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Spring Training, Florida
Hands, touching hands, reaching out, touching me, touching you
If you go to enough spring training games (and by “enough,” I guess I mean four), certain truths will begin to become self evident. First off, even with a smaller stadium, the game’s not going to sell out. Second, by about the fifth inning (or so), people are going to start to leave early, even if the “best fireworks of the Palm Beaches” is going to take place immediately following the game. Third, the crowd’s really just not going to be too much into it. During the game, even during generally good, action filled stretches, you can expect library level silence. All these rules apply at all these stadiums, or, more accurately, at all three of the four stadiums we visited.
JetBlue Park at Fenway South in Fort Meyers is the exception to the rule and, by far, the nicest of the ballparks we visited. It had everything. A sold out engaged crowd that (mostly) stayed to the end, free sunscreen, architecturally interesting design (thanks Populous), damn good food (although the pretzels were better at BB&T Center) and even an actually good baseball game, where there hometown Red Sox came from behind late to beat the Minnesota Twins 7 to 6.
Just about every day that I travel with my father, I try to get him to pose for a picture that I then send to my sister, and just about every day it does not go well. To say that he is reluctant to pose for pictures is a kind understatement. However when we got to JetBlue Park, all of that changed. He immediately got on line to pose with the World Series trophy, then on line to wait to pose next to a fiberglass replica of the mascot (Wally the Green Monster), then on line to pose next to a Lego replica of David “Big Papi” Ortiz. If you can say that I am a Mets fan (it’s not that I’m not a Mets fan, it’s more that I’m just not all that into it), you can definitely say without question that my father is a Red Sox fan.
This picture is a rare iPhone panorama shot (with the wide angle lens, the iPhone panoramas feel generally less useful, maybe that’s just me) that shows the view from our seats. Fenway South is no Fenway, but they do have their own green monster, complete with (lower) seating covered by netting and standing room up on top. And while Fenway South is no Fenway, they (unlike the Mets) at least try. In the middle of the eighth inning we all stopped to sing along to Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline,” despite its message of “hands, touching hands” not being especially timely for a virus fearing crowd.
The green monster at Fenway South may only be eight years old (the stadium opened in 2012), but the scoreboard is a little older at eighty-eight years old. It was original to Fenway (North) and moved here from Boston after it was replaced in a renovation. There is one big difference though. In Boston, the manual scoreboard was changed from behind. In Florida, a team of two people would quickly run out with a ladder between innings and anytime anyone did anything to quickly change the numbers from the outfield side. Hard to tell if they have the best job or the worst job in all of Fenway South.
Also from here you get a good view of the park’s green monster. It is the actual size and height of its Boston twin, although the seating was moved to be in the middle of the wall, although it’s protected by netting so that the ball would bounce off and remain in play. Supposedly this was done to comply with hurricane codes that do not allow an unsupported wall of that height without openings, although it seems that it was done because seating that height also worked well with the height and scale and rest of the stadium.
Everything was back to normal at Roger Dean Chevrolet Stadium in Jupiter, on the east coast of Florida, where the half filled stadium crowd was quiet, left early and once again the Mets didn’t win- although in all fairness, they did at least tie the hometown Marlins 1 -1 (unlike real games, spring training games do not bother with extra innings). And while the food was nothing special, you could spot a disinterested Marlins co-owner Derek Jeter standing on a suite level balcony and talking on his phone the whole time during the game util he left early, so at least there’s that.
The stadium (shared by the Miami Marlins and the St Louis Cardinals) wasn’t especially distinctive, but it was the only one we visited that was located in a neighborhood and not in a great big field of nothing. After somehow finding a lot with hardly any signs anywhere (seriously Jupiter, consider putting up a directional sign or two), we parked on the Florida Atlantic University campus and had a pleasant two block walk to the stadium, past bougainvillea covered arches and past actual street level shops and restaurants. A nice change of pace after parking in endless lots and endless grass fields for the better part of a week.
Even as this all too short five (or six) day trip to four baseball games and a hockey game comes to an end, it is hard not to write about the obvious and ominous shadow chasing this entire trip. Three days after our game at Roger Dean Chevrolet Stadium, the entirety of spring training was shut down over public health concerns. We followed the news and were reasonably careful- washing our hands a lot and avoided touching our faces when we could. Still we attended live (some sold out) sporting events, ate at restaurants including hotel breakfast buffets, took JetBlue flights and walked through Newark Airport Terminal A without wearing a hazmat suit, all things that would seem almost impossible and foreign just a few weeks later. No future is decided and no future is (truly) predictable, although in retrospect the signs were certainly starting to show themselves. On a weekday late afternoon, on our last day before flying back home, we ate here at an almost empty Pirate Republic in Fort Lauderdale, watching almost empty water taxis go back and forth along the river. Five days later back home, all restaurant dining rooms would be closed indefinitely, everyday life would be on hold and we would consider ourselves damn, damn lucky to have been able to complete this all too short five (or six) day trip exactly when we did.
