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For The Most Devoted Of Sports Fans, They Cope With Insane Vegas Heat To Get Player Autographs Before Raiders-Knights Charity Softball Game In Summerlin Saturday

Alan Snel ,

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By Alan Snel, LVSportsBiz.com Publisher-Writer

It’s one thing when you spend all your money on logo gear like hats, shirts and pucks when your local NHL team wins the league championship. That’s loyalty and the Vegas Golden Knights cashing in on winning the Stanley Cup thanks to winning 16 out of 22 games in the postseason.

It’s quite another thing in Las Vegas Friday when your fans risk their health by standing in blazing million-degree heat to get an autograph from a popular NHL player like 32-year-old Reilly Smith, a former Vegas Misfit who was traded to the Pittsburgh Penguins less than a month ago so that the VGK general manager could create some salary cap space to sign some other guys.

But there they were, the most devoted of all the devoted Golden Knights fans standing on line at a “fanfest” event that’s connected to the charity softball game played between the Raiders and Golden Knights with a few other local characters like Jose Canseco thrown in there on Saturday.

Raiders vs Knights. Sounds like the story line for a modern adaptation of West Side Story. But the money collected from ticket sales and other donations from this annual “Battle For Vegas” softball event has raised more than $550,000 for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Southern Nevada and the Public Education Foundation.

The record-setting heat was brutal Friday and it continues Saturday when the softball game starts at 8 PM — 30 minutes later than originally planned.

The Golden Knights sponsors like orthodontics, cancer screening and injury law companies had tents among the several dozen participants at the fanfest. Local representatives for mega events in Las Vegas like the F1 race on the Strip in November and Super Bowl 58 at Allegiant Stadium in February were also on hand.

Players also popped in to sign autographs. Here’s Raiders player Nate Hobbs with fans:

 

Alan Snel

Alan Snel brings decades of sports-business reporting experience to LVSportsBiz.com. Snel covered the business side of sports for the South Florida (Fort Lauderdale) Sun-Sentinel, the Tampa Tribune and Las Vegas Review-Journal. As a city hall beat reporter, Snel also covered stadium deals in Denver and Seattle. In 2000, Snel launched a sport-business website for FoxSports.com called FoxSportsBiz.com. After reporting sports-business for the RJ, Snel wrote hard-hitting stories on the Raiders stadium for the Desert Companion magazine in Las Vegas and The Nevada Independent. Snel is also one of the top bicycle advocates in the country.

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