Play Ball: Grapefruit League Style

We have spent a lot of time in Florida during the last few winters, but we have never watched any Major League Baseball spring training or attended any training games. Many MLB teams have training camps all over central Florida and play each other during exihibition/training games in the "Grapefruit League". When we were in Port St. Lucie a few weeks ago we were within walking distance of the Mets training camp and stadium, but they had not started playing games. Time was running out on our Florida trip, and we still had not been to a game. Yikes!!! Well, it turns out that our friends John and Pat had made plans to attend two games. We had become fairly close to John and Pat over the last few weeks. Before we ever met them, I had noticed their motorhome: it is the same model, year and color as ours. It's the first one I had ever seen with the identical color pattern as ours. The only difference is that theirs is a 40' model and ours is a 33' model. It looks just like ours, but on steroids. So John and I had been swapping motorhome woes and fixes, etc., and I had been playing Pickleball with both of them every day. In any case, they invited us to join them for a couple of games.

Today we attended a game between the Houston Astros and the Cleveland Indians at Osceola County Stadium about 20 miles away from our camp. It was a warm and hazy day and a great day for baseball. I don't know if they were only playing rookies, or if I'm just out of it, but I didn't recognize any of the players. I guess it was naive to expect to see Roger Clemens pitching. Maybe he's tied up this week lying to Congress. Both teams were changing pitchers every other inning, and I expect most of them are headed back to the minors, because the game was a slug fest. The Indians won 11-5, out-hitting the Astros 19 to 9. Neither team tried very hard to win; apparently that's not the objective in spring training. But that certainly didn't keep us from enjoying the game.