Baseball is really back.
After a stop at the local Bank of America branch this morning, we traveled over to the Phillies spring training site, Bay Care Ballpark. We arrived after 12:00 pm, a little later than we have in past years. We usually arrived when the park opened at 11:00 am and walked around the park perimeter and watched batting/fielding warm-ups. We would then have a ballpark food lunch and relax in our seats before the game started at 1:05 pm. We didn't arrive yesterday however until after 12:00 pm and skipped the walk around and lunch.
The stadium was packed. It was filled to capacity, almost 9,000 people in seats and on blankets/standing on the outfield berms. As it was opening day for the home spring training games there was an opening ceremony beforehand. This year is the 75th anniversary of the Philles doing spring training in Clearwater. There were a few speeches from the local politicians and the owner (managing partner) of the Phillies organization, introduction of Phillies executives and a number of Phillies player alumni for past glory years.
Since the game was between the Phillies and Toronto Blue Jays, there were also lot of Blue Jay fans in attendance. Their spring training site is at Dunedin and spring training usually attracts a lot of Canadian snowbirds.
Before the game starts, players from both teams line up along the base paths and the Canadian and US National Anthems are played, usually performed by a local singer. The early spring training games are normally played by mostly young non-roster players and others trying to make the team. Since spring training has been compressed this year due to the labor dispute, many of the regular Phillies starting players were in the line-up today. Most played into the 5th inning and then a lot of minor league players came in and completed the game. It was a close game, and the Phillies won 3-2. The weather was perfect, low 80s, sunny and no wind. Our seats are in the 2nd deck in the shade. Spectators along the field and the berms in the sun got a good dose of sun however and I am sure it felt much warmer there.
After returning to the RV we had take-out pizza for dinner. It was a long day but enjoyable.
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