Spring Training: When Small Town America Gets Big

It’s not early but the man with the ponytail and cheap blue suit is clutching a can of Red Bull. He is speaking on his cell phone to a work colleague about where to assemble for the day’s meetings.

His call ends and he looks up noticing something not quite right about the rest of the Dunkin’ Donuts customers. “What’s going on?” he asks to no one in particular. He is trying to process why in a packed donut and coffee chain in Fort Myers Florida, everyone is wearing either a Boston Red Sox jersey, hat, sun visor, sweatband, or all of the above. “Why is everyone in here a Red Sox fan?” he demands. People ignore him. I can tell they’re thinking: “What, you don’t know?” I pipe up: “It’s Spring Training. The Sox play around the corner. We’re all going to the game.” He sighs and smiles. He remembers his cell phone and re-dials his co-worker. “Hey Matt, did you know the Red Sox are playing a Spring Training game here today? I’m cool with that, we can do it tomorrow, right?” He puts his hand over the mouthpiece and asks me: “Hey, do you know if there are any tickets left?”

Spring Training is baseball’s pre-season, which starts in February. All 30 teams’ training complexes are located in small towns in either Arizona (the Cactus League) or Florida (the Grapefruit League) at miniature stadiums where fans can get close to the players. In March the teams start to play each other in exhibition games as managers trim their rosters to 40 men in time for the regular season in April.

Fort Myers is on the gulf coast, roughly a two-hour drive north west of Miami, through a swamp called Alligator Alley. With a population of about 68,000 it’s a middle class town of mostly shopping plazas on either side of Cleveland Avenue, the highway that acts as the Fort Myers High Street. It’s not a walkable town and my fiancée Jake and I were glad we had a rental car with a GPS system.

The ballpark sat in a neighbourhood of small houses, the American version of the two up, two down. The one storey church a block from the stadium turned their adjacent empty plot into a car park. Older, smiling gentlemen waved giant flags to signal to motorists that their parking spaces were going for a reasonable five dollars a spot. If they were annoyed by the influx of strangers, you’d never know it.

It was barely one pm but we were on holiday so after a quick lap of the souvenir shop (if a Red Sox logo fits on it, it’s for sale) we headed for one of the beer carts.

A middle aged woman and an elderly man ordered two beers from the pensioner working the tap. As the beer settled, he asked them for identification. “I’m 82 and this is my daughter who’s nearly 50, you can’t be serious,” the customer bellowed. But the beer steward stood his ground and said the rule was: no ID, no beer. It was ridiculous but sweet in a small town kind of way. You got the feeling that he always followed the rules and never told a lie in his life. When they were forced to retreat to get their IDs, the beers abandoned on the counter became ours.

We took our seats, beers in on hand, ballpark hot dogs in the other. A row of palm trees swayed behind the right field wall. The sun was hot but not uncomfortable. People chatted. Kids practiced their speeches in the event they met the stars of the team: the veteran first baseman Kevin Youkilis, designated hitter and jokster David “Big Papi” Ortiz or second baseman Dustin Pedroia, the smallest man on the diamond but the one with the most energy and hustle. I smiled at Jake and we toasted our beers. As the players took the field we played our favourite holiday game: “If I was at work right now I would be ______” 

The rules of baseball are pretty much the same as rounders. The batter must put the ball in play and of course reach all three bases before finally touching home plate again to score one run. There are nine innings and the home team always has the advantage of batting last. Some claim it’s a slow game, I would say relaxed. In between innings when the infield dirt needs raking or a new pitcher needs to warm up, there can be long pauses. The announcer takes that opportunity to tell you about Johnny’s Seafood Shack or the bar where your ticket stub from the game is good for free buffalo wings.

During the fifth inning break the announcer says: “The weather today in Fort Myers: sunny and 82 degrees,” and everyone in the stadium lets out a cheer and lifts their beers in the air. Then he says: “And the weather in Boston…20 degrees with snow flurries!” A roar erupts and the Bostonians in the crowd produce their cell phones to call friends and family back home to gloat.

People yelled encouragement to the players, shouted at the umpires, sang “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the seventh inning stretch. The first time Jake opened his mouth to admonish a batter who swung at a pitch he shouldn’t have, our section craned their necks to see where the English accent came from. One woman turned around and said: “When you yell it sounds so much better than when we do. You sound so polite!” Everyone agreed and asked why an Englishman was at Spring Training; people around us eagerly took turns recounting their trips to England.

A retiree with thick glasses and a blue cap turned to me and said: “Don’t you just love the bacon they’ve got over there?” He was so friendly, like everyone else we’d met, and we chatted about England for a while. Then he noticed it was three pm. The game was only half over but he had to start thinking about dinner; the early bird specials would be starting soon. He bade me farewell and ambled down the bleacher steps. I imagined he told his friends at dinner: “Guess what? I met a man came all the way from London to see the Sox play, isn’t that somethin?”

For more information on Spring Training visit the official Major League Baseball website.

To learn more about baseball read the official rules at mlb.com.