I have to remember to thank the weather gods because today was beautiful for standing in place in the sun for an extended period of time. I wasn’t sure I’d make it to the “Caravan” autograph signing event at Champps today because we were supposed to meet friends at the Zoo to see the baby panda at 1:30 PM. I decided to give it a shot anyway. My husband suggested I take both kids so he could meet with a landscape expert (see, I told you we have gender reversal going on!), but in hindsight, I should have only taken my son. The bicker-siblings drove me crazy waiting in line for an hour and a half. Plus, my daughter could give a princess’s behind about baseball!

On the way there, I was waiting at the stoplight at Joyce Street and happened to glance in my rearview mirror and spot the Screechmobile behind me with a rather good-looking guy behind the wheel. I pointed it out to the kids who were mildly interested. Later it occurred to me that the driver might be the Screech-man himself. Sure made me view the bottom of the lineup (according to OMG – see #21) mascot in a whole different light.

We found our place at the end of the line at 11:30 AM, which seemed incredibly long, but really we weren’t so far back. We ended up partially in the parking lot where the line U-turned and snaked back into the courtyard area of Pentagon Row. My kids began fighting and hitting each other – getting quite wild. My husband had let my daughter dress herself that morning, so she was – shall we say – looking like a homeless girl with an odd wardrobe! I spent the next hour telling them how many more minutes until we went to the zoo and warning them not to ask me again! It was the equivalent of “Are we there yeeeeetttt?”

Luckily, Screech came along and offered a little refreshing interlude. My son posed with him. My daughter cowered behind my legs.

We turned in our canned goods for two new visors and a canvas lunchbox-sized cooler. Cool! At that point I realized we weren’t going to make the zoo appointment, but we were nearly in the door of Champps and there was no way I was ditching when we were sooooo close! Panda or Nationals? Uh, no contest there IMO (and my vote overrules the young uns’!).

Finally we were in!! I managed to snap a few pictures of the guys before it was our turn to get autographs.

Tony Beasley (new 3B coach) was very nice and chatted with my son about his NASA jacket, asking if he was interested in rockets and being an astronaut. He was very smiley and nice – made a great first impression as a person. Then Brian Schneider was next. I thanked him for signing a four year deal. He replied that he was very excited about it. Awesome! Jose Guillen told me his shoulder is “good”. He wasn’t very talkative. Brandon Watson didn’t say anything (but then again, I didn’t ask him anything). When I reached the end of the line and Ryan Zimmerman, I asked him if he knew some in the Nats blogs nicknamed him “Dutch”. He looked at me like I was a freaking crazy lady and said, “what?” Awkward! I tried to explain, but not very well – he apparently was unaware :-)

Jose Guillen’s signature smeared a bit on my son’s cheap ball from last year (the covering is somewhat shiny). My ball looks awesome and I shall treasure it always!

And then we raced off to the zoo. We missed the panda, but our friends said there wasn’t much to see.

The full Flickr set of my photos.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 28th, 2006 at 7:01 pm and is filed under Players, Washington Nationals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.