(Note: Frequent commenter JimCrikket is in Fort Myers and, as he did last season, filed a report from Saturday’s Red Sox-Twins game for those who wish they were there.)

A couple of days ago in the comment section of one of JoeC’s blog entries, BC of ND asked me if I was going to file reports from Spring Training for Howard’s View from Section 220 blog like I did last spring. I honestly hadn’t thought about it until he asked so I emailed Howard and… well… here I am. I guess that’s my way of saying that if you don’t like this, don’t blame Howard and, for that matter, don’t blame me. Blame BC of ND. I’m all about “accountability” as long as it’s someone else that I can make accountable.

I’ve been finding my way down to Spring Training for the past 3-4 years. I work for a company with an office in St. Petersburg, so I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to schedule work trips down here in March and then add a few days to catch some baseball. This year, there really was no reason for me to go to the office, so I’m down here on my own nickel… unless… hmmm… wonder what would happen if I submitted an official-looking expense report to Howard at the Strib.

I was very proud of the way I prepared for this trip. I didn’t make a list of things to pack (lists? phhht… who needs lists?), but I made a mental note of those things that would be important. Sunglasses (prescription), sunblock, camera/batteries, laptop, Twins jerseys, Twins cap, a few shirts, couple pair of shorts, underwear, socks. Jacket? Hah. nah. Adapters for phone, Garmin, blackberry, laptop, and a few other adapters that I’m really not sure what they’re for but I throw them in anyway. Oh… and a copy of LEN’s recommended eating establishments that he posted in his blog a couple of weeks ago!

The direct flight to St. Pete went great. I waved at my office as I drove by on my way to I-275 South to Ft. Myers. A totally uneventful 2 hour drive to Ft. Myers (well not totally uneventful… I did get a phone call asking about my interest in interviewing for a very intriguing job opening, but you don’t care about that. I did spend the rest of the drive wondering what the Royals blogosphere is like, though).

I unpacked at the LaQuinta and put everything away, noting that I had not brought along my sunglasses, sunblock, extra batteries, nor any of my Twins jerseys. OK, so maybe there’s something to that whole “list” thing after all.

Not much I can do about the prescription sunglasses thing, but the rest of the stuff I forgot was taken care of with a quick stop at K-Mart on the way to City of Palms Park for today’s game with the Red Sox. I even bought a 6-pack of bottled water (which I’ve just discovered turned out to be Kiwi flavored bottled water…ewww) for the fridge in my hotel room. (By the way, this LaQuinta is a 2-star hotel in Priceline.com. Only in a Florida coastal community could this be considered anything but an old fashioned motel, however. It does have clean beds, free breakfast, free wi-fi and came in at under $50 a night via Priceline. Hard to complain about that.)

I know this Spring Training is dragging out unmercifully long for fans and for players. But it worked out perfect for me since this is really the only week I would have been able to fit in a trip. The Twins schedule is also just about ideal. Usually, in order for me to catch 3-4 games, I have to zip around from Ft. Myers to Bradenton to Sarasota to Tampa, which is a lot of driving. But this year, I’ll see 6 games and only leave Ft. Myers once… a short drive up I-75 to Port Charlotte to the Rays’ new facility next week. Other than that, today’s game at City of Palms Park here in Ft. Myers (actually closer to my hotel than Hammond Stadium) was the only non-home game I’ll be attending.

City of Palms is a pretty nice stadium. I hear the Orioles are considering it as an option as they try to escape Ft. Lauderdale. The Red Sox will be getting a new facility elsewhere in Ft. Myers and it would be a shame for this ballpark not to have a tenant. My son, Crikket Jr., is a lifelong Oriole fan and it would be nice to be able to come down here together some time and see Twins and Oriole games in the same city.

Those of you who read my reports last spring may remember I had a few issues with ticket purchases. Twice I ended up having to buy two tickets in order to get a decent seat. I have two goals this week in that area. Never buy more than one ticket to any particular game and never pay more than twice face value to the shady looking guy on the street corner across from the stadium. I’m happy to report that I accomplished both goals today. One ticket and, although the friendly broker was asking more than twice face value for the seat “down the third base line”, I managed to acquire said ticket for well under twice the face value.

Now… technically… I suppose the “third base line” and the “left field line” are the same line, right? So I shouldn’t be too upset that I was sitting well beyond third base itself. Nevertheless, I was in the sun and at these cozy ballparks, I was happy with my vantage point.

Now, I just realized I’ve made you read for several minutes and not mentioned a dang thing about the ballgame itself. But let’s face it, if you want to know what happened at the game, LEN and JoeC can do a lot better job of telling you what happened than I can… they are, after all, professionals.

What I can tell you is that Delmon Young put on a bit of a show in BP. There was a good 20 mph wind blowing straight out to left field and DY took advantage. There’s an adjoining diamond with about a 25 foot high backstop fence beyond the LF wall and Young sent a few well over the scoreboard in Left Center and rattling the top of that fence. It gave me hope that maybe I’d see some fireworks during the game… and unfortunately, I did.

In the same hitting group as Young, however, was a lefthanded hitter I didn’t recognize. He was giving the folks in the RF bleachers cause to stay alert as he rattled a few in their direction, as well. Since he was getting no help from the wind, it was arguably a more impressive BP performance than Young’s. Not knowing who he was and not feeling inclined to go buy a program that probably wouldn’t have him listed anyway, I decided to “phone a friend”. Actually, I texted a friend, but since it was on my phone, it still counts, right?

Of course, I made the mistake of texting a woman friend who was of absolutely no help at all. Don’t worry, Babs, I won’t embarrass you by mentioning your name. Toward the end of the game, good old 95 got a chance to hit and that’s when I found out it was Matt Moses that had been impressing me in BP. His pop out to shallow RF when it counted was somewhat less impressive, of course, but still… he was fun to watch.

It was also fun to watch Gomez steal 2B… twice. It was fun to watch NewThirdBaseGuy, Joe Crede, double Gomez home in the first and score on Doc’s single up the middle. It was fun to watch Franchise make Papi look sili (hey if he can spell “pappy” wrong, I can do the same with “silly”) with a first inning swinging (read: flailing) K.

It was less fun watching the same Franchise (at least someone wearing the same 47 jersey) get lit up like a Christmas tree in the third inning. Baldelli’s HR cleared that LCF scoreboard easily. Yes, it was windy, but that one was going out anywhere. Ortiz’s line drive HR wouldn’t have cleared without the jetstream (in the interest of fairness, neither would have Tolbert’s later). But the big blast was Bay’s HR. That one cleared that adjoining backstop fence well beyond the LF wall.

I’m sure it’s coincidence, but at about the time Bay hit his shot, the Space Shuttle was scheduled to re-enter the atmosphere, zip across Florida and land. It didn’t. In fact, it turns out the Shuttle had to do an extra lap around the world and come in about 90 minutes later. We knew this because we could hear the telltale double sonic boom as it passed over to the north. According to the government, the delay was weather related, not due to Bay’s HR shot. I guess if the government says so, we have to believe them, right? They never lie.

Let’s see… what else… Humber didn’t look bad, I thought. He gave up a couple of hard hit balls but, again, this was a hitter’s day and anything hit to LF was going to carry. You can ask RedSox SS Jed Lowrie if you don’t believe me. Gomez hit a pop fly that Lowrie tracked… and tracked… and tracked… until it fell 5 feet beyond his reach in LF for a single. (How in the world Gomez didn’t get a double out of that thing is beyond me… I suspect Gardy was wondering the same thing.)

As I mentioned a few scattered thoughts ago, I didn’t want to invest in a program. I was pleasantly surprised (more like shocked) to find out I didn’t have to. After BP, I decided it was time for a beer and went for a stroll along the concession area behind the stands. The guy selling souvenir programs was going through his stack of preprinted programs and inserting a scorecard sheet, with today’s starting lineups pre-printed in their respective lines, in to each of the programs he was there to sell. But he was also handing out one of those preprinted scorecard sheets to anyone who asked for one… for free! Now how cool is that?

Now, if I had only remembered to bring a pencil. Guess I should put that on my “list” for tomorrow.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 29th, 2009 at 6:26 pm and is filed under Guest post. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.