Lincecum gets his 17th win & Peavy ’07 Cy Young winner signing session

So, I got a heads up from Mike over at Bad Wax on this week’s autograph signings. Jake Peavy, last year’s unanimous NL Cy Young award winner was signing today at a car dealership in Carlsbad. I called the Padres hotline to see what time he was signing and it was at 12:30 so I rushed last minute to make the 15-20 minute drive up the coast. He was actually late to the signing, but was very nice about everything and signed per request. Even though we were supposed to be limited to only one item per person, he signed anything that we gave him and even took photos with fans. I had to put on my Brian Giles Padres shirt to hide the fact that I’m a true Giants fan in order to appease Jake. Oh well, it was worth the 2 hour wait in the hot sun. I got him to inscribe CY ’07 on a clean new MLB ball along with his autograph. He also signed the Barry Zito ball that I got yesterday. Two Cy Young winners on that ball! Maybe I will start collecting Cy Young winner autographs on that ball now. Anyway, not only that, but he signed a ball that I got for Mike as well as my Allen & Ginter 2008 Peavy card. Those cards are really nice for autographs – they look really nice too. Here are some pictures:

This looks like an actual auto insert, doesn’t it?

Thanks Jake!

So that Peavy signing basically killed the whole morning. I ended up only resting for an hour and then heading over to wait for batting practice to start at Petco. I’ve gotten three batting practice balls the past three Petco games I’ve been to, but no such luck today.

Once again, Barry Zito was signing for the throngs of fans. I’m not sure if he would be as lucky in SF, but I guess people still see him as a superstar in SD.

I also got two autographs when I moved from the left field seats to the dugout, since I guess that’s where positional players sign, if we’re lucky. I got two more autographs to add to my Allen & Ginter 2008 collection of Giants and Padres players. I was the last person that Aaron Rowand signed for, which I’m pretty happy about, but he didn’t wait for the ink to dry so the auto is kind of smudged. Dave Roberts is still beloved by Padres fans and he was very nice about signing. Not only did he sign for almost everyone, he blew on the autographs so it would dry. He knows what he’s doing! compare the two autographs below:

I also ended up getting Dave Robert’s autograph on a ball that also has Ivan Ochoa and I also found Emmanuel Burriss sitting on the side of the third baseline and got him to sign the ball as well:

As for the actual game, it was another dominant start by Tim Lincecum. He won his 17th game by striking out 12 Padres and limiting him to 4 hits in his first career complete game shutout! I’m glad I got to witness that. He is now 17-3 (which should be higher if the bullpen didn’t blow it for him so many times), with 237 strikeouts, which leads the Majors, along with a 2.43 ERA (second only to Cliff Lee in the Majors), which leads the NL. He leads two out of the three categories for pitching’s triple crown. There hasn’t been a Giants Cy Young winner since Mike McCormick in 1967. Timmy needs to end that drought.