This weekend, Chris and I went to Richmond and met up with Ryan to graph two games between the Baysox and Flying Squirrels. I had been looking forward to this series since I pulled the above magenta lunar crater chrome parallel of Samuel Basallo's 2023 Bowman Draft. Basallo was one of only two autographs I got on Saturday.
Basallo hit his paper Bowman Draft as well. He was really nice, and had a great game on Sunday, hitting two homers.
Bowie was pretty tough on Saturday, like I said. Sunday was much better, as the three of us, along with my friend Charlie, who showed up toward the end of Sunday's game, hit Bowie outside the stadium as they were boarding the buses.
I was able to get almost all of the guys I needed, missing Kade Strowd and Silas Ardoin completely. Still, I got a good amount out of the boxes and into the album.
Pregame Sunday, I concentrated on the Richmond side of the stadium for the first time. Ryan and Chris hung back and tried Bowie. I got Reggie Crawford first, which was really cool. I was able to feed my book under the netting and Crawford did two of the three cards I had.
I was told ahead of time that Hunter Bishop would be one per, so I pulled this lime green parallel out of the book and fed it under the net when Bishop finally came over. He ignored me at first as he went to stretch, then I made eye contact with him and signaled a request to sign. He gestured that he would come over after he finished, but walked by afterward. I had put the card up, only to see Bishop coming back. I hastily found the card and was able to get it signed. This 2021 Bowman has some miles on it, as it went out for a couple missed 50/50s. It finally rests in the album with some ink on it.
The rest of the Flying Squirrels were really nice. Each of Jimmy Glowenke, Grant McCray, Ryan Murphy and Will Wilson struck up conversations as they were signing. I was glad to finally get a few if these guys, and feel like I did pretty well over on the Richmond side.
Post-game was when we did the best on Bowie. Most of the guys we called over by the buses came over and signed a few cards. We must have missed Ardoin, as we didn't see him get on the bus, but he must have when we were distracted by getting someone else to sign.
In all, I got the following autographs: Samuel Basallo x 4, Dylan Beavers x 5, Kyle Brnovich x 1, Jud Fabian x 2, Seth Johnson x 1, John Rhodes x 4, Anthony Servideo x 3, Hunter Bishop x 1, Reggie Crawford x 2, Jimmy Glowenke x 3, Grant McCray x 3, Ryan Murphy x 3 and Will Wilson x 3 (35 total autographs).
