(Note: Section 220 commenter JimCrikket is at spring training … and the dog track … and the bar, where he gallantly bailed out a bartender who got stiffed by some wings-walking customers.)

I just got back from the Monday game with the Rays and for the record, this was a much better day.

Technically, since the game has been over for something like three hours as I right this, I suppose it’s a bit inaccurate to say I just got home from the game. But since you aren’t my wife, I really don’t have to explain where I’ve been to you… or what that dogracing form is doing in my back pocket.

Boys and girls, days like this are exactly what God had in mind when he invented baseball as an outdoor sport.  Blue skies and low 80s temperatures. Be honest… how many of you have ever seen TC Bear at a ballgame armed with a supersoaker? We are gonna LOVE baseball in 2010, gang.

Not that 2009 is shaping up all that bad, either.

I’m not sure how I ended up with a seat literally 10 feet away from where the Rays’ on-deck hitters awaited their turns to hit, but that’s just about the perfect place to watch a ballgame. I could literally listen to the conversations of the Rays’ hitters, manager and coaches. Very cool and one heck of a vantage point from which to take some decent pictures… if you know how to use your camera.

You would think someone who got started in photography back in the days of the Polaroid Swinger would know how to use a moderately expensive digital camera that he’s owned for almost a year. But when that someone is me, you’d be wrong. You see… I’ve gotten lazy. Yes, my camera can be focused manually, but I’ve figured that Olympus has put millions of dollars in to research and development to come up with an autofocus camera so who am I to think I could focus better?

And for a year, that philosophy has worked for me. But when you are trying to take pictures of a baseball game from 6 feet behind backstop netting, that autofocus insists on focusing on the netting… letting all the action on the field blur in to nothingness. So it was time to flip the little AF switch to MF and… hmmm… apparently you have to do something else, too.

So, just as was the case on Saturday, it was time once again to “phone a friend.” The same friend, even. Amazingly, after I trashed her publicly in this blog for not knowing #95 was Matt Moses on Saturday, she took my call again today. You see, Babs’ dad has the exact same camera I do so I naturally assumed she would know how to manually focus my camera. I’d like to say she knew exactly what to do. Well, Babs is good, but she isn’t THAT good. She did, however, put me in touch with DaddyBabs who knew exactly what to do to help me out. A big thanks to both of them. Not that this does any of the rest of you any good, because you can’t see the beautiful pictures I took (unless of course you are one of my Facebook friends).

In any event, I had a great seat and had a great time, even if the guy sitting next to me was big enough to play offensive tackle for the Vikes. Tomorrow’s ticket for the Pirates’ game is back about 10 rows so still not bad, but I’m definitely spoiled after today.

I understand the game was shown on FSN and MLB networks. If you watched, you got an opportunity to see a very good pitching match up. Garza was throwing well for the Rays and Perkins had a very nice outing. The dang pitch-speed gizmo on the spanking new scoreboard wasn’t working (or wasn’t turned on) during the first five or so innings, so I have no idea how hard those guys were throwing, but based on the way they were missing bats, they both must have been bringing it pretty well.

The highlight of the first part of the game was Michael Cuddyer’s rifle shot to gun down Pena at the plate. Yes, the oh-fer at the plate didn’t look good for Cuddy, but I’ve missed seeing that arm out in RF. Honorable mention goes to Carlos Gomez who, as a late inning defensive replacement for Denard Span in CF, showed off his arm as well… keeping the potential tying run from tagging up and scoring on a fly ball. I don’t know how you put a value on this type of thing, but teams are simply not going to run on the Twins OF this summer.

The “cringe of the day” came when Joe Crede got hit on the hand by a pitch. It sounded ugly and I’ll be surprised if he’s not out of the lineup for a while. I’m just hoping it doesn’t turn out to be anything serious. I also had to cringe a bit when Brian Duensing gave up an opposite field HR to Pena in the 8th. That can’t be helpful when you’re trying to shoehorn yourself in to that last bullpen spot heading north.

The game only took about two and a half hours, though, which means it was over almost about the same time of day that yesterday’s rain-delayed game got started. That left me with considerable (some might say too much) free time on my hands. Imagine my surprise to find out that there is legalized gambling in Florida!

Not only can you watch dogs run around in circles very fast (though not fast enough if you’re the dang #5 dog in the first race!), but they have a very nice poker room where you can play cards with perfect strangers. And just because Floridians are SO nice, these perfect strangers also give you their money! In fact the nice people I played cards with for about 90 minutes gave me enough money to cover the cost of my tickets for four of the six ballgames this week. Is this a great place, or what!?

I stopped for pizza at Shoeless Joe’s (one of LEN’s listed recommended establishments earlier this spring) and had a great visit with the friendly bartender in the outdoor bar section of the restaurant. Unfortunately, we apparently had too good a visit, because a couple of other patrons at the bar managed to slip out without paying for their two orders of wings… sticking said bartender for their bill. Good thing for him that one of his other customers had a good day at the card table.

I’m not sure what it is about me that draws fans from the opposing team to sit around me. Yesterday, I was surrounded by Cardinal fans and today I had Rays fans on either side of me. I suspect there are only 2 Pirate fans in all of south Florida, but I’m quite certain they will be sitting to my left and right tomorrow afternoon.

Just in closing… I want to send my best wishes to any of you in the Fargo/Moorhead area or with family up there. Having gone through the flooding in Cedar Rapids, last June, I can relate to what’s going on up there and I wish you the best.

(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.

The commenter T-Mouse offered this up in response to yesterday’s holiday post and it’s interesting enough that it deserved to be shared more widely. This is the passion that comes with September baseball, and I figured it was a whole lot more eloquent that writing about how trips to Toronto are wonderful (because of the city) and scary (because of the baseball).

Without further introduction, here is T-Mouse and the Seven Dreams:

DREAM #1: A PRODUCTIVE GOMEZ
Carlos needs to get instructed to do more bunting — even with runners on second. We simply cannot absorb unlimited strikeouts from Go-Go. He has potential, but my dream is that he bunts once per game, and is given a kangaroo-court reward for every walk he draws in the month of September. Seriously. This is a guy with 122 strikeouts and 21 walks. He is on pace to draw 4 walks in September. Let’s give him $500 for every walk he draws over 4. We need productivity here. His .632 OPS really hurts us.

DREAM 2: MAUER PLAYS EVERY DAY. I do not mean he plays behind the plate every day. I do mean that he starts every game, taking on DH duties in day games. We have four day games left. Every game counts now. We need a guy with an .856 OPS, who — hallelujah — has drawn 73 walks vs. 42 strikeouts (compare to Carlos above). We need every at-bat from Joe that we can get.

DREAM 3: SEEK THAT EXTRA 1/3RD, 2/3RD, or FULL INNING. I understand why we manage our young arms so carefully. I disagree with Bert about this. I think we’re doing the right thing. But the arms are healthy. We need to extend our starters for some extra outs now. If you look at the inning by inning stats (a great future article by you, I propose!), you’ll see that the numbers support guys like Baker going into the 7th/8th often. Bringing in Crain, Guerrier, or Bonser has to be seen as the *downgrade* that it is. The numbers don’t lie. The dream here is to take a few games from starter right to Nathan this month.

DREAM 4: FOCUS ON PERFORMANCE RATHER THAN CIRCUMSTANCE. In my humble opinion, the bullpen has been mismanaged this year. You can start by comparing Breslow and Bass. What digits suggest we ever should have given Bass 2X the innings of Breslow. At this point, Breslow should be the go-to setup man for Nathan (yes, ahead of Guerrier, Crain, Reyes, Guardado). Rick and Ron need to stop tying outings so tightly to situations. They should focus more on performance.

DREAM 5: CAREFUL WITH EDDIE. In six of Eddie’s last ten appearances, he’s given up runs (not to mention inherited runs). During that period, his WHIP has been a terrifying 2.44 and his ERA has balooned a full 1.09 to 4.18. I’m not saying don’t use him. I am saying do so with a very tight leash right now. He isn’t getting the velocity and placement right now to warrant a loose hand on the controls. Be very careful here.

DREAM 6: PILE ON RUNS. It’d be a dream to just say it and have it happen: MORE RUNS. But I mention this because I worry that we may turn too defensive-minded down the stretch. We need Busch’s bat in the lineup vs. righties. It certainly deserves consideration to put Span in center, Kubel in right, and DH Busch vs. righties. Alternately, DH Morneau and put Buscher at first. The more you look at our situation, the more pain we suffer with Carlos at the plate right now (cf. Dream One).

DREAM 7: FOCUS ON THE TALENTS. When we insist on playing the following players, they need to be restricted to their areas of producitivity as follows:

- Everett: late inning fielder and only bats versus lefties;
- Buscher: DH of choice vs. righties and mostly off the field in the late innings:
- Casilla: either sits vs lefties in favor of Punto or bats 8th;
- Guardado: tight leash;
- Gomez: reduced plate appearances versus righties.

Go Twins!

T-Mouse (9-1-08)

other people are here too

(Blogger’s Note: Michael Reiter is among several dozen folks on a summer trip to watch baseball. The group took in two of the Twins-Yankees games in New York a few days back. Here’s the first of two reports from the bus tour.)

Like most baseball fans, I am familiar with the history of The Yankees, and of Yankee Stadium, “The House That Ruth Built.” And like many, I was appalled that the team could leave it’s hallowed grounds to play in a new ballpark basically geared to removing customers’ money a little faster (and hand it to the Steinbrenners). However, after two days in The Stadium, I’m surprised to hear myself say - TEAR DOWN THIS DUMP.

The group I’m traveling with is “Ballpark Tours” formerly “Save The Met” It was formed to oppose The Twins effort to leave Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington (unofficial slogan: we wuz right). Having failed in that effort, they have annually been chartering buses and driving around the country to visit outdoor ballparks. (I wonder if we’ll have to keep doing it after the new Twins ballpark opens because we won’t be able to afford tickets.) This year’s trip is a 10-day excursion through the Midwest and to the East Coast.

Days 5 and 6 find us in NYC, after seeing games in Chicago (Sox), Cincinnati, Altoona, PA, and Baltimore. All excellent examples of the recent renaissance in ballparks. One would think that our group would be inclined to be sad about our final visit to Yankee Stadium. However, an informal survey of them taken after the game indicates that we are pretty much ready to move on to Yankee Stadium II.

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(Note to all: Gregg Anderson grew up in St. Paul, went to the U and has somehow ended up in western Massachusetts, where he teaches history. He married well — my friend Audrey from Macalester — and writes real good. Here’s his take on last night’s game.)

Fenway’s the greatest venue there is if you had a good seat- I had one last night- upper deck down by the right field foul pole (or the Pesky Pole as those with Sox credentials call it ). I walked up and bought it at the ticket window before game time — $50 face value, factor that in the next time you complain about the Dome. My attempts to work the ‘informal’ market were unsuccessful - $40 for standing room seemed a bit steep. (Don’t all us guys think we’re master negotiators when it comes to scalped tix?) It would also seem as if the South Boston Bulger mob (See Howie Carr’s excellent book The Brothers Bulger, for clarification) runs the ticket scalping operation outside the park-It looks like a cross between a Dropkick Murphys show and the Massachusetts Legislature. I could’ve had a box seat for only $200!

A tip for MN visitors- if you park a mile or so down Comm Av. (Commonwealth Avenue to those of you “from away”) you only have to feed the meter for an hour or so - beats $25-50 near the park. Also be advised that Mass. state statute requires that at least one member of your party have an Italian sausage outside the park- IT’S THE LAW! All that said it was a beautiful night for baseball — warm, a breeze blowing, friendly banter with the Sox fans once my cover was blown- people at Fenway in my experience ARE pretty knowledgeable. A terrific game, too even though the result was not what we had all hoped.

But as for the game:

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