Former San Diego Padres All-Star and Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn made an appearance yesterday at El Cajon Ford. He was scheduled to meet fans and sign autographs from 9-10:00 am.
I made my 150 mile journey from the San Fernando Valley down to El Cajon with three friends early Saturday morning. It took us about 2 hours to get down there. Surprisingly, there were only two other people waiting in line when we arrived.
While we were there, my buddy Alex was giving me updates from the Los Angeles Convention Center where Blake Griffin was scheduled to sign at 1:00pm. That too was a surprisingly short line.
Mr. Gwynn arrived about 15 minutes early and started signing right at 9:00. I had heard some horror stories about Tony being snappy at past events. When I got to the signing table he was very friendly, autographing my baseball and was even joking around. But sure enough, the guy behind me got him upset. The gentleman behind me had a picture of Tony in a San Diego State basketball uniform and Tony wanted to know where he got it. The guy said he bought it from someone in line and before you knew it, Tony was out of his seat wondering who the guy was. After this person was pointed out, Tony made it clear he didn't want any of his pictures sold there because it was theft. The General Manager at the dealership even announced it over the loudspeaker. The whole ordeal had us all laughing.
When we left the Ford dealership, I got another update from Alex at the Convention Center, and there were just five people there in line. Maybe we had a chance to get Blake Griffin's auto too? So we got on the freeway and hauled ass to Downtown LA. As I already mentioned, we did get Blake's autograph, but I'll save that for another day.
That's a nice sig!
ReplyDeleteThanks!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you had a good experience with Tony. Mine wasn't as positive as yours was. I think he was just grumpy about flying across the country to the show that day.
ReplyDeleteRyan - Oh that sucks. He did sign for you though, right?
ReplyDeleteActually I just found out Tony went off on somebody at the end of the line and it was caught on video. I need to see this.
can you link us DB? ha ha now we both have a gwynn auto!
ReplyDeleteFormat - no problem.
ReplyDeleteAwesome bro! I was planning on going but didn't want to take the F-150 and spend too much ga$ up the a$$. Hopefully i'll find someone to go w/ next time. But funny about that guy getting called out of the pic lol!
ReplyDeleteI've met Tony MULTIPLE times in MANY different places and he is 'usually' a HUGE 'JERK' sure he 'can' be nice at times but its getting to be few and far between anymore...
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