Thursday, March 3, 2016

Florida Spring Training Trip 2016 - Day 26

We slept in a little, had breakfast and went to the ball game today.

The Phillies played the Houston Astros.  It was a split squad game.  The Phillies sent half  of their spring training squad to St. Petersburg to play the Yankees. The other half stayed home to play the Astros.  Generally, the veteran players stay home on split squad game days. Seniority usually trumps a bus ride.  That was pretty much the case as most of the Phillies veteran players were in the line-up today.  It was a very frustrating game as they lost 3-2.  The Phillies got a lot of runners on base but couldn't score many runs.  The veterans didn't exactly stand out and a free agent third baseman made two errors (allowing two runs to score), struck out three times and hit into a double play.  He may be one of the first cuts as the roster gets trimmed.  Over in St. Petersburg, the rookies did much better, beating the NY Yankees 14-4.

The crowd was very small today.  There were only about 4,000 people there (the stadium seats 10,000).  One of the ushers said he thought part of the reason is the Canadian dollar conversion (now about $0.70 or so to the dollar) has resulted in fewer Canadians coming south this winter.   Other reasons may also include an early Easter this year and the general state of the Phillies being in a rebuilding mode, without any superstars of note at the moment.  Everyone likes a winner.

After the game, Judy picked-up refilled prescriptions at the local CVS and we got a carry-out pizza for dinner.

There is another game tomorrow against the Atlanta Braves.

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