More from Spring Training

The trip has been kind of a whirlwind, to be honest. We arrived Thursday night and then headed to games on Friday, with a three hour trip to a shopping mall in between. The first game was at the Phillies park and the second was that the Yankees. Both places are nice enough in their own way, but have a real major-league feel about them. The facilities are good and the atmosphere is light, but they have an almost corporate feel about them, the Yankees in particular (not much of a surprise there). They play in pleasant but sterile park across the street from where the Tampa Bay Buccaneers play, which give you an idea of how not small-timey it is. The kind of spring training I experienced years back is gone.

 We didn't have to do any meals out, because we were eating at ballparks all day. By the time we're done, I will have consumed almost anything you can put between two slices of bread or on a roll. There's a lot of variety of things you can put on bread, but eventually becomes tiresome.

Saturday's game was at the Pittsburgh Pirates spring home, McKechnie Field in Bradenton, Florida. I have very vague memories of this place from my mostly inebriated trip in 1976. Back then, I was supposed to come to spring training with a friend who came down with the flu the day before and had to cancel, so I was down here by myself. I stayed at a friend of my friend's, which was completely awkward and sort of unpleasant. That wasn't his fault, it was mine.

Anyway, the McKechnie is the oldest facility left in Florida, built in the 30s I believe. It's been renovated now, so there are at least seats in it as opposed to benches. The one thing I remember is still in place- the third-baseline stands are right on a busy street, so any foul ball that carries out of the park in that direction has a more than decent chance of hitting a passing car. This idea is reinforced the stadium's PA system, which plays a screech and crunch noise every time a ball goes out. And the whole game played out like a minor league game, with raffle winners in between every inning and lots of announcements to keep the crowd busy.

The parking was catch as catch can. We parked in a small dirt lot with a dozen other cars, shepherded in by 4 kids of a combined age of maybe 30. I swear there was a 4 year-old directing traffic. It cost 5 bucks and was fine.

Honestly, I found this the most appealing of the bunch. I go to major league games in real major-league ballparks all the time. The only downside was, Bradenton is about an hour away, and with traffic it took about an hour and a half. By the time we came back, even though we decided to go to the workout room together, it was coming noticeable that we are getting a little bit sick of each other.

We've been with each other all day long and all night the whole time, and we get along pretty well for the most part, but really. When I contemplate whether I would do something like this again, what I'm going to suggest to my daughter is that, yes we do it again, and yes we make sure we have some separate time instead of being together constantly.

So today we go to an hour or so of one last game and then it's home again. Not too bad on the whole, if I must say so myself.