Happy 2014 Baseball fans! Baseball season is finally here. Not one moment too soon for me, it was a long, lonely winter. I can't say cold, because I live in South Florida, but you get the drift.
Last week I took a mini-tour of Spring Training sites down here in Florida. I've never really had a goal to visit all of them, but after going to see a game at Osceola County Stadium and Joker Marchant Stadium I'm halfway through all of the active stadiums (stadia?) in Florida, and some inactive ones.
Osceola County Stadium is your basic two tier stadium, and has recently been upgraded. It's a good outing for the kids, as Orbit the mascot roams the crowd posing for pictures, and they have plenty of giveaways, including an Astros towel that fell at my feet as I was doping around on my phone lol. "Deep in the heart of Texas" plays every 7th inning, and the crowd gets pretty into it.
Joker Marchant, established 1966, was awesome, probably the best spring training stadium I have been to. A lot of them are kind of cookie cutter, metallic orbs, but Joker Marchant has soul. A lot of the people there have been religiously attending games for decades, and they love their Tigers. It's a lot like Comerica Park, it may not have the most recent and glitziest scoreboard, but when you get into that place you can feel the history and how much the people love their team. There were two replay reviews during this game, they went pretty fast. And hey, you can't halt the train of progress.
I have no comment on either ballpark's food because I was somewhat funds challenged at the time. :)
Well happy 2014 everyone. It's funny when I started this blog in 2009 I had seen 3 ballparks, and now I'm up to 18 major league parks and 7 spring training sites. Stay tuned, I have some cool stuff planned for this summer. Until next time, enjoy the road, but remember to make the turn for home.
