International Intermission at Spring Training

Since I was a kid living in Alton, IL I have been a St. Louis Cardinals fan.  It was during this period of my life that my love of baseball really took off. I started playing baseball there as an eleven year old and found that the sport was an incredible challenge that I enjoyed.  I was never what you would call a naturally gifted athlete. I found that baseball was a sport that required as much physical ability as it does intelligence.  Reflecting back, it was something I could practice everyday very easily and without assistance from anyone and improve my skills and compete. I remember waking up everyday thinking about going outside and playing baseball. I would seek out my neighborhood friends to play a whiffle ball game in the parking lot behind my house. A homerun was if you hit the ball over the street into the neighbor's yards. If kids weren't around, I would beg my bother Joel to just be my catcher. We wore a spot next to the house that represented home plate.  If no one could be found to join in my fun I could be seen throwing the ball straight into the air as high as I could and envisioning myself as Willie Mcgee or Vince Coleman making a big catch in the outfield. Erica tells her first memory of seeing me was as she drove past my house, I was outside with my glove playing catch with myself. 

I started collecting baseball cards during this time, when card collecting was hot.  The most facinating part of card collecting wasn't just to score a hot card by Beckett's (a popular price guide that would come out monthly) standard, It was to study the back of the cards to learn every possible statistic that each of my favorite players put up year after year. My card collecting helped me better understand the statistical side of this very technical sport. To this day I can tell you this is why I played the game and came to love it so much.  I think the technical aspects of the game continue to be the appeal for adult fans of the game, most who dreamed of making the big leagues as a kid.

I have always wanted to attend spring training since I can remember.  It held dreams of being close to the field of the big leagues and being able to interact with the players like never before.  I remember going to Busch Stadium as a tween and catching my first foul ball along the third baseline railing and then getting the ball autographed by Montreal Expos player, Marquis Grissom. A ball that I still have to this day.  I thought the spring training environment would be filled with these types of interactions constantly.  Turns out that I was very wrong. The player interactions are as few and far between as a regular season game offers in a major League ball park.  

I want Boyd and Blythe to feel the excitement of baseball like I did as a kid. Blythe enjoyed reading her book and hanging out with Erica in the stands while Boyd dragged me around the stadium hunting for any player that would come over and sign the ball he got at our Friday night game between the Washington Nationals and the Miami Marlins. I taught him to be aggressive, which at first intimidated him to ask. By the end of our second game on Sunday afternoon between the St.Louis Cardinals and the Miami Marlins, he was off on his own to get an autograph from one of the Cardinals rising star pitchers, Jesus Cruz.  After two full games, he grabbed four autographs on his ball.  He was proud of himself and I was excited to see him seem to enjoy it as much as I did.  During the middle of the Cardinal game, Erica was shopping in the Cardinal team store when a foul ball landed right next to her. A gift from the baseball god. She grabbed the game ball and Blythe enjoyed using the sharpie to create her own ball designs. Both kids leaving with game balls was awesome.

Roger Dean Chevrolet Stadium was packed full for the Cardinal game, ninety percent wore red and white and so many native mid-westerners gave us the feeling of being back home there.  A family, David and Michelle and their two boys, who sat next to us were from the town of Fairfield, IA where I remembered going to as a kid for groceries. We lived down the road in Ollie and it has been very rare in my lifetime to run into people from that area of the heartland. It made the day really interesting to experience, connecting with folks who are so similar to us after being in a country for the past month where we were connecting with folks who were so different.  

Peace and Love and Baseball