In early 1984, right after Harmon had been elected to the HOP, he signed autographs at a show at the

TwinsFest, which we missed last year because of its relocation, certainly resort hotels felt familiar but freshened from past years. I think that the absence of a year, for many folks, made the heart grow a little bit fonder toward this old stalwart. And despite coming off a lousy season, resort hotels everybody seemed so gosh darn happy .
And that new Metrodome roof was so much more cheery than the old one. It probably would be tougher on baseball players, but every time the sun came out, it caused a dramatic change in the mood of the place. Why couldn't they have done that 20 years ago?
Everyone who was there must admit it: We love baseball. Even when our team isn't at its top form, baseball remains the promise of a summer which just keeps on giving. Why else would we plunk down real money (my total for the event was $70, admittedly maybe not your definition resort hotels of "real" money) to walk around and just look at some baseball stuff -- some of which we've seen before?
Well, there's the chance that we'll bump into a player or two. OK, that doesn't really happen resort hotels anymore, at least not in an uncontrolled situation. But you can run into the ballpark organist, which is its own thrill.
The nearest I could tell, Sue was just attending the event. I happened to turn around after taking a picture of my kids by a World Series trophy to find her standing behind me, trying to get close to the trophy case.
As always, she was gracious in being recognized, and happy to explain to the kids what she does: "I'm the one who goes dum-dum-dum-dum-da-dum on the organ." After we took a picture with her, she moved back toward the exhibit and didn't get recognized again in the whole time we hovered nearby looking at the various resort hotels artifacts.
The bane of this TwinsFest, like all others, is those autograph lines. resort hotels They are impossibly long, snaking throughout the floor, resort hotels and tying up people who appeared to all wish they were doing something else. In a couple of cases, I didn't even recognize the Twins they were waiting for.
The addition of colored wristbands appears to have helped somewhat resort hotels for the bigger names. But I talked to one fan who had arrived at the crack of dawn just to get in line for a wristband to give her the chance of getting Joe Mauer's autograph. In the end, she got the wrong color. But she was philosophical, saying that the process had actually had saved her a lot of time.
This is not rocket science, though there is some experimentation and projection involved, and it would require finding a provider for the software if it's not available in house. But one call to the Minnesota History Center or the Minneapolis resort hotels Institute of Arts and you've got that covered. They do that sort of thing all the time.
So, as an autograph-seeker, you have to do some virtual waiting, but then your ticket will show you exactly when to arrive in order to get your autograph. Max wait time: 15 minutes. And all the money is handled securely, no player needs to feel like he's disappointing anybody left standing in line when his time is up, and everybody is happy.
We ate some hot dogs and cotton candy (they were out of pizza, imagine that). We hit some whiffle resort hotels balls. Ninjas taught resort hotels us how to swing (don't ask; I don't know the answer). There was much jumping and bouncing, plus a bit of climbing and sliding. I said, "stay together" about 500 times, and still had to chase after the younger one a couple of times as he wandered absentmindedly into the crowd.
Nice recap, Rick. I took my son and one of his friends. They're old enough to be able to wander around on their own now, but to deal with autograph lines in the past, I've usually brought a book and waited in line while the kids and my wife (or other adult) walk around with them. Line starts moving, get close, call the kids, they come over. Not that difficult, really, and once the lines start moving, they go pretty quickly.
The wristbands worked fairly well, I thought. We did NOT get there early to get a Mauer wristband. We showed up at the table about half-way through the desingate dpick-up time period and there were still 75 or so wristbands available, in each of the 3 colors. We each picked a different resort hotels color. My son's friend didn't want to pay for Mauer's autograph but took a wristband anyway, resort hotels which meant that we were certain to get one picked (turned out, it was his). We thought we were being clever, going to the actual autograph line 5-10 minutesd before they were going to announce the winning color, only to find about 500 people already in line!
this was far better than past years, when the memorabilia dealers all were able to get in the popular lines before resort hotels the rest of the crowd and made it extremely resort hotels difficult to get to Mauer or Morneau unless you did camp out for hours (not 1 or 2 hours - 4+ hours) in advance. The wristbands fixed that problem.
Your solution could work, although you'd need to figure out a way to limit the # of tickets a person could buy. The key to the wristbands was that one person could get just one wristband, and had to put it on right there (so, no swapping/selling wristbands). If you don't limit it, you'll just end up with the same problems you see for other ticketd events - dealers/scalpers will set up multiple computers and buy up all the stock, shutting most others out.
I haven't been to Twins Fest in many years. Has it changed much? I went a few times and eventually came away with the feeling that once you'd seen it, you'd seen it; autographs, resort hotels cards and memorabilia, some stuff for kids, some historical displays. The clubhouse tours are obviously out the window. I'd give Twins Fest another chance if there was something new and different about it.
What is the deal with autographs resort hotels anyway? Why do people want them? I guess I have a few, but when I meet a player the last thing I expect or want is a signature, and I'm sure it's a pain for them to always be signing things.
Isn't the fun in just meeting the player, particularly for the kids? The hysteria about autographs just kind of bogs down the process resort hotels and cheapens what could be a friendly interaction into a transaction.
What if instead of autograph sessions, these were just "meet the player" resort hotels sessions - you'd go through a line, shake hands, resort hotels take a pic, and be done with it - no autographs allowed. Or what if small groups of people got to meet with a player for 5 or 10 minutes, ask questions, have a conversation. Isn't that more fun than focusing on the piece of paper.
A couple of years ago I argued for a reboot of the whole thing , and still think it could use something like that. Whether it would be worth it to attend in its current form depends wholly on how much you want to get a little taste of baseball in the winter.
Funny you should mention Harmon Killebrew. My feelings about autographs come from an encounter with him at a predecessor to Twins Fest back in the 1980s. There were several current and ex players around, but no organized autograph lines. A big mob surrounded him and, being Harmon, he just stood there patiently signing until the last person was gone (so big a mob that there was a picture of it in the Strib the next day). My turn came, he signed my program, and then I had the nerve to ask him to sign one more thing for my sister, because it was her birthday! He sighed, ever so slightly, but being Harmon he signed again without complaint.
That was almost resort hotels 30 years ago, and I still feel guilty about it! It just seemed so ridiculous a way to treat someone who everyone in the mob certainly admired. And most of us were adults, and I'm sure most of those autographs are long lost (except mine - I also got Jim Perry, Bob Allison, Tony O, and a few others on the same program that day...more guilt).
I love getting resort hotels autographs. I don't sell them, nor do I ever plan to, its just a neat reminder of the day I met them and something to look at for memories, instead of just in my head, and it's special to me.
Human beings like to collect things. It's particularly noticeable in American culture. Autographs are one of those things. That people are willing to pay large amounts of money for certain autographs resort hotels isn't all that surprising (in the context of beanie babies, comic books, resort hotels etc.), and that simply drives interest all the more.
I like the idea of small group meet-and-talk sessions. They sort of do that with the kid Q&A sessions, but the groups are larger and not very personal. They do have the photo lines, which used to be free but now involve a $5 charge (ugh).
If you're an adult, and you're not a collector, and you've been to Twinsfest resort hotels before, and you're not going with kids... don't bother. But getting in the baseball spirit (in January) and helping to instill it in a child - that's worth the admission price.
Years ago a good friend of mine had the chance to get a photo taken with Harmon at one event or another. He took the photo to the next Twins Fest and presented it to Harmon for an autograph. Harmon not only gladly signed, but wanted to talk about the picture, warmly asking about when it was taken and, when told, then discussing the event in question. Harmon was so chatty that the Twins employee manning the station had to politely ask him to wrap things up since there was a huge line of people still waiting.
My own experience of this sort of thing was road tripping to Kansas City in the summer of 1993 to watch the Twins and Royals. One of the games was camera day. Every fan with a camera could enter the field to take pictures from the warning track of Royals players at different stations. My party bought disposable cameras at a drug store just for the sake of walking on a Major League ball field. Anyway, Greg Gagne was pretty new to the Royals and wasn't attracting much of a crowd, resort hotels so we went over to say hi. He saw our Twins caps and spent some time chatting with us. He was as nice as could be.
In early 1984, right after Harmon had been elected to the HOP, he signed autographs at a show at the Dome. My wife and I mentioned we would be going to Cooperstown fo