First of all I want to thank everyone who helped us set up on Saturday morning. That includes Kerel,Mets_Bro, Mr. and Mrs.Read the Apple, Ceetar, Meesh, my sister, @LaGranderusty and @Kranepool. Shannon, Darren and I couldn’t have pulled off all that rearranging of the furniture in McFadden’s without you guys. Thanks also to everyone else that helped out through the day, like the 7line calendar girls and Dan Twohig. All of you were key in helping us pull off a fun event. No, I didn’t forget our esteemed panel hosts and panelists. Thanks for sharing your knowledge with the rest of us.
Next I want to thank McFadden’s for letting us have the QBC there.Who knows where we would have had it, if they didn’t offer the use of the bar.
Now to all our sponsors and vendors for coming out and believing in us that we wouldn’t just have an event that had only six people show up.
Now, that all the thank yous are out of the way, let us delve into what I experienced all day on Saturday. Believe it or not, I wasn’t nervous at all. About three weeks ago, I was just like I don’t care. Let me expand on this. It wasn’t that I didn’t care about the event, I just didn’t care about being nervous. I was like this is what we are doing, time to do it. And from what a lot of you told me, you guys enjoyed it. Was the day perfect? Nope. We had some hiccups along the way but for a first time event I think we all did a damn good job. We had a really great support staff(see above thank yous) that really helped me when I needed to be in two places at the same time. I really wish I had a chance to talk to more of you guys when you stopped me to tell me how great the QBC was. Wow. I just realized something. I realized that I wasn’t nervous but I was worried that you guys might leave the QBC thinking that it sucked. But from each person I talked to, you guys really seemed to like it. I got to run around from one end of McFadden’s to the other seeing smiling faces all over the place and that made me feel really good inside. I was happy that Shannon, Darren, and I, could deliver on a product that everyone enjoyed that day.
Now for some of my highlights from the QBC:
Throwing out the ceremonial first pitch and that said first pitch finding it’s target and dunking ED MARCUS aka @lagranderusty. I have been dying to get Ed in a dunk tank for years and being able to hear the kerplunk splash made all the work that I have been doing for the QBC since last summer worth it. Thanks for being a good sport Ed.
I didn’t get to spend time with Ron Darling due to the fact I was running around setting up the autograph line for him, but from what I have seen in some video that I was able to shoot, his Q and A seemed to go really well.
Talking to Ed Kranepool for about 20 minutes one on one in private. Ed wanted to know what the QBC was all about. I explained to him the idea behind it and how as Mets fans, we wanted to be able to have a fan fest and hang with other Mets fans in the middle of the winter. He was enthralled by the idea of all these fans getting together in Jan. and he said that he couldn’t believe that this was the first QBC. He wished us luck on it being a yearly event and said he would love to come back. That made me proud right there.
The Gil Hodges Award presentation- WOW, I actually had Goose bumps hearing Greg Prince presenting the award and Gil Hodges Jr. accepting the award. And how great was it to see a total surprise guest Art Shamsky show up as part of it?
The Mazzy’s- This is just fun. Has made me laugh the last 2 years doing them live.
I have some video that I was shooting at the QBC and I am trying to get it all together soon. Hopefully those who missed this years QBC can watch this video and want to attend next years. Thanks again everyone and hopefully we can have an even bigger and better QBC15
