2016 Spring Training- Before I Even Got There...

As some of you may remember from last year, I did not make it to Spring Training due to having a six month old son, but my parents continued their yearly tradition of heading down to Sarasota to avoid the cold winter weather of the Northeast. Well, this year, while I did make it down for a few days, their trip was a bit longer than mine, and my dad spent some of the time ahead of my arrival snagging some autographs. By the time I got to Sarasota, he had already gotten 21 autographs in one day! He helped me out a ton last year, and this year, he provided an awesome start to my autograph-seeking adventure.















My dad was able to get all of these OMCs (Old Man Cards) signed and some personalized for me before I even set foot in Florida! (I just realized that I forgot to scan the three Audry Perez autos that he got, but I will show them off with the next batch.)

These were my first autographs of Chris Lee, Andy Oliver, Francisco Pena, and Andrew Triggs, so these personalized OMCs are heading directly for the collection if/when they make their Orioles debuts. Triggs is already out of the organization after the Orioles released him to make room for Pedro Alvarez and the A's added him to their team, so it seems unlikely that he will pitch for the O's at least in the near future. So Triggs is the commemorative Alex Gonzalez/Alex Hassan OMC autograph of the player who was out of the organization before Spring Training ended. Which is too bad since he signed a card for my son as well, but that's life! The other three guys could show up in Baltimore at some point in the near future.

I've been lucky in the past to get autographs of Jason Garcia, Chaz Roe, and Mike Wright in the past, so the non-personalized cards are available for trade. And thankfully Chaz didn't spell my name Rayn this time around.

Thanks for your help old man!

Hopefully, I will be showing off some more autographs sometime later this week. But two posts in a week is certainly a good starting point.