Spring Training Days 2 and 3

My favorite newcomer so far has to be Junior Spivey. He's always been a solid player, and he's the most conspicuous team member in his calf-high striped socks, always a plus. We'll see if he can live up to Edgar Renteria's old #3. Speaking of uniforms, when I arrived at the stadium in Ft. Lauderdale I was pleasantly surprised to see the Cards wearing their red caps with their grey road uniforms. For the past 15 or so years, they've been wearing navy blue caps with their road uniforms. I think the red caps with the grey jerseys is the best look in baseball--I hope they keep it during the regular season.

The Cardinals lost Monday's game to the Orioles 11-8 in a game that featured 32 hits. The pitching looked pretty suspect, but I guess they get a little bit of a break for pitching to actual major leaguers. Sandwiched between games featuring the no-name Marlins and the Dodgers' soon-to-be AA players, the Orioles ran out Corey Patterson, Melvin Mora, Kevin Millar, Jeff Conine, Jay Gibbons, and Desi Relaford.

Tuesday's game was back at home (Jupiter, FL), and I arrived at the spring training complex just in time to see Chris Carpenter finishing one of his drills and signing some autographs along the chain link fence. But he didn't just sign some autographs; he signed all of them. For 10-15 minutes, Mr. Cy Young 2005 signed balls, signed pictures, and posed for photos until everyone who wanted his time got it, which I had never seen before.

The Cardinals played the Dodgers on Tuesday. The Bums are one of the few National League teams I've never seen play, so I was very excited. The Cards and Dodgers have always been the two most storied NL teams, which is kind of cool. And they've got a bunch of names in their lineup, among them Rafael Furcal, Nomar Garciaparra, Cesar Izturis, Jeff Kent, Bill Mueller, J.D. Drew, and Kenny Lofton. But the lineup I got to see featured Repko, Aybar, Ethier, Guzman, Loney, Martin, Martinez, Abreu, and Andy LaRoche, who between them have two years of major league experience.

Webster's defines "masochism" as "trying to keep score at a spring training game". It took me until the fifth inning of my third spring training game, but I learned that keeping score during spring training is a pretty dumb undertaking. First off, they make all kinds of substitutions without notifying you, and, as was the case today, the players don't have names on their jerseys. Also, there isn't a good scoreboard that shows the lineup, which is important because multiple switches are often made, so you need to know who bats where. Not that it matters. Spring training is where the guy sitting next to you has been a fan for fifty years and the usher has seen more baseball in the month of March than you've seen in your whole life, so you're better off talking baseball than trying to record it.