Screen grab from video I took at the Hot Stove concert - Bronson Arroyo and Elan Trotman
Okay so things didn’t go exactly the way I planned they would on Saturday. I did attend the New Stars for Young Stars event at Jillian’s in the morning and then the Hot Stove Cool Music round table at Fenway Park in the afternoon. Both were fun and relatively interesting. I got to see Trot Nixon and finally thank him for his part in 2004 and seeing the young ones interacting with the fans was its own entertainment. A tremendous amount of thanks to KellyO for generously sharing both events with me!
Omar Minaya was a guest on the panel at the round table where they discussed integrating the foreign players into MLB. Omar seemed very taken with both Bronson Arroyo and Manny Delcarmen…especially Manny. He was charming and endearing and seems to genuinely care about his players. I think Jason Bay is in good hands.  Well, if not good hands at least caring ones.
Manny Delcarmen won a bigger place in my heart than he already had by invoking Mike Timlin’s name first when discussing players who helped him make his way when he first made it to the bigs. Unfortunately, on Saturday my man Mike was in another part of Massachusetts at a signing, close to where I usually am but far away from where I was all day. It was a bummer to have missed him even though the day I had was fabulous.
Thanks to a last-minute tip from Elan Trotman that we then got verified by Mike O’Malley after the round table, we found out that Bronson was going to open the Hot Stove show…after debating on whether we wanted to spend the night at the concert, we decided to hit the show, watch Bronson’s set and bolt. The idea of 12 hours of bouncing from Jillian’s to Fenway to the House of Blues made me long for my bed sooner rather than later so instead of sticking it out for the entire show we literally got there early enough to be up front, watched Bronson’s set and jetted out of there.
I have to admit, although I had resigned myself to the fact that I wouldn’t see Bronson perform this year, I was more than a bit giddy at getting to see him again. I can’t help it, I immediately turn into a fan-girl when Bronson starts his singing.
It was an awful lot of fun for one day. I posted some photos of the day here and you can find videos of Bronson’s set on my YouTube page.
Friday, February 12th is Truck Day and pitchers and catchers report on Thursday, February 18th. It’s nice to have those dates to look at in your calender, isn’t it?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5NhqafH_g0&hl=en_US&fs=1&]