Another training day

Much less driving today. The game was local, so we got to the park early enough to go to the team store. There's always some vague sort of line outside the store, and someone who periodically waves people inside. The store is tiny and once you get in it's packed and nearly impossible to move around, so I'm not sure what standard he uses to wave people in. As usual, I bought a Spring Training shirt and my daughter got some tank tops, a hat and a Phillies flask for a friend. I used to have a flask when I was a kid. I would fill it with apple cider and very conspicuously drink and swallow with obvious discomfort while riding the subway. And no, that wasn't the most disruptive thing I ever did on the subway. I spent a lot of time on the subway ages 12-15.

Very few spring games are actually decent games, but this one was. The Phillies took a 4-0, then 4-1 lead on the Braves, who stormed back to take the lead 6-4. The Phils tied it up in the 8th and won in the 9th on a mammoth home run by Darren Ruf, who was promptly sent to the minor leagues (we also got to see him butcher 2 fielding plays in left field, which is why he was being sent down). We had parked in my favorite lot, the one shared with the frisbee golf course. So when we returned, we had to dodge around men of all ages, rolling coolers full of beer and flinging disks wildly through the woods.

From there, we went to International Plaza, a nice mall that would be in the shadow of the Tampa airport if airports had shadows. There I got to observe my daughter go through the ritual that girls call shopping. I have shopped. I go into store and buy things all the time. This, my friends, is not shopping. This is a voyage of self-evaluation and strategic planning. At least on this trip, every item had a purpose or multiple purposes and was bought in the context of prior and prospective purchases. It was actually very impressive. I was, of course, so help except to say if I thought something looked good, which I'm not bad at for a guy who doesn't think about that stuff much. I was there to pay, which was fine. That was my role and I was comfortable in it.

By the time we finished, it was pouring outside. Fortunately, we had, almost randomly, parked in the covered parking rather than the open lot. We headed back to the beach and had dinner at Frenchy's Rockaway, a favorite spot of mine, where we dined on grouper and watched NCAA basketball. While we waited for a table, the rain turned to a torrential thunderstorm that caused the lights to flicker, diners to cheer, and me to get soaked when I went out to feed the parking meter. It had subsided somewhat by the time we returned to the car and to the hotel.

Once back, I watched the strangest soccer game I've ever seen, the US national team versus Costa Rica in a World Cup qualifier in Denver. The game was strange because it was played in a blizzard. Guys were shoveling the lines constantly so the ref could call things. The players were strangely unfazed by this. I can't imagine this was familiar territory for the Costa Ricans. The first half resembled soccer, but as the snow picked up in intensity it covered the field 2 or 3 inches deep which transformed the game into something unfamiliar. It was a treat. Hard to imagine the result standing, but the players all agreed to keep going when the ref tried to stop it. All in all, an entertaining end to an entertaining day.