Cardinals Winter Warm Up Day 1

The weather improved from Friday to Sunday morning enough that my son and I were able to make the 2 hour drive to St. Louis for the Cardinals Winter Warm Up (WWU).  This is my 8th straight year going, and the third in a row that it has been just a guys weekend.  My daughter is not a fan of standing in lines, so my wife treated her to a shopping trip. 

 

We arrived shortly after the doors opened at 9:00.  One of my in-laws usually gets my passes as a Christmas present.  This year's pass was just a plain ticket, while all the previous years I went it was a nicer placard with some players photos on it.  Another change for this year were autograph tickets were mailed if they were bought before January 4th.  This eliminated a stop at the will call window that would take 30 minutes, so that was a nice plus just to be able to walk right in.

The autograph tickets used last year's game ticket design.  This has been common for the 8 years I have attended.  Before you get the player/alumni's signature, you go through four steps:  show your ticket to get in line, show it again to someone who is keeping track of the number of autos, have your ticket scanned, and then have it hole punched.  In my previous 7 years, the tickets were numbered and you lined up accordingly.  This year they changed to alphabetical order.  Having a last name that begins with S meant we would be in the back of the lines every time.  The players sign for one or two hours, so we would wait until the last 20-30 minutes to get in line.   

The programs are the same ever year.  There is short welcome by one of the team's front office members, then a a schedule of the 3 day's worth of signers and auctions.  There is also a map of the vendor area and a list of the presentations throughout the day.

Here is the Sunday schedule.  Our two days were filled with autograph lines, roaming the vendor area, and spending time in the children's play area.  The only presentation I have ever attended is by the minor league director, but this year it was on Saturday.  My son finds these talks boring and even fell asleep during one last year, so I decided to skip them.  Knowing he would have a lot of time in line, I chose to pick my battles. 

Here are the items we got autographed from Sunday in the order we got them.

Danny Cox is always one of the free signers at WWU.  I am slowly running out of different cards for him to sign.

Kyle McClellan was also a free signer.

Scott Terry was also free.

Harrison Bader had a $10 fee.  I had him sign a ticket from his debut game.  One nice thing about getting autos at WWU is most players do not mind adding inscriptions.  I was able to get the ticket for free from a friend who attended the game. 

Todd Worrell was also a free signer.  When tickets went on sale back on December 11, you could only get 2 each for the free signers.  I was hoping to find someone who had an extra ticket, but I could not.  Todd was nice enough to sign all 3 cards anyway. 

I spent $30 for Paul DeJong to sign his debut ticket.  My brother attended this game where DeJong homered on the first pitch he swung at.  He has changed his auto from his first certified cards to this fuller signature. 

Luke Weaver's auto was $25.  I bought this 10x14 reprint of his 2017 Topps Heritage card from the Topps website on Black Friday.  I was hoping to add Reyes to it at the WWU, but he signed on Saturday.  I also was not willing to pay $50 for his auto when his past signings were in the $30 range. 

By the time we got finished with Weaver, it was almost 5:00 closing time.  This was our light day as far as autos were concerned.  Other than Weaver, we did not stand in line for more than 15 minutes.  I cannot say any player stood out more than another.  All of them were polite, but there is little time for chit chat.  If all the player's tickets are sold, they sign 200 autos for 1 hour or 400 for two hours.  That is about 3 autos per minute.  Every player we got an auto from sold out.  I will say the younger guys were more talkative than I thought.  Bader, DeJong, and Weaver all asked my son something about his Little League season.