At the old ball game

Southern Florida is home to the Grapefruit League, where most of the Major League baseball teams east of the Mississippi go for Spring Training.  (Spring training for the other teams is the Cactus League, in Arizona.)   One of the Grapefruit League venues - the Ed Smith Stadium - is in Sarasota.  It's the winter and spring home of the Baltimore Orioles.  I dragged Nancy there for a little Spring Training experience.

We got in line at the ticket window.  A guy walked up and asked if we'd like, free, a couple of extra tickets he had for the game.  We accepted gratefully, since Spring Training prices aren't the bargain they used to be.  I think it was our good looks and snappy outfits that drew him to us.  The seats were out beyond first base, at ground level, in the very first row.  Our benefactor, sitting beside me, was a Red Sox fan from the Boston area, a snowbird who owns a condo in the area and who has season tickets for this stadium even though it isn't the home of his favorite team.  And remarkably the lady sitting beside Nancy was a retired nurse who had trained, as had Nancy, at Philadelphia General Hospital.

The game was between the Baltimore Orioles and the Toronto Blue Jays.  We weren't emotionally invested in either.  I just wanted to sit in the sun, drink in the ambiance, and enjoy the traditional meal of hot dog and beer - which cost $36 for the two of us, by the way.  Spring Training is a time of giving young players an opportunity to show what they can do, and of gradually working the veterans up to playing shape.  So the rosters were a mishmash of good and great and not so good.

We left happy and fulfilled after four innings of baseball, with the Blue Jays leading 3-1.  I never checked to see who won.

One day each week the managers of the RV park we're staying in here in Sarasota host a free dinner for their guests and customers.  Nancy was told that they would provide the food, and we would have to bring our own beverages to the affair.  Thinking that we'd share a nice California wine with our neighbors, we carried over a nice Napa Valley claret by Coppola, and a couple of big, fancy red wine glasses.  There were at least fifty people taking advantage of the free meal of pulled pork sandwiches, pasta with meat sauce, and salad - but we were a little out of place.  Not only did no one else bring wine, we saw only a few beer bottles on the tables in the clubhouse, and nobody wanted our wine.  Mostly these were water drinkers.  And we won't be here long enough to educate their palates.