If you build it, they will come, Part One
Mar. 17th, 2008 10:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
penfield"Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital."
- Aaron Levenstein
The beach theme of the above quotation notwithstanding, this entry will not be a general postmortem of my trip to the Florida's gulf coast (regional motto: "Free Breakfast with Hip Replacement Surgery") except to say that it was a pleasant extended weekend for everyone, except perhaps for Mr. and Mrs. F's new puppy, who was vocally apoplectic at the prospect of two carpetbagging interlopers infringing on its rightful dotage and property.
I will, however, briefly comment on the selfish and somewhat esoteric portion of our visit, a twin-bill of Major League Baseball Spring Training games.
On Saturday, March 15, we watched the Minnesota Twins (parent team of the Rochester Red Wings) take on the Philadelphia Phillies at Bright House Networks Field in Clearwater, Florida. Final score: Twins 11, Phillies 2. Impressions:
- The Field: A charming (and apparently newish) facility with nice wide concourses, a bevy of alluring food choices and comfortable grandstand seating. The cheesesteak was a little chinsy but still delicious.
- The Twins: Starter Kevin Slowey and the rest of the pitching staff toyed with the Phillies, who played their whole starting lineup for seven innings with the wind blowing out to center field. The Twins hitters do not look particularly intimidating on the scoresheet or in the batter's box, but they do make a lot of contact which makes them at least "pesky." Fantasy players who are not in my 2008 league, keep an eye on Jason Kubel. He's good.
- The Phillies: Starter Adam Eaton looked sloppy, and was throwing junk all over the place, but even he looked pretty good compared to J.D. Durbin, who should have heeded the soothsayer's warning. Being a Phillies fan is going to be terrifying after the sixth inning this year. At least they can look forward to Ryan Howard's at-bats, if he keeps dropping bombs like the homerun he hit in the second inning.
On Sunday, March 16, we watched a Detroit Tigers' split-squad team play at the Tampa Bay Rays spring training home of Al Lang Field at Progress Energy Park in St. Petersburg. (The Tampa Bay Rays used to be known as the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. If they could shorten the name of the club -- even though they excised the only interesting word in their former name -- the least they could do is truncate the name of their spring training site.) Final score: Rays 7, Tigers 2. Impressions:
- ALF@PEPiSt.P is, bluntly, a baseball park-shaped toilet. The recessed concourses were almost unbearably crowded, such that one could barely move at all during the pre-game food rush. Our grandstand seats behind the plate were old-fashioned corrugated aluminum benches, the seats apparently sized for marathoners or individuals with severe eating disorders. I was fortunate enough to get an Italian sausage with little effort, but J. stood in line for 20 minutes to get a high school cafeteria-quality hot dog. At least parking was cheap, and the staff was friendly enough to help me find the binoculars I accidentally left under my seat.
- Detroit: Starter Dontrelle Willis looked winded by his fifth pitch of the first inning, and was struggling to find the strike zone. It could have been the 90 degree weather in stifling humidity, but it could have been the fact that he's simply washed up at age 26. At the plate, only Gary Sheffield swung the bat with any kind of authority, with most of the Tigers other hits coming on fluky dinks and dunks over the infield. Curtis Granderson came close to a home run, but was thwarted by ALF@PEPiSt.P's generous dimensions and looked clueless in his other at-bats.
- Tampa: It took a while for starter James Shields to find the plate, but he dodged a few bullets and ended up pitching well. The back end of the bullpen is still going to be a problem, though -- Troy Percival isn't up to the closer challenge. Most of the damage at the plate was done by the Rays' scrubs and second-tier players, with Carl Crawford inactive and Carlos Pena inert. BJ Upton had only one base hit, but he swings damn hard. The ball just sounds different coming off of his bat. He also stole a base.
- Umpires: I should point out that the home plate umpire's strike zone was all over the place. He must have been watching a different game in his head, or drunk, or in a hurry to get home.
I get the sense that Spring Training was once a "hidden gem" for baseball fans who make the trip to Florida or Arizona, but by the look of the crowds I saw this year, those days are over. Both games I attended were sold out -- the game at Clearwater actually set an attendance record for the park -- and there were a lot of Standing Room Only tickets sold to seat vultures and grazers on the fields' berms and grassy knolls. If you were thinking of taking a trip to experience the innocence and magic of uncommercialized sport, I'm sorry, you missed your chance.
TO BE CONTINUED, TOMORROW.
- Aaron Levenstein
The beach theme of the above quotation notwithstanding, this entry will not be a general postmortem of my trip to the Florida's gulf coast (regional motto: "Free Breakfast with Hip Replacement Surgery") except to say that it was a pleasant extended weekend for everyone, except perhaps for Mr. and Mrs. F's new puppy, who was vocally apoplectic at the prospect of two carpetbagging interlopers infringing on its rightful dotage and property.
I will, however, briefly comment on the selfish and somewhat esoteric portion of our visit, a twin-bill of Major League Baseball Spring Training games.
On Saturday, March 15, we watched the Minnesota Twins (parent team of the Rochester Red Wings) take on the Philadelphia Phillies at Bright House Networks Field in Clearwater, Florida. Final score: Twins 11, Phillies 2. Impressions:
- The Field: A charming (and apparently newish) facility with nice wide concourses, a bevy of alluring food choices and comfortable grandstand seating. The cheesesteak was a little chinsy but still delicious.
- The Twins: Starter Kevin Slowey and the rest of the pitching staff toyed with the Phillies, who played their whole starting lineup for seven innings with the wind blowing out to center field. The Twins hitters do not look particularly intimidating on the scoresheet or in the batter's box, but they do make a lot of contact which makes them at least "pesky." Fantasy players who are not in my 2008 league, keep an eye on Jason Kubel. He's good.
- The Phillies: Starter Adam Eaton looked sloppy, and was throwing junk all over the place, but even he looked pretty good compared to J.D. Durbin, who should have heeded the soothsayer's warning. Being a Phillies fan is going to be terrifying after the sixth inning this year. At least they can look forward to Ryan Howard's at-bats, if he keeps dropping bombs like the homerun he hit in the second inning.
On Sunday, March 16, we watched a Detroit Tigers' split-squad team play at the Tampa Bay Rays spring training home of Al Lang Field at Progress Energy Park in St. Petersburg. (The Tampa Bay Rays used to be known as the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. If they could shorten the name of the club -- even though they excised the only interesting word in their former name -- the least they could do is truncate the name of their spring training site.) Final score: Rays 7, Tigers 2. Impressions:
- ALF@PEPiSt.P is, bluntly, a baseball park-shaped toilet. The recessed concourses were almost unbearably crowded, such that one could barely move at all during the pre-game food rush. Our grandstand seats behind the plate were old-fashioned corrugated aluminum benches, the seats apparently sized for marathoners or individuals with severe eating disorders. I was fortunate enough to get an Italian sausage with little effort, but J. stood in line for 20 minutes to get a high school cafeteria-quality hot dog. At least parking was cheap, and the staff was friendly enough to help me find the binoculars I accidentally left under my seat.
- Detroit: Starter Dontrelle Willis looked winded by his fifth pitch of the first inning, and was struggling to find the strike zone. It could have been the 90 degree weather in stifling humidity, but it could have been the fact that he's simply washed up at age 26. At the plate, only Gary Sheffield swung the bat with any kind of authority, with most of the Tigers other hits coming on fluky dinks and dunks over the infield. Curtis Granderson came close to a home run, but was thwarted by ALF@PEPiSt.P's generous dimensions and looked clueless in his other at-bats.
- Tampa: It took a while for starter James Shields to find the plate, but he dodged a few bullets and ended up pitching well. The back end of the bullpen is still going to be a problem, though -- Troy Percival isn't up to the closer challenge. Most of the damage at the plate was done by the Rays' scrubs and second-tier players, with Carl Crawford inactive and Carlos Pena inert. BJ Upton had only one base hit, but he swings damn hard. The ball just sounds different coming off of his bat. He also stole a base.
- Umpires: I should point out that the home plate umpire's strike zone was all over the place. He must have been watching a different game in his head, or drunk, or in a hurry to get home.
I get the sense that Spring Training was once a "hidden gem" for baseball fans who make the trip to Florida or Arizona, but by the look of the crowds I saw this year, those days are over. Both games I attended were sold out -- the game at Clearwater actually set an attendance record for the park -- and there were a lot of Standing Room Only tickets sold to seat vultures and grazers on the fields' berms and grassy knolls. If you were thinking of taking a trip to experience the innocence and magic of uncommercialized sport, I'm sorry, you missed your chance.
TO BE CONTINUED, TOMORROW.
