be a scramble once a location within the ballpark was secured. As you all know it has been a long time since Jorge has signed. Due to the lack of signings we have built up quite possibly the largest amount of send-in/mail order pieces I have ever seen. I knew going into the signing that it was unlikely Posada would complete everything and was preparing myself to make a game-time decision on what was to be signed... little did I know the decision would actually be made for me. Upon arrival at the park I was forced to double-park by Gate 2 and await word on who would be coming to get me to take us to the "Family" room where we were conducting the signing. This took forever as the stadium is basically a "Fort Knox" right now (miss the old days when I would put the blinkers on and head straight to Torre's office). Finally with not much time to spare word was given that security was coming down in a few minutes to escort us (I had two interns with me...ironically one a Laker fan and the other a Nuggets fan..obviously I took the Laker fan with me and the Denver fan drove solo...how can someone outside of Denver be a Nuggets fan?...seriously??) With the few moments allowed we then parked the cars on the third floor of the closest parking garage. Between the three of us we were able to carry two cases of baseballs, two boxes of bats and a box of photos. My rationale at the time was that those pieces were self-explanatory and ready to go...considering how late it was once we finally got to the room I definitely made the right choice. After struggling with the boxes over the course of the mile walk we finally got settled in the room at about 4:25. The signing was slated for five and, after getting set up, I debated heading back out to grab as much more product as I could as there may have been just enough time for another trip. Thankfully we didn't since Jorge showed up about ten minutes earlier and did not have much time to sign. Posada did knock out the signing in no time. We got some awesome product signed (1st stadium homerun baseballs, bats and photos) but it was only the tip of the iceberg for what we will be getting signed at the next session (sometime next week). We finally got packed back up and headed back through the corridor for the longest mile, out the gate and towards the garage. Unfortunately I had not realized that the parking ticket needed to be paid at a pay-station before leaving the garage. I once again caused a scene by backing up, trying to find a pay station and eventually stopping traffic again to pack up the car. Soon after I dodged around the incoming stadium traffic and hit the Degan for the trip home (actually was not as bad as expected or any of my past experiences leaving the park on a game day).
Two quick side notes on that adventure: The "Family" room is awesome. There is food for the kids (full kitchen, stocked refrigerator, mini Oreos) as well as toys, television and a computer. The walls are covered with photos of some Yankees with children (one of Mantle, another of Whitey..etc..)
Secondly, I ran into Reggie Jackson not far from the clubhouse. It is pretty cool that he is regularly around the club and works with the players...always interesting to see some of these athletes in situations other than a signing or an appearance.

While Thursday's experience was a little bit of a schlep Friday's was quite the opposite as Brett Gardner came up to our office for a small private signing. We were able to get images of Brett's inside the park home run from May 15th...the first of it's kind at the new yard. It is one of the strongest photos we have done in a long time (both with inscription and without) and is sure to be one of our best sellers this baseball season. Aside from the photos we also got a limited number of baseballs and bats signed with the "1st Inside the park HR 5-15-09" inscription.
Before the signing I gave Gardner a tour of our new, improved facility. I have really been enjoying seeing people's reaction as finally we are in the perfect spot (we outgrew our old space about three years before we moved)...it truly is impressive. Anyway, Friday was undoubtedly the first of many signings we will be having up here with Brett as I said earlier that photo is soon to become a staple piece.

While the Posada signing is probably the more interesting one of the two I will take Friday's ten times over... nothing better than doing something in house. While I have received countless emails from the blog faithful telling me how cool this job is (and it is cool- don't get me wrong) the lengths and the physicality you must go to expedite some of these signings is ridiculous at times. As I said earlier Thursday was not half as bad as expected but if you read through the blog archives (go back to '06, '07) there are quite a few horror stories (Danica Patrick at the Richmond Speedway for example).... you guys should check out the archives anyway as it is easy to see what the upwards trends were in sports over the past four-five years (just by following me..isn't that nuts?)

Enjoy the rest of the day! Fernando Martinez called up to for the Mets today... should be an interesting evening at Citi...Go Mets! Go Lakers (turn the on-switch back to on tomorrow...please...)!

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