Hello and I'm back with the second to last report from sunny Florida. Sad to be leaving but Minor Leaguer and I had a lot of fun. On Tuesday we had an off day so ML and I decided to try out the game of golf. You hear baseball players talking about how much they love this game so why not give it a try? It was a bon ton to be sure but lets just say neither I nor ML will be writing about the Masters anytime soon.
Yesterday we made the drive to Sarasota and saw an exciting comeback against the lowly Orioles. Ed Smith Stadium (no one seems to know who the hell Ed Smith is) is a brand new facility and it makes Florida Auto Exchange Stadium look like what it sounds like; an old car garage. One aside, the water out of the drinking fountain in Dunedin is almost hot. This to me seems borderline dangerous in these temperatures. Not sure it's worth risking the health of Jays fans so they can sell more bottled water -just saying, but I got beef with that. Where was I? Oh right, the Jays vs Orioles game. As Tom has already broken the game down in fine fashion as he is wont to do, I won't go into details. Just some colour from our day.
Yan Gomes is awesome. We sat directly next to 3rd base and after being wowed by his hitting on Monday we were impressed by his range, arm and poise at 3rd. The fact that he can play both 3rd and and catcher is interesting to say the least and I'd like to see more of him. It's too bad he'll probably be the last cut of the Spring.
Lawyers for the most part, are scum. Sorry but we sat in front of a partnership of local lawyers and we had to endure their Southern drawl flavoured jokes and comments for the better part of 7 innings. I don't know who "Pancake A*s" is but I'd like to take this moment to apologize to her on behalf of all decent humans everywhere.
Minor Leaguer asked Chris Woodward if he would deliver a copy of his Great Flying Mike McCoy poster to Mini Mike. He was a little confused at first as he assumed he wanted it autographed but after an explanation he looked at it and said he'd seen it before and then he delivered it to Mike in the dugout. I thought it was a pretty stand up move on Woodies part and we were both impressed that he's seen it online.
This game was my best scorecard yet. Not one mistake(well almost) even with all the substitutions. I really love my scorebook and I highly recommend you get yourself one or two of these bad-boys. If you want one check out this lovely site http://eephusleague.com/shop/
Jonathan Diaz (2nd from Left, below) is really small, scrappy and impossible not to cheer for. He made Chris Woodward look like a giant when he came in to play 1B next to Diaz who was already in as the 2nd baseman.
The Orioles are bad at defense. That is to say they don't play the game "the right way". They miss cut-off men routinely and seem generally confused whenever runners are on base.
The Toronto fans were well represented at this game and in the 8th a chant of "GO JAYS GO" broke out and there was nothing the poor Oriole fans could do to shut it down. Poor O's fans, they know how bad their team is. The future looks bleak as well as we didn't see or hear of any exciting prospects for the O's in this game. At least their stadium is nice, the drinking fountain has cold water in it and the amount and quality of their merch is light years better then that of the Blue Jays.
Our cover as anonymous BBB bloggers was somehow foiled by Adam from Peterborough who reads the site but doesn't post. We encouraged him to come out of the shadows and comment. In the middle of the climate controlled gift shop we proceeded to have a lovely chat about the state of the Jays Franchise and agreed that if the Jays are in 1st place by the All-Star game our collective heads will explode.
No Jose Bautista for us on Wednesday but hopefully we'll see him in Dunedin. More on that later...
I'd like to write a Haiku to celebrate this epic adventure but then I remembered that I'd rather jump off the 11th floor of this condo into a 4 foot pool of salt water filled with Piranha, after shaving my entire body, head to toe with a rusty Jason Frazorblade.