Joe on the Twins not named Mauer and a Bull

So, what happened was, at first I was in the Joe Mauer line. As in I arrived at 8 AM to get in the Joe Mauer line (read gcrl's description, it's accurate). The compa and I were supposed to meet up later that afternoon to hang out and then go on back home while I was at the auto thingy.

Only she called round about 11 to say she was on her way over to hang out. Remember, this is our anniversary trip. She not a Joe Mauer fan, but she's not not a fan either. But standing in line to only get his auto would not have been her preferred activity.

She digs closers, though, so I relinquished my place in the Mauer line and got in the Joe Nathan line. He'd shut the door on the 'stros the night before (with Delmon's help, thank you!) and both of us would be stoked to see him up close. 

A cool story from the line: this older woman ushering the event chatted us up (people up here are REAL chatty like that) and asked if we had something for the other two guys (Luis Ayala and Sean Henn) to sign. I had purchased a hat the night before specifically for guys whose cards I lacked to sign, so I showed her the hat. "That's good, I always feel so bad when people get one person's signature and walk right past the others." And I guess there was a lot of that, which is hard to grasp. On the one hand, paying $85 for a box of Heritage with only a Luis Ayala auto: very, very bad. Getting a Luis Ayala auto in person: way, way cool under any circumstances. 

Anyway, she dug the Bowman Heritage Nathan I had for him to sign. Joe holding up a ball, smiling, it is its own thing, as they say. And Joe laid a great signature on it.

Finally, the first guy in the Kevin Slowey/Mike Redmond line was another former Durham Bulls, Jason Pridie. Embarrassingly enough, I had NO Jason Pridies until the Captain over at Waxaholic included one, among other Rays, with the Gaston he sent. See, one of Captain Canuck's powers is ESPN. I told Jason how stoked I was to see him up in the bigs, and congrats, and got him to sign the card. The scab doesn't do it justice (they seldom do) but there's one more thing about the card to share. 

I'm guessing Pridie and the Bowman Chrome have met before. Before signing he took his thumb and ran it over the spot he was going to sign a few times before he actually signed. Has anyone seen anyone else do this, and is that hoe players have to sign the Chromes? If nothing else I thought it was interesting that a) players would pass that kind of knowledge around and b) that Pridie cared enough to actually do it. Cool, cool guy.