Game 1 - ALDS - Red Sox vs. Angels @ Angel Stadium with "Ballhawking 101" client David Y.

On the Monday before the start of the ALDS I received an email from a baseball fan from Northern California. David contacted me because he wanted to go to the 2 ALDS games in Anaheim since he was going to be attending a conference down here.

We met up on Tuesday night to discuss the details of the week and to also head over to the Red Sox team hotel for a shot at getting autographs. While David had been to several Giants games he really had not chased autographs or baseballs. From what he told me his son had acquired a few autographs and baseballs but he was looking for a few more tips.

We spent about an hour and a half at the hotel and mall and we saw a handful of players however only a couple signed and they only signed one or two autographs. David did learn a few things that you should not do such as yelling foul and abusive names at a player just because he doesn't sign and running after players like a crazed maniac. This is what a few of the autograph seekers did and it only hurts the chances of getting autographs.

Wednesday morning about 8:15 I arrived at the ballpark to get us tickets. I expected to be far back in the ticket line however when I got to the ticket line there was only 1 person ahead of me! WHAT??? The ALDS against Boston and only 1 person in line for Day of Game tickets? That is CRAZY!! Oh well it worked out very good because we ended up with SUITE tickets. YES A SUITE!! It seems the Angels sales staff had not sold 2 Party Suites so they decided to make one avaialbe to individual ticket buyers.

On Wednesday night David had to be at the conference until 6pm. I was on my own for batting practice and and it was pretty bad. The Angels who usually hit a few balls down the right field line in the last 2 groups hit only 2 and they were not anywhere near me. The Red Sox came up and I was lucky enough to make a play on a slow roller hit down the line by J.D. Drew.

As BP ended David called and said that he was outside the main gate. I walked over there and we met up and headed up to the Suite. Once we got to the Suite we were suprised to see food inside. I was told that there would only be food at an extra charge if we wanted it. Obviously before we started to eat anything we double checked to make sure it was complimentary and it was! HOW COOL!

We had Pizza, Hot Dogs, Popcorn, Cracker Jacks, peanuts and other cool things however there were no drinks :-(

The game was a pitchers duel until Jason Bay broke it open with a Home Run. After that is was just boring simply because the Angels could not do anything to get anymore runs across the plate.

In the 8th inning we headed down to the Field level to get behind the Sox dugout to try to get a ball after the game. Here are a few pics from the inning and a half we waited down there:

  If you look at the enlarged image of this photo the ball is just under the Umpire's feet. It is hard to tell but I can assure you that is where it is!

This is a picture of Paplebon coming in to Save the game for the Red Sox. At the end of the game he walked in with the final out ball in his glove and tossed it to the guy right next to me!

UGH!! I hate when that happens! Oh well tomorrow is another day! 

On the way out we saw former Angels and Yankee pitcher Jim Abbott. Abbott signed some autographs, posed for a few pictures and then took off. Shortly after that we did the same!

On Thursday I spend a few hours at the stadium trying to get some more autographs for David and was lucky enough to get a few. Mark Kotsay, Justin Masterson, Gil Valasquz and one other autograph.

I will be posting my entry for Game 2 of the ALDS shortly! Keep watching!

IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN TAKING PART IN MY "BALLHAWKING 101" day at the Ballpark which INCLUDES TICKETS to an NLCS GAME check out the post below or go to http://mlballhawk.com and check out the link for "LET'S GO TO A NLCS GAME!"