My Own Brush with MLBers

I was invited by one of our Business Partners - who we just bought a bunch of hardware from - to attend the West Michigan Whitecaps end of year banquet where they raise money for some local charitys.

Well first, let me back up - it's damn near 4am and I'm only posting this because I got paged and can't get back to sleep.

So tonight me and Jim, another guy I work with, head up there after work. The Whitecaps are a Grand Rapids minor league team and they happened to win it all in whatever league they're in. There was a silent auction / dinner / live auction / raffle / speakers. I was thinking the silent auction would be just Whitecaps stuff or maybe some Tigers stuff since that's the orginization they're in, and there was, but there was all kinds of other stuff too. What caught my eye the most was a Kyle Busch autographed hat / model car.

I waited around for awhile and finally bid $40 for them and was only the second bid ($25 was the first). 5 minutes before it was over, my bid was still the highest, so I went and got another beer and went to dinner. I lost. Julia said silent auctions people swoop in at the end and win them - doh! Who knew? But they had some other cool stuff too like a Favre autographed jersey, some big name hockey jerseys autographed, golf rounds at some pretty nice places, but the Kyle Busch stuff is all I bid on.

The had Leyland there to talk to us which was pretty cool. He said managers don't really have anything to do with a good team. He said he's had good players and the season's turned out well before, and he's had teams with lousey players and the team 'wasn't worth a damn.' so it's all in the players.

Then Brandon Inge spoke some and Verlander, Craig Monroe, and a couple others were there. Out of probably 100+ tables there, we were just a couple rows back and pretty close to the front.

Obviously I'm not a huge Tigers fan - or a fan of them at all, but it was pretty sweet to be there and hear these guys talk. And it made me want to go to a Whitecaps game sometime.

When I found out some Tigers were there I though Sean might be there and I was going to tell him thanks for letting me watch Big Ben win the Super Bowl at his place, but I guess he was off with Chambers and some ultimate fighter and Nicole Richie or soemthing.