"Did you get him the bagels?" That was one of the first pieces of baseball chatter I heard at Spring Training. For those of you scoring at home, Carp and I have safely made it to Sarasota, Florida and have imbibed the Reds-Phillies game. And it was while garnering some relish from the condiment stand, that I heard a tall, muscular guy from the security detail bark about bagels. He had been standing behind me when I got my bratwurst and hot dog--but when his cell phone vibrated, he efficiently snapped it open and barked, "Did you get him the bagels? (beat) I told you to get him the bagels! You do what I tell you to do." Then growing increasingly hostile he mumbled something about the give and take of their orders, before snapping his phone shut again with, "Get it done." He looked like an even-keel, friendly guy, but this was wildly aggressive--and about what? I wondered if perhaps he was procuring a late breakfast for Glossie Atkins, Sarasota's jovial mayor (pictured in the Reds' media guide). When the security man's call was over, I turned to him and he smiled wryly at me with a welcome to Sarasota grin.
Arriving in time for the 1:05 start was a minor adventure. We drove for five and a half hours on Friday from Atlanta to Gainesville, but without a hotel reservation, found everything booked for a cheerleader convention. We soldiered on to Ocala another 30 minutes further south, and after stumbling through a few more hotel lobbies (a rodeo was rumored to be in town), we found a vacancy at the Courtyard by Marriott (our clerk grumbled slightly about a Christian basketball tournament being the source of our trouble). Great room--I got the king suite while Carp slept on the pull-out in the living room. We had an amazing meal while the final seconds ticked down in the Florida-Butler NCAA basketball game. We had prime rib at the Lonestar Steakhouse while enduring horrible service from our mutton-chopped waiter.
Saturday morning we had two hours to travel before game time, and arrived at the ballpark around 12:30--much later than we wanted to--and were surprised to see so many people for a 6,000-seat stadium. Cars and pedestrians were everywhere and it was looking like a very long, frustrating wait to get into the parking lot. That's why I drove around the line of cars waiting to get into the lot, and headed away from the stadium. I thought there must be a way to circle around behind everyone and sneak in. After rounding a corner, and heading in the general direction of the lot, I spotted a vacant field with faint tire tracks and popped off the street and on to the grass. We drove my Toyota Corolla along a 100-yard stretch of grass, with the lot directly in front of us--when we came to the end of the field, we found a stream of cars entering the parking lot from the right and from the left of us--all I had to do was bump off the curb and mingle in. Of course, all the other drivers looked at me with envy and resspect for my ingenuity as I cut to the front of the line, and made my way to the parking lot.
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