Spring Training Trip–Day 1

About a year and a half ago, my wife suggested it would be a fantastic vacation if we could travel to Florida for spring training for our beloved Washington Nationals.

This year, Easter is early enough that my spring break from schoolteaching coincides with spring training. So here we are in Melbourne Beach, Florida, about a half hour away from the Nats’ spring training camp in Viera.

We had planned to fly out of Baltimore early on Saturday, March 15, and catch a home game against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Space Coast Stadium in Viera. But when we checked in and made it to the gate, we discovered that the plane designated for our flight was stuck on the ground in Columbus, Ohio, fogged in with zero visibility. There was no hope, we were told, that we would leave earlier than three hours late.

That, of course, would mean that we would miss the entire game against the Dodgers. But a gate change, and an apparent addition of a plane located in Baltimore, allowed us to leave earlier than we thought we would. So we flew to Orlando and got there without much trouble.

But then we wasted another half hour waiting for an apparently non-existent shuttle bus to the car rental agency. When we finally got our car (a Prius, much to our pleasant surprise), we drove straight to Viera, to Space Coast Stadium, and made it for the last two innings of the game. The Nats lost to the Dodgers 6-1, and we saw hardly any Nationals players we recognized, but we were there.

A stadium full of Nats and Dodgers fans had already enjoyed seven innings of the game when we got there. Our seats were very good, pretty much right behind home plate.

I have to admit, I don’t really know who is batting here. I got into the game so late I had no idea who was on the field. I didn’t get the lineup, and I’m sure it had changed two or three times before I got there. But this is a decent shot of an at-bat. the only player I’m sure of is former Nationals backup catcher Gary Bennett, who’s behind the plate for the Dodgers. This shot would be in the bottom of the 8th inning.

Because we saw veteran ex-manager Tommy Lasorda on the field for the Dodgers, and because we couldn’t see any of the regular Nats in the dugout, we assumed this was a split-squad game, with Dodgers manager Joe Torre and Nationals manager Manny Acta on the road with the other half of each team. But no, this was the only game the Dodgers and the Nats played yesterday. Still, it was a treat to see Lasorda relatively up-close.

Here are two people who are really relieved to finally be in Viera. One of the ticket-taker ladies at the gate in the stadium told us her daughter was stuck in Atlanta until Sunday night due to the extreme weather. The pilot of our flight must have flown far around northern Georgia’s terrible weather, because we didn’t suffer from much turbulence at all.

Since the Nats are playing Baltimore on Sunday at Fort Lauderdale–the farthest removed spring training camp from Viera–we chose instead to visit the Kennedy Space Center, about 40 minutes up the coast from our hotel in Melbourne. We’ll get back to all-baseball-all-the-time on Monday.