The Illinois Baseball community continues to amaze me. The annual Illinois Baseball Hot Stove Banquet co-sponsored by the Dugout Club, was scheduled for last Saturday night. To be honest, I wasn’t sure if attendance would be high. We had a nasty winter storm roll in on Saturday and roads were pretty icy.
What I saw was very heartening. The conference hall at the iHotel in Champaign was packed. I saw fans from here in town as well as out of town braving the iffy roads.
Fans were treated to energetic keynote speaker Bobby Valentine who spoke about his rise to the Major Leagues and his success as a manager in America and in Japan. His overall theme: it takes a little luck and being in the right spot at the right time to make it big.
The Hot Stove Banquet is a good chance for catching up with old friends.
I some nice chats with Bren Spillane who talked about his first year in the Reds organization. Will Krug was there with his parents who are great Illinois baseball supporters.
Hot Stove auction!
As always, there were plenty of items to bid on for the auction. In the last few years, the organizers have started using breakout rooms to display the smaller items. Even Robin and I donated a few photographs for the Hot Stove auction.
For the high-ticket items in the auction, Coach Hartleb brought in promoter and auctioneer Mike Namoff. In addition to being very entertaining, Mike knows how to get the crowd in the game and get the bidding going. He also had a few new ideas this time around. This year, there was a “speed painter” who painted a portrait of Mike Ditka (upside down even) in six minutes. That piece of work went up for bid.
Another new creative idea this year was something called “Stuff the Purse”. It started with a nice designer purse worth a fortune in itself. Banquet attendees were asked to bring items to “stuff” into it at the banquet. When it came time to auction it off, it was bulging with rolls of cash, gift cards, jewelry. No one really knows what the value of it was but the winning bid was $3,600. Great idea by Mike!
When the night was done, Coach Hartleb tallied up the bids and $79,800 was raised. When that was announced, a kind soul from the audience brought up $200 taken from his wallet and gave it to Coach Hartleb to make it an even $80,000!
Table #22 meets Nathan Lavender
I really enjoyed meeting Illini pitcher Nathan Lavender who was seated at our table. Nathan is from El Paso (“the one in Illinois”). Nathan is a Cubs fan which got him on my good side already. Seriously, he was very polite and friendly, someone fun to talk to. Nathan is a Political Science major as I was at the U of I. He aspires to possibly go into Law.
One of us asked Nathan which MLB player inspires him. His answer? Sandy Koufax? I for one, am impressed by his knowledge of baseball history. Dad, if you’re reading this, good job.
As always, good job by the organizers, the coaches, emcee Dave Loane, and all of the sponsors. It was a great night and I had a fun time. I want to thank Sullivan-Parkhill Automotive for sponsoring Table #22 so I could attend. Thanks also to Robin McElwee for thinking of me.
There are plenty of photos from the Hot Stove Banquet in the Illinois Baseball Report gallery.
The Hot Stove Banquet marks the beginning of the 2019 Illinois Baseball season. Opening day is February 15 against Georgetown in Winston-Salem, NC.
Good luck, Illini!!