It was nice to go to Dunedin today for the Blue Jays-Pirates game. It was a throwback experience, from the stadium itself to the music. And it was a well-played game, finished in less 2 ½ hours! And we talked to Tim Mayza (see previous post here) again.
Tim was kind enough to visit with us before the game on Friday at Clearwater. We had a nice conversation down the rightfield line 45 minutes before the game. He was only there as the emergency pitcher that day. On Saturday, he threw 1.1 shutout innings with two strikeouts against the Orioles.
This morning, Terry and I decided to forsake a day at the beach to make the short trip to Dunedin. (She has come a long way.) I texted Tim to see if he could leave a couple of tickets, but he didn’t get the message in time. He texted an apology.
On the way in, I bought a Blue Jays shirt and hat.
“Do you want to sit in the shade?” the ticket guy asked at the booth.
“Please!”
He accommodated us with seats in section 200, row 12, under the overhang. Twenty dollars apiece, considerably more reasonable than the ticket prices for NFL preseason games–the biggest ripoff in sports.
I texted Tim back, “No prob. We got tix down rt field line.”
We waited along the fence with the autograph seekers, and Tim sought us out about 30 minutes before the game. We had another nice conversation. Among other things, we learned that his sister, who played basketball overseas this winter, was traded from Denmark to Lithuania. That is one heck of an experience.
Tim is scheduled to pitch against the Phils on Tuesday, our last game.
The contrast between regular season and pre-season games is interesting. Pre-season is about the game. Regular season is about making money.
Dunedin Stadium sits unobtrusively in the middle of a residential area. Nearby property owners offer parking for $5 or $10. The layout reminded me of a couple of high school fields I coached at. Bigger, of course, but the seating area only wrapped around the infield. The scoreboard merely kept score with lighted numbers, and space for one electronic name at a time. Lacking was the constant sensory barrage of canned videos and endless ads and phony exhortations to make noise.
The between innings music sounded like a playlist I would put together. It was as if the music was being played for the spectators and not the players. So un-hip.
I get it that going to a game merely to see the game is soooo passe. Teams must provide an “entertainment experience” for a couple of generations of fans who fidget through a five-second Snapchat. And the older generations don’t spend money like they used to, so our demographics are not targeted. Boomers are welcome to come to the games, but marketing departments ain’t talking to us.
The Toronto fans we’ve run into at the hotel, and whom we have been near at the games, exude a friendly, understated, enthusiastic optimism for the Jays.
On the other hand, the Phillies’ fans are already booing Maikel Franco!
And some guy bought a makeshift Super Bowl trophy to Spectrum Field on Saturday so he could do Eagles’ chants, I guess. Every fan who had ingested five beers or more thought that was really cool.
Oh, well. For at least one day in Dunedin, it was nice to experience baseball more as a relaxed spectator sport than a hyperactive spectacle.
Even if the games don’t count.
The Q-View 