The National Trip, Day 3

START TIME: 9 am Eastern
STARTING CITY: Lexington, KY
STOPPING POINT: Charleston, WV
STATES VISITED: Kentucky, West Virginia
MILES DRIVEN TODAY: 174
MILES DRIVEN TOTAL: 1,237

Aside from a nice sunburn, Charleston was a fun outing.

We got into town pretty early for the 2 pm game-- gave us enough tome to make a quick Walmart run and get inside as gates opened. Team sets were only $8 for the 2018 set and $5 for the 2015 set, so I grabbed both. The 2017 set didn't have anything too useful aside from cards of Wyatt Toregas, Mitch Keller, and Ryan Long, but I'll take it. Future usages, perhaps.

Michael Egnor of the Ballpark Graphers group on Facebook helped me with some recon in advance and it made things easier for us. If you go down the right field line near the deck overhang, you can get both teams coming onto the field there. So before the game we were able to get Toregas on six cards, Joel Hanrahan on three, Cody Bolton on the game program, Rodolfo Castro, Kyle Watson, Lolo Sanchez, Ryan Peurifoy, Domingo Robles, Matt Seelinger, and Calvin Mitchell each on one. For Asheville, Norberto Martin signed four, and Tommy Doyle signed two.

Postgame we managed a few exiting-- Ryan Vilade signed two, and Argenis Diaz and and Ike Schlabach one.  We really wanted to try to get Oneil Cruz, so we went for the bus.  Luckily, the visiting bus and home bus pulled up together so we were able to get both teams-- Will Gaddis signed two and Robinson Cancel three for Asheville. For West Virginia, we got Joel Cesar, Sergio Cubilete, Nick Pressley, Travis MacGregor, Hunter Stratton, Ben Bengtson, and Chris Sharpe each signed one. Deon Stafford signed a card and the program, and eventually, finally, Cruz broke down and signed one.

After that, a quick dash northward put us into out home base for the next week, Macedonia, Ohio!

START TIME: 6 pm Eastern
STARTING CITY: Charleston, WV
STOPPING POINT: Macedonia, OH
STATES VISITED: West Virginia, Ohio
MILES DRIVEN TODAY: 231
MILES DRIVEN TOTAL: 1,468

Day totals: 42 autographs
Running total: 101 autographs

Tonight: Columbus vs. Indianapolis!