Saturday, March 01, 2008

Postcard From Florida: Behind Enemy Lines

Hope you're enjoying the snow back home in New York City.

Here, it reached a high of 78 in Sunny Florida ... a stark contrast from the 19 degrees we dealt with on Thursday night back at White Plains airport. That walk from the gate to the plane outdoors almost froze us before we got on the plane. I'll take 78, thanks.

I was excited when there was a good handful of Mets fans at the airport, thinking they were all coming to Orlando with me. I had thoughts of leading a chorus of "Meet the Mets" on the plane. But all the Met fans got on the plane to West Palm while we took the last flight out to Orlando for leg one of "Metstrapalooza: The Spring Training Tour".

Game one was spent behind enemy lines: Disney's Wide World of Sports Complex (at the newly christened Champions Field) for the Dodgers and the Braves. You probably missed the Braves taking advantage of the Dodgers' porous middle relief for a 10-3 victory. You also missed Dodger third baseman Andy LaRoche being the nicest guy in the world. He gave autographs to anyone and everyone. If LaRoche wasn't a third baseman I would demand that we trade for this guy right now! There were two Dodgers that were nice enough to sign baseballs for the crowd. Would you believe the other one was Rafael Furcal?

You also missed me chanting "Laaaaaaaa-rryyyyyyyyyy" at every opportunity (including the two ground balls he bobbled). I was texting people back home telling them to put on the ESPN game to try to hear me yell at him. Did any of you hear me by chance? (I think Larry himself might have heard me, right before his base hit in the fifth which signaled to me that I should probably knock it off before he gets madder).

And you just missed a conversation in the hotel room regarding Hank Steinbrenner's bitching and moaning about this being a Yankee World, to which I replied: "If this is a Yankee World, where's my spaceship to Mars?" (And now at this point, the Yankee fan in the room is talking about guest blogging for me. I'm not stupid enough to do that a second time.)

Well, it's a long drive to Lakeland tomorrow for leg two: Indians/Tigers at Lakeland, so I should probably get some sleep. It's all leading up to a reunion between me and the Mets at Vero Beach on Sunday. Hopefully, whichever star pitcher is on the hill will refrain from giving up a three run dinger to an 84-year-old man. I hate Juan Gonzalez.

In the meantime, enjoy more photos from Day One, and stop shoveling so much snow:









5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Where's my "weather is here, wish you were beautiful" comment?

Keep having fun; we'll keep the home fires burning!

And would I out you if I told the world you were traveling with Yankees fans?

Metstradamus said...

No, because I already mentioned that. But here's the thing: There's two Yankee fans and two Met fans in our group, and out of the three games we're seeing, we're seeing a Met game but not a Yankee game. Thank goodness for small miracles.

Chris Goudoras said...

For a preview of the 2008 NL East go to http://ultimatebaseball-cgouds.blogspot.com

Anonymous said...

is that john kruk talking to matt kemp??

dawn said...

I heard you, or someone, yelling at Larry, right before his hit. I knew it would work! Go Braves!