Best baseball day ever?

Yea, I think so. 

July 19th, Ft. Worth Texas, The Omni Hotel.

The Texas Rangers were honoring Ivan "Pudge" Rodriguez at a luncheon because he was being inducted into the Texas Rangers Hall of Fame.

Yours truly was at table #3 sitting alongside former Rangers Casey Cox (1966-1971 Senators, 1972 Rangers, 1972-1973 Yankees) and Kevin Mench (2002-2006 Rangers, 2006-2007 Brewers, 2007-2008 Blue Jays, 2010 Nationals).  I sat next to Casey Cox and spent a good half hour talking to him about what it was like to pitch in his era.  We also discussed what it was like playing for Ted Williams and about the time he had an at bat against Nolan Ryan. 

I didn't go with the idea to get any autographs because I was told that people didn't really do that at these functions.  Well, that was far from the truth and I really missed out on a golden opportunity and if I get to go to another of these things, I'll go prepared.  There were more than 25 former Rangers there and I was like a kid in a candy store.  I did manage to borrow a Sharpie and get Rusty Greer's auto on the Texas Rangers 2013 Yearbook, which was at everyone's seat. 

Here is a close up of Rusty's auto.  He was very gracious and took loads of pictures and signed tons of autographs.  I got a picture with him too, but I don't want to lose any readers by showing my ugly mug. 

Rusty was nice enough to sign another auto for my son.  It was a great experience overall.  We sat two tables over from Nolan Ryan and were not more than 10 feet from Pudge.  Is it too soon to start sucking up in hopes of getting invited back to this thing again? 

I think not.