SUMMER TIME

SUMMER TIME

Sunday, January 14, 2007

WINTER WARM-UP

This weekend my husband and I attended our first St. Louis Cardinals Winter Warm-Up. The event took place at a hotel in downtown St. Louis. The three-day annual baseball festival begins on Saturday morning thru Monday evening. Fans and families can get autographs, meet players, management team & team owners, bid on silence and live auction items, and purchase memorabilia from vendors. Admission ticket costs $40 each. All of the proceeds will be given to charitable organizations.

With the St. Louis Cardinals winning the World Series last October, all admission tickets were sold out. An estimate of approximately 15,000 fans were expected to attend the Warm-Up. People braved the bad weather of ice storms. Many were out of towners. On Friday night, we saw people in line with their sleeping bags, blankets and lawn chairs, willing to wait more than 12 hours to purchase autograph tickets ranging from $10 for less well-known players to $125 for a signature by David Eckstein and $150 for a chance to meet Cardinals first baseman, Albert Pujols. Eckstein is St. Louis Cardinals shortstop and World Series MVP.

By 10:00 Saturday morning, we were informed that all autograph tickets were sold out. More than 1,000 people paid $125-$150 per ticket for autographs from Eckstein and Pujols. So it paid off for those who were willing to spend the night on the floor of the hotel lobby. Because we were not willing to wait in line overnight, we did not get autographs for our World Series baseball and Game 3 tickets.

The nice thing about the Warm-Up is that it is a family event. We saw many fathers and sons, friends, large groups of people having a good time talking about the winning games, their favorite players and discussing their purchases.

After having our photo taken with the World Series Trophy, we decided that we should go home. We plan to attend the Warm-Up next year. Perhaps we would have better luck at getting autographs. Hopefully the lines will not be as long and the costs will not be too high for autographs. What are the chances of the St. Louis Cardinals winning the World Series back-to-back?

No comments:

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails