Separated at Birth?

Cheryl and I made our way to the Safeway on Alabama Avenue, SE, Saturday morning for the Dmitri Young autograph session. The event was scheduled for 11 am - noon, and we arrived around 10:30 am, the first to get there for the event. We made our way to customer service, and asked about where the signing was going to be set up, etc. I was on my cell phone talking to a fellow owner in one of my fantasy leagues, so i wasn't paying attention to the conversation. Apparently, the store manager started asking Cheryl about she thought it would be best to set up, what kind of supplies were needed, etc. The the manager asked if Cheryl had brought a tablecloth or something for the signing table. It was at that point Cheryl realized the woman thought I was Dmitri Young and Cheryl was from the Nats! You can tell from the photo that me and Dmitri are practically twins. Pretty funny stuff.

The real Dmitri showed up right at 11 am, and since we were first in line we got a couple minutes to chat with him before he signed out pictures we took at spring training. I gave him a Hank Aaron card from Hank's last season as he's a real big collector and thought he'd appreciate it, and he did. He personalized the picture of the two of us, saying "To Dave, Keep Battling the Diabetes Like Me, Peace, Dmitri Young". Very solid individual. I hope he makes the All-Star team and then gets traded to a team that makes the playoffs, cause he really deserves it after being discarded by Detroit last year. I just can't see how he could have been THAT big a distraction to the club, but i know the clubhouse is a different place.

Pre-game on Saturday, Cheryl was able to get Brandon Watson, newly recalled, to stop over and sing the pic she had of him from last year's opening day. He obliged, inscribing it "43 game minor league hit streak '07". Good stuff. She's a big fan of the slap hitting center fielders. I was able to get Saul Rivera over towards the Nats bullpen. Cheryl had a great pic ofwhat we call the "cingular man" pose, like a big X. He say me holding it up and after ridding his jacket and bucket of balls in the bullpen, came back out and signed for me. He said "Great picture, did you take?" and i said "no, my wife", to which he replied, "She does nice work". Nice work indeed.

After Saturday night's game, we stuck around afterwards to get a couple more autographs before joining friends at the Irish Times. Maybe I'm getting old (no maybes), but it was REALLY LOUD in there. I wonder if it was always that loud. Anyway, we met the girls from the 3 Girls With Heart blog. Really nice girls, and they really know their stuff, so their blog gets added to the list to the right. We got Austin Kearns, Jesus Colome, Nook Logan and Ryan Langerhans from the Nats, and Injuns starter Paul Byrd and OF Trot Nixon, who had a posse of easily 20 people. Cheryl told Nook he needed to get more steals for her fantasy team and he replied "I gotta play to steal". She felt bad cause she didn't mean anything by it. It's true though, you can't steal from the bench. Unless you're Ruben Rivera, but that's another story.