The Adventures of Napkin Doon: Fanfest Part Three: Other Favorite Booths

Friday, July 13, 2012

Fanfest Part Three: Other Favorite Booths

I've could spend a whole week talking about the various booths and experiences at FanFest. In the interest in time, I'll just highlight some of my favorites. Note to anyone planning to go to FanFest in the future: entry times are staggered out on the tickets, so if you want to go and want to have enough time to see everything, purchase your tickets early so you can get early admission tickets. I guess I got mine a little late, because 4 pm admission was all that was available to us. I could have easily spent a few more hours taking it all in. On the flip side, 4 hours was probably about all my little ones would have been able to handle, so there's that.

And going to FanFest was really meant for the kids to enjoy, so while I would have liked to spend a little more time at the Cooperstown and Negro League Museum exhibits, I wouldn't trade that for watching my kids participate in the throwing and hitting activities that were there for them.

I also don't regret that I didn't spend more time looking at the card/memorabilia tables, other than spending a little time at the Topps booth. I looked at the dealer booths long enough to see that the stuff was pretty expensive. However, I did pick up this snazzy metal sign:

Overall, we saw a lot of great stuff. Here are just some of the highlights:

The Rawlings Booth had a little stage where it looked like they were holding exhibitions of the process of sewing a baseball. Unfortunately, we never did see it happen.

This was a big map showing all the minor league parks across the USA.

We just missed Fergie Jenkins at the autograph booth, but I was able to catch a few minutes of his interview afterwards.

Here is that grass that is used at the Rangers Ballpark. Yippee.

I thought this was cool. There was a mock up locker room with the actual jerseys of several players. At least I'm sure they were the real things since several attendants repeatedly advised the crowd not to touch the jerseys.

One of the dealer booths.

The awards booth was very cool. Pretty much every major award that will be given out for this season was on display, including the World Series trophy. Above is the 2012 AL MVP award, hopefully with the name Josh Hamilton and not Mike Trout inscribed on in in a few months.