Cotton Candy and Life Sized Pencils
Ok, so I know I have a sports blog where I’m supposed to put this kind of thing and I will put a more detailed sports fan report together for that blog, but this post is really more about a fun day with my kid than it is about sports, so I’m posting it here.
Gibson and I went to the Portland TrailBlazers Fan Appreciation event at the Portland Rose Garden where the Blazers play yesterday. This made it two years in a row for this event and we had a great time, so I thought I would share. The event consists of an autograph signing session with the players followed by a short practice and then an intersquad scrimmage.
Let me start by saying, I’m not an autograph guy. I’ve gotten things signed a few times over the years, but it has never been a big deal to me. Usually, when I’ve been in a position to get something signed, I didn’t have anything worth signing (do you keep a scrap of paper? I know some of you do), or it wasn’t someone I cared enough about or whatever. But now that my infatuation with new Blazer Rookie guard Brandon Roy is at an all time high, I was excited to get to Blazer fan appreciation day right as the doors opened, so we could rush to stand in line to get some autographs, mostly Roy’s.
You see, if you don’t follow sports, you might not know that the Blazers are awful. But when the team got bad, they didn’t just stop there, they also brought in a bunch of guys with criminal tendencies that not only would you not want your daughter to date, you wouldn’t want her in the same zip code. Just bad guys who made up for it by being bad players with huge contracts. Instead of “Fan Appreciation Day”, the Blazers should have “Begging Fans for Forgiveness Day.” Well, in the last draft, they drafted a guy from the University of Washington named Brandon Roy. He is exactly who I wanted the Blazers to get. I love him. Good guy who plays the game the right way with huge amounts of talent. He’s not going to be Michael Jordan or Lebron James, but he’s going to be a lot of fun for Blazer fans to finally have someone that gives us hope and isn’t a felon.
The last year has seen my oldest son Gibson go from having a mild passing interest in sports at most to full-blown fanatical obsession. Gibson has watched sports with me from birth. He was born in September right at the beginning of football season and so some of our earliest bonding moments were dressing him up in tiny Niner or Duck jammies and sitting and staring at him while football played in the background. As he got older, his interest in sports gradually increased, but it was pretty obviously just a way to get my attention and occasionally get taken to games which meant, no nap and cotton candy.
Last year we went to this same scrimmage event and Gibson was excited at first to be there and get his picture with then Blazer center Theo Ratlif (Gibson came up to his knee) and try to figure out who some of the players are (not an easy thing to track for Blazer fans), but mostly he was excited about the event. His favorite part was getting cotton candy and then he mostly concerned himself with finding where the Blazer Dancers had their table set up and getting to see them Dance. One of the Dancers was Gibson’s Sunday school teacher at the time and I’m sure that’s all that was about. Even though the scrimmage is only 20 minutes long with four 5 minute quarters, Gibson was bored nearly to tears last year by half time. He had a good time all around, but he just didn’t care that much about basketball.
This year was totally different. Gibson now collects basketball cards, thanks mostly to our friends the Remms who generously donated a couple hundred really cool older Jordan/Magic/Barkley/Bird era cards. Before we left yesterday, Gibson gathered the cards he has of Blazer players (Dickau, Magloire, Randolph and Webster) to make sure he had something for the players to sign during the autograph portion. He wanted to leave right after church to make sure we had plenty of time to get all the autographs we wanted. He wanted to talk about who was a good dunker, who has a bad attitude (always a popular subject for Blazer fans), who was going to be “really really good”, who was the fastest, who had the best nickname. In other words, he wanted to talk hoops, not dancers and cotton candy. By the way, after seeing the practice my answers to those questions are as follows:
1. Roy, Outlaw and surprisingly, even Webster
2. Miles and Randolph. Ugh.
3. Roy and point guard Jack
4. Outlaw. He flies down the court, just doesn’t know what to do when he gets there.
5. Sergio Rodriguez – “The Spanish Magician.” How much cooler than that does it get?
So we spent the 20 minute drive to the Rose Garden talking hoops. What a perfect way to spend an afternoon. When we got to the Garden, I was thrilled to discover that parking was free even in the main garage. The tickets to the event were also free and while this doesn’t make up for the fact that Darius Miles is still on the roster and the hot dogs still cost $47, it is still a nice gesture from the Blazers.
This year we had a mission. The goal was to get at least the autographs of Brandon Roy and Martel Webster since Gib had Webster’s card and since I wanted Roy’s. The players sit in pairs at tables around the concourse signing autographs for about an hour before the actual scrimmage begins. There were several thousand fans there so the line for each table was approximately 1 mile long. In fact, the lines so overlapped and co-mingled that it was often difficult to tell which line you were in until the person in front of you moved. We walked around the Rose Garden until we found the table where Martel was signing. Roy was nowhere to be found.
He was signing with Portland’s current most cancerous player Darius Miles who neither Gibson nor I like at all because of his…well…let’s just say, “bad attitude.” Gibson was alarmed that someone as nice as Webster would even sit at the table with him and he questioned me repeatedly about whether they were friends and whether he would have to get Miles’ autograph to get Webster’s. I assured him that they were not friends and that he could politely shun Miles when looking to get an autograph from Martel. This suited G well enough so we got in a very long line.
While in the line, Brandon Roy and several other notable Blazers just came strolling by. “Hey, there is Roy and Zebo”, Gibson shouted, “let’s go get their’s now and come back and get Martel’s.” I agreed and we jumped out of line to chase down this year’s Rookie of the Year. We caught up just as he was getting to the table where Webster had been sitting to take their place. In other words, we got out of the only line that would actually allow us to get their autograph and now couldn’t get Webster’s at all. Gibson, beginning to realize the gravity of the situation, whimpered, “where is Martel going?” Not wanting to disappoint, we quickly snuck behind the barrier and caught Webster before he got on the elevator and got him to sign his card for Gibson. 1 down, 1 to go.
Now, however, we had lost our place in line and when we went back we discovered that it had doubled in length and now reached to the outskirts of Bend in Eastern Oregon. We got back in line and when I looked at the clock I realized we would never get to the table before it was time for the players to leave. So, we took the calculated risk of getting back out of line and went back to the area behind the barrier where we had cornered Webster and waited. Meanwhile, I had figured waiting in line would be a terrible form of torture for my 6 year old, so I got him some cotton candy to help the time pass. The truest sign of how much his perspective on the event had changed was that he declined cotton candy, not wanting to get his cards sticky before we sat down and just wanted to hurry up and get to the game so he could “see how these guys play.” Can you hear my chest swelling with pride right now?
While we were waiting for Brandon Roy to exit, we observed the following:
1. A guy in a giant pencil suit and a guy in a giant dog suit, neither of whom had anything to do with the Blazers so far as we could tell. Gibson asked, “who are those guys?” “I don’t know,” I said. “Are they more mascots for the Blazers?” “Not sure,” I answered, equally perplexed. “I hope not,” he said, “I don’t think Blaze (the current mascot) needs their help and I don’t see how they could dunk a basketball anyway.” I could not argue.
2. Approximately 3,600 young women just back from a month long stay at the Paris Hilton school of fashion and etiquette. Words like “slutty”, “skanky” and “shockingly inappropriate” just don’t do it justice. From the way they hung in packs around the players’ tables, I’m guessing this was a not so veiled form of advertising what these confused young women believed to be their best assets. Quite sad on various levels.
3. Lots of people having conversations about how well they know some Blazer player personally. According to what I saw, for every 4 teenage boys traveling together, at least one of them “totally parties with [insert name of Blazer here] almost like every weekend in the off season.” Who knew?
4. Blazer president Steve Patterson just wandering around the concourse looking lost and confused and going completely unnoticed. I began to better understand the team’s rebuilding strategy.
5. Lots of middle aged men carrying 2 or 3 basketballs and half a dozen brand new (tags still on) jersey’s and hats to get signed. I’m guessing you can find just about all of them on ebay this morning for a starting bid at 10 times what they paid for them.
Gibson was beginning to reach his boredom limit waiting for the players to get released when some random guy calls over to me.
“Hey, you guys waiting to get Roy’s autograph?”
“Yeah, we were way back in line and had no shot at getting up here so we thought we’d wait here and try to cheat the system a bit.”
“Cool. This his first game?” Pointing to Gibson.
“Nah, I’ve been dragging him here for a few years now.”
“Well, give me something to sign and I’ll get it signed for you, I’m just here to get Roy’s name on a card anyway.”
“Daddy,” whispered Gibson in hushed urgency as I was removing my cap, “Don’t give that guy your hat, what if he doesn’t give it back or he just wears it? I don’t think his hair is clean”
Thankfully, the guy had not heard Gibson and I chose to ignore my son’s warning and gave the guy my hat. By this time, I had inadvertently just sort of joined him in line as we talked and we were basically at the table so not only did I get my hat signed, but I got to shake hands with Roy and wish him luck and warn him not to listen to a single word Miles or Randolph say about anything. Ok, so I didn’t say that last part, but I did wish him well and get my hat signed which was fun.
Then to make things better, this guy was a season ticket holder who had bracelets that got him special courtside seats for the scrimmage and he offered them to us. He and his girlfriend really had just stopped by for the one autograph and weren’t staying for the game. So Gibson and I got to sit on the court right by the players. Blaze came by and gave G some water out of the team’s cooler which was the highlight for Gibson who loves the mascot (and kept the green Gatorade cup as his favorite souvenir). We high-fived the players coming in and had tremendous seats for the game.
The scrimmage was entertaining. Roy played well and the whole thing was fun. Gibson had a blast and we spent the whole trip home talking about hoops and the NBA. I wish the Blazers and the NBA and sports in general had better guys for my son to look up to and I wish they would stop showing sexual beer adds and Viagra adds during all sporting events on TV and there’s a lot about the world of sports I’m not excited about exposing my sons to, but I will admit that I am thrilled to have this interest in common for as long as it lasts. At very least, it gave us a really fun day at the arena yesterday and I can’t wait to take Griffin with us next year.
And, of course, we did finally eat that cotton candy.
Gibson and I went to the Portland TrailBlazers Fan Appreciation event at the Portland Rose Garden where the Blazers play yesterday. This made it two years in a row for this event and we had a great time, so I thought I would share. The event consists of an autograph signing session with the players followed by a short practice and then an intersquad scrimmage.
Let me start by saying, I’m not an autograph guy. I’ve gotten things signed a few times over the years, but it has never been a big deal to me. Usually, when I’ve been in a position to get something signed, I didn’t have anything worth signing (do you keep a scrap of paper? I know some of you do), or it wasn’t someone I cared enough about or whatever. But now that my infatuation with new Blazer Rookie guard Brandon Roy is at an all time high, I was excited to get to Blazer fan appreciation day right as the doors opened, so we could rush to stand in line to get some autographs, mostly Roy’s.
You see, if you don’t follow sports, you might not know that the Blazers are awful. But when the team got bad, they didn’t just stop there, they also brought in a bunch of guys with criminal tendencies that not only would you not want your daughter to date, you wouldn’t want her in the same zip code. Just bad guys who made up for it by being bad players with huge contracts. Instead of “Fan Appreciation Day”, the Blazers should have “Begging Fans for Forgiveness Day.” Well, in the last draft, they drafted a guy from the University of Washington named Brandon Roy. He is exactly who I wanted the Blazers to get. I love him. Good guy who plays the game the right way with huge amounts of talent. He’s not going to be Michael Jordan or Lebron James, but he’s going to be a lot of fun for Blazer fans to finally have someone that gives us hope and isn’t a felon.
The last year has seen my oldest son Gibson go from having a mild passing interest in sports at most to full-blown fanatical obsession. Gibson has watched sports with me from birth. He was born in September right at the beginning of football season and so some of our earliest bonding moments were dressing him up in tiny Niner or Duck jammies and sitting and staring at him while football played in the background. As he got older, his interest in sports gradually increased, but it was pretty obviously just a way to get my attention and occasionally get taken to games which meant, no nap and cotton candy.
Last year we went to this same scrimmage event and Gibson was excited at first to be there and get his picture with then Blazer center Theo Ratlif (Gibson came up to his knee) and try to figure out who some of the players are (not an easy thing to track for Blazer fans), but mostly he was excited about the event. His favorite part was getting cotton candy and then he mostly concerned himself with finding where the Blazer Dancers had their table set up and getting to see them Dance. One of the Dancers was Gibson’s Sunday school teacher at the time and I’m sure that’s all that was about. Even though the scrimmage is only 20 minutes long with four 5 minute quarters, Gibson was bored nearly to tears last year by half time. He had a good time all around, but he just didn’t care that much about basketball.
This year was totally different. Gibson now collects basketball cards, thanks mostly to our friends the Remms who generously donated a couple hundred really cool older Jordan/Magic/Barkley/Bird era cards. Before we left yesterday, Gibson gathered the cards he has of Blazer players (Dickau, Magloire, Randolph and Webster) to make sure he had something for the players to sign during the autograph portion. He wanted to leave right after church to make sure we had plenty of time to get all the autographs we wanted. He wanted to talk about who was a good dunker, who has a bad attitude (always a popular subject for Blazer fans), who was going to be “really really good”, who was the fastest, who had the best nickname. In other words, he wanted to talk hoops, not dancers and cotton candy. By the way, after seeing the practice my answers to those questions are as follows:
1. Roy, Outlaw and surprisingly, even Webster
2. Miles and Randolph. Ugh.
3. Roy and point guard Jack
4. Outlaw. He flies down the court, just doesn’t know what to do when he gets there.
5. Sergio Rodriguez – “The Spanish Magician.” How much cooler than that does it get?
So we spent the 20 minute drive to the Rose Garden talking hoops. What a perfect way to spend an afternoon. When we got to the Garden, I was thrilled to discover that parking was free even in the main garage. The tickets to the event were also free and while this doesn’t make up for the fact that Darius Miles is still on the roster and the hot dogs still cost $47, it is still a nice gesture from the Blazers.
This year we had a mission. The goal was to get at least the autographs of Brandon Roy and Martel Webster since Gib had Webster’s card and since I wanted Roy’s. The players sit in pairs at tables around the concourse signing autographs for about an hour before the actual scrimmage begins. There were several thousand fans there so the line for each table was approximately 1 mile long. In fact, the lines so overlapped and co-mingled that it was often difficult to tell which line you were in until the person in front of you moved. We walked around the Rose Garden until we found the table where Martel was signing. Roy was nowhere to be found.
He was signing with Portland’s current most cancerous player Darius Miles who neither Gibson nor I like at all because of his…well…let’s just say, “bad attitude.” Gibson was alarmed that someone as nice as Webster would even sit at the table with him and he questioned me repeatedly about whether they were friends and whether he would have to get Miles’ autograph to get Webster’s. I assured him that they were not friends and that he could politely shun Miles when looking to get an autograph from Martel. This suited G well enough so we got in a very long line.
While in the line, Brandon Roy and several other notable Blazers just came strolling by. “Hey, there is Roy and Zebo”, Gibson shouted, “let’s go get their’s now and come back and get Martel’s.” I agreed and we jumped out of line to chase down this year’s Rookie of the Year. We caught up just as he was getting to the table where Webster had been sitting to take their place. In other words, we got out of the only line that would actually allow us to get their autograph and now couldn’t get Webster’s at all. Gibson, beginning to realize the gravity of the situation, whimpered, “where is Martel going?” Not wanting to disappoint, we quickly snuck behind the barrier and caught Webster before he got on the elevator and got him to sign his card for Gibson. 1 down, 1 to go.
Now, however, we had lost our place in line and when we went back we discovered that it had doubled in length and now reached to the outskirts of Bend in Eastern Oregon. We got back in line and when I looked at the clock I realized we would never get to the table before it was time for the players to leave. So, we took the calculated risk of getting back out of line and went back to the area behind the barrier where we had cornered Webster and waited. Meanwhile, I had figured waiting in line would be a terrible form of torture for my 6 year old, so I got him some cotton candy to help the time pass. The truest sign of how much his perspective on the event had changed was that he declined cotton candy, not wanting to get his cards sticky before we sat down and just wanted to hurry up and get to the game so he could “see how these guys play.” Can you hear my chest swelling with pride right now?
While we were waiting for Brandon Roy to exit, we observed the following:
1. A guy in a giant pencil suit and a guy in a giant dog suit, neither of whom had anything to do with the Blazers so far as we could tell. Gibson asked, “who are those guys?” “I don’t know,” I said. “Are they more mascots for the Blazers?” “Not sure,” I answered, equally perplexed. “I hope not,” he said, “I don’t think Blaze (the current mascot) needs their help and I don’t see how they could dunk a basketball anyway.” I could not argue.
2. Approximately 3,600 young women just back from a month long stay at the Paris Hilton school of fashion and etiquette. Words like “slutty”, “skanky” and “shockingly inappropriate” just don’t do it justice. From the way they hung in packs around the players’ tables, I’m guessing this was a not so veiled form of advertising what these confused young women believed to be their best assets. Quite sad on various levels.
3. Lots of people having conversations about how well they know some Blazer player personally. According to what I saw, for every 4 teenage boys traveling together, at least one of them “totally parties with [insert name of Blazer here] almost like every weekend in the off season.” Who knew?
4. Blazer president Steve Patterson just wandering around the concourse looking lost and confused and going completely unnoticed. I began to better understand the team’s rebuilding strategy.
5. Lots of middle aged men carrying 2 or 3 basketballs and half a dozen brand new (tags still on) jersey’s and hats to get signed. I’m guessing you can find just about all of them on ebay this morning for a starting bid at 10 times what they paid for them.
Gibson was beginning to reach his boredom limit waiting for the players to get released when some random guy calls over to me.
“Hey, you guys waiting to get Roy’s autograph?”
“Yeah, we were way back in line and had no shot at getting up here so we thought we’d wait here and try to cheat the system a bit.”
“Cool. This his first game?” Pointing to Gibson.
“Nah, I’ve been dragging him here for a few years now.”
“Well, give me something to sign and I’ll get it signed for you, I’m just here to get Roy’s name on a card anyway.”
“Daddy,” whispered Gibson in hushed urgency as I was removing my cap, “Don’t give that guy your hat, what if he doesn’t give it back or he just wears it? I don’t think his hair is clean”
Thankfully, the guy had not heard Gibson and I chose to ignore my son’s warning and gave the guy my hat. By this time, I had inadvertently just sort of joined him in line as we talked and we were basically at the table so not only did I get my hat signed, but I got to shake hands with Roy and wish him luck and warn him not to listen to a single word Miles or Randolph say about anything. Ok, so I didn’t say that last part, but I did wish him well and get my hat signed which was fun.
Then to make things better, this guy was a season ticket holder who had bracelets that got him special courtside seats for the scrimmage and he offered them to us. He and his girlfriend really had just stopped by for the one autograph and weren’t staying for the game. So Gibson and I got to sit on the court right by the players. Blaze came by and gave G some water out of the team’s cooler which was the highlight for Gibson who loves the mascot (and kept the green Gatorade cup as his favorite souvenir). We high-fived the players coming in and had tremendous seats for the game.
The scrimmage was entertaining. Roy played well and the whole thing was fun. Gibson had a blast and we spent the whole trip home talking about hoops and the NBA. I wish the Blazers and the NBA and sports in general had better guys for my son to look up to and I wish they would stop showing sexual beer adds and Viagra adds during all sporting events on TV and there’s a lot about the world of sports I’m not excited about exposing my sons to, but I will admit that I am thrilled to have this interest in common for as long as it lasts. At very least, it gave us a really fun day at the arena yesterday and I can’t wait to take Griffin with us next year.
And, of course, we did finally eat that cotton candy.
Comments
But this sounds like a pretty awesome day. It gives me hope that the day will come when James wants to actually watch the game, and not just sit with Daddy while HE watches.
Often we find that the parents ARE the source of the addiction, whatever it may be. Fortunately he has Mactastic Mama to balance his outlook.
My favorite sporting event with my son was the time I checked Steven out of elementary school to attend an Atlanta Braves Spring Training game at Disney’s Wide World of Sports. I didn’t tell him that I was going to check him out of school that day. He was one happy boy. We had box seats just behind home plate.
In fact, our seats were so good that we heard Greg Maddox let out a cuss word when he threw his first ball after a succession of strikes. Steven looked at me for my opinion of Maddox’s language and I answered by saying, “Son, you know you have excellent seats when you can here the pitcher cuss from the mound. Not that Daddy condones that kind of language but these are good seats.”