Spring training, day ten

Day 10, Spring Training. Hammond Stadium, Fort Myers. Home of the Minnesota Twins.

Hammond Stadium looked new to me. But if I understand the program right, it dates back to 1991, so they’ve maintained it well. After Legends Field, home of the goddamn Yankees, it’s the second biggest park and crowd I’ve seen during my spring training tour. The announced attendance was 8122 with not many empty seats. I expected the Yankees and Red Sox to be well supported, but I didn’t know the Twins had such a large following. Either that, or spring training games are real popular down here. The Red Sox also call Fort Myers their spring training home at another facility a few miles away. Not surprisingly, the Sox regularly sell out.

The stadium is located in the Lee County Sports Complex and has a nice piece of land for other training fields and parking. The concourse area in Hammond Stadium is kind of cramped though and navigating through it is a problem. The souvenir store was the most packed of any that I’ve seen. It may be just the layout and they simply need more cash registers. The stadium has overhangs on both the first and third base side. As with most of the parks I’ve visited, there was more shade on the first base side. I bought my ticket as soon as they went on sale, but my seat was still in the last of the box seat sections down the third base line. I was twelve rows up a little past the infield. Not a bad seat, but I’ve had much better. It was partly sunny and a humid 81 degrees at game time. As has been my practice, after one inning I moved up to a shady seat behind home plate. The press box and suites are tall enough that they shade the top half of the upper section of seats behind home plate. Like Al Lang Field in St. Petersburg, the upper sections of seats are metal bleachers with backs but no armrests.

Got to see the O’s play. The Orioles train in Ft. Lauderdale and don’t come as far north as Sarasota or Bradenton, but they do travel across the state to play in Ft. Myers. There were a fair number of O’s fans around. They yelled “O” during the National Anthem, as usual. I happened to sit near a quite a few of them. I had forgotten how grating on the ear the Bawlmore accent is. Another thing that I don’t miss from living in the DC area.

O’s get a couple of gift runs in the 1^st thanks to a couple of errors, but Mike Cuddyer starts the Twins’ rally with a solo home run and the Twins eventually win 4-2. Twinks score the winning runs in the bottom of the 8^th on a two-out, two-run double off the bat of reserve infielder Garrett Jones. O’s load the bases in the 9^th, but non-roster invitee Jon Knott grounds into an inning-ending, rally-killing, game-ending double play. Knott will not make the squad.

Traffic was miserable again both getting there and coming home. Ft. Myers is 85 miles south of me, so I can’t see making this journey again.

Tomorrow, I go up to Lakeland to see the defending AL Champion Detroit Tigers.