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Thursday, April 21, 2016

Baseball Spring Break Vacation

This year the stars aligned and the kids' spring break from school matched up with the final week of Cardinals' Spring Training in Jupiter Florida.  Joe and I had both been wanting to go to this for many years.  This vacation was like we had two vacations in one - we attended 3 baseball games in 3 days, but we also had plenty of beach and explore the town time, too.  This blog post will only focus on the baseball aspect.  We drove to Jupiter (not sure that that will ever happen again!) over two days, arriving to a very warm, although cloudy, Florida.  

Our first game was at Roger Dean Stadium to see the Cardinals vs. Mets.  This stadium was very small - it held about 7000 people, but that meant that there really was not a bad seat in the entire place.  Seeing palm trees at a baseball game is a little odd, though!


Batting practice prior to the game was our big unknown.  There are 12 fields behind the stadium - 6 for the Cardinals and 6 for the other team, and we discovered that the teams begin to practice about 2  hours prior to game time.  The public could only access 3 of the 6 Cardinals fields - the rest were private, and some were inside a separate building.  Field 6 seemed to be all prospect players, but we got lucky on Field 1 and watched all of the starting pitchers practice various moves.  We did not know about the stadium batting practice tickets that could have been purchased to watch the home team (that day was the Cardinals) practice inside the stadium - they cost $5 extra and only a limited number were sold.  Notice Joe's giant backpack - it contained about 10 different baseballs that he hoped to get signed, Sharpies, pens, etc.


This is how close you can get during batting practice.  Wacha was warming up with some hitting practice.


Wishful thinking.  We were hoping to get some pictures or autographs of players as they went from their car to the stadium, but the entire parking lot was fenced off and had security guards posted.


Ethan wanting to sign up with the Cardinals through the player only entrance.


The stadium opens to the public about 90 minutes prior to the game, and it is a dash to the front row to claim your spot for autographs.  Ethan (and his new friend that he made) actually had really good luck standing over the dugout getting a few autographs as players entered/left.


Al Hrabosky did some on field interviews and then stayed after to sign.


Some people take a picture of their feet in the sand with the ocean in the background.  Ethan and Joe prefer this picture.  We were in the second row behind the Cardinals dugout - prime location for getting a ball thrown to us by Cardinals players.


Matt Adams ripped his pants while sliding into a base.  The dugout does not lead to the team's changing rooms - they have to walk through the field to get to their clubhouse in the outfield.  So, poor Adams played an inning with his underwear (in all fairness, it was probably his sliding shorts) on full view until he could run to change his pants.  We have never seen a major league player have to play with a uniform so badly ripped.


For our second baseball game, we traveled one hour to Port St. Lucie to see the Mets vs. Marlins at Tradition Field.  And it was a good thing, too, since the Cardinals game on this day was rained out.  The rain didn't start here until literally the final out of the game (which no one actually thought was an out, but no one wanted to get stuck in the rain, including the umpire!).  This stadium was completely different looking than Roger Dean Stadium - it had more of a professional feel, like a miniature major league stadium.  Roger Dean Stadium felt much more casual.  In front of Tradition Field was a piece of the World Trade Center surrounded by flags.


A view of the field.


Ethan was lucky enough to get an autograph from manager Don Mattingly.


This was definitely the Mets stadium - there were hints of New York everywhere!  The concessions sold black and white cookies, cannoli (both were actually pretty tasty), and Nathan's hot dogs. 


Our final game was back in Roger Dean Stadium to see the Cardinals vs. Marlins.  Due to the morning rain, there was no outside batting practice that day.  So, we had a lot of time to waste prior to the game.  We walked around the entire complex, and the security guard was nice enough to let Ethan and Joe go into the Marlin's players fenced off parking lot to get a picture with this wall.


It was like we tried to get Ethan kicked out of the stadium.  First he tried to walk into the players' entrance, and then when the usher left the door to the field open he tried to walk onto the field!


Pham signing autographs prior to the game.  As Pham was signing autographs, a lady told him that he was very nice to do this and thanked him.  Pham looked right at her, said "I'm really not a very nice guy" and continued to sign autographs.  We could not figure that one out - no sarcasm or joking manner was detected, all he had to do was smile and nod and let the woman think that!  


We had front row seats to the field for our final game. We had great views into the dugout.


On the field at Roger Dean Stadium after the game.  It was a successful trip and we hope to make it back again some year!


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