Braves FanFest = Long, Long Lines

What other minor league players were there?

I know not everybody can just scoot on down to Florida, but spring training was the best for us.  We went in February last year when pitchers and catchers reported.  No games, smallish crowds.  The position players were there on the back field and we couldn't go there, but everybody else was around.  In two trips there (a total of about 4 or 5 hours walking around), we got:
Tim Hudson, Brian McCann, Kelly Johnson, Bobby Cox, Buddy Carlyle, John Scheurholz, Scott Thorman, Pete Orr, Manny Acosta, Anthony Lerew, Peter Moylan, Blaine Boyer, Kevin Barry, and Jose Ascanio.
Now for a Braves fan, that wasn't a bad haul!  And I got a picture of my kid with every one of those guys.  
You know, we used to be able to get autographs at games, but they've made that difficult now.  When we go, we are lucky to get anybody's autograph.  Even if somebody comes over to sign for a good 10-15 minutes, they usually can't get to everybody before the announcement is made for people to go away and the ushers start herding you off.
I don't really know what the point of this post was except to throw gas on the fire torching the fan fest.  I know autographs aren't everything, but for those of us who collect them, it would be nice if a trip to Florida wasn't a better alternative than going to fan fest!

For those that got there at a respectable time (8am est) Fanfest was great.  We entered among th e first 500 people and my wife and I went strait to different autograph lines.  We were able to get McCann, Francoeur, and Glavine right off the bat.  Don't sleep in next time guys.

http://www.triterium.com/blog/images/fanfestday1.jpg

http://www.triterium.com/blog/images/jeffandheap.jpg

I didn't like it at all either. I was in line and halfway up to the front when Mac and Frenchy got up. I was disappointed even though I saw them later in a conference with their dads for the baseball conference show thing they were doing as well. I did get Chris Resop and Will Ohman's autographs for the heck of it. Not many wanted theirs, though, so fans didn't want to get out of line since you were to wait in line, as was already mentioned in a comment, and you had no idea who was coming out next to sign. They had no intentions of telling you or telling who was even there that day. Everyone replied that "they didn't know."

After the conference thing ended, Jeff and Brian were trying to sign autographs, but the security was all but literally dragging them out of the auditorium because they had somewhere else to go. And my mom said she and my sister were told there would be no autographs as they were walking in before it started.

Also, my mom and sister had gone out of the auditorium before I did, I went to the stage trying to get their autographs and what not, like everyone else. I was able to pictures of them up close and with Jeff's dad, but that was it. My mom tapped Brian on the shoulder as he was walking down the hallway from the auditorium, knowing they would go out that way, asking for a quick picture with them. His reply was simply, "I'm very sorry, but we have to be somewhere. They've had us running all over the place all day. I'm really sorry." He was very nice about it. Of course, my mom and sister understood, but it's kind of bad when you can't sign people's autographs for fanfest. They had only signed autographs for an hour at the most earlier that morning and then took pictures with fans, but that line was just as bad as the autograph lines.

I don't know about the rest of the players, but I know they had Jeff and Brian all over the place, all day long. During the conference thing, they both looked like they were ready to go home and get that day over with.  

But yeah, I was extremely diasppointed with how they did things. Too much other stuff and not enough player interaction for everyone. I will not bid $1000 just to get a pass to pass people in line to get autographs that you can get anytime you want by just asking them for one, that's rediculous. And nothing was cheap either. Pizza was $6+ for a personal pan pizza and drinks were $2+. The parts that had to do with Brian and Jeff were the best part, everything else pretty much sucked.  

I'm writing a better review post, this was just my rant about the day, and will probably post it on my blog site (which is located on the my profile on here) when I'm finished writing it, I'll also post pictures as well, if anyone is interested in reading.  

Day Two was not as successful as day one.  But still, it was a fun time.  I met some pretty neat people with all that time to stand around, and was able to get a nice Autograph or two.  Day two resulted in a nice Scooter auto, and my wife got Jair.  The Glavine line was cut directly in front of her.  No big deal, she got Glavine yesterday.