[URBAN NOTE] "Dispatches from Dunedin: Reuniting With The Jays"

[rfmcdonald]

At Torontoist, Stacey May Fowles writes about her experience trekking down to Florida to join the Toronto Blue Jays as they engage in spring training.

There’s something about your first annual spring training game that feels a bit like a long-awaited romantic date. There’s a hell of a lot of build up and anticipation, a lot of wondering what the day will look and feel like, a lot of nervous yet optimistic energy buzzing around as you take to the Florida interstate to finally be reunited. In fact, I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t carefully pick out an outfit the night before.

For diehards, it’s more than a little emotional to finally come back to the ballpark—any ballpark—after a long, dark, wintery four-month hiatus. If it happens in Florida, there’s a good chance that the weather will be beautiful and the mood congenial, making it hard not to get a little teary behind your sunglasses. All of that emotion is only heightened when the last time you saw your beloved he was gunning hard for a World Series championship. Spring Training may be, as they say, meaningless, but after what we all endured last October, it’s hard not to carry our lofty expectations with us as we push through that turnstile for the first time.

This year’s reunion between me and the Toronto Blue Jays didn’t happen at the team’s springtime home in Dunedin, but instead at Tampa’s George M. Steinbrenner Field, one of the Grapefruit League’s more majestic ballpark offerings. Steinbrenner is like a tiny Yankee Stadium substitute, still steeped deep in heritage and holiness, though its capacity is about one fifth its parent’s size. (It is, however, the largest Spring Training ballpark in Florida.) From the $10 open field parking lot, staffed primarily by polite retirees, the park is a quick walk across the bridge over Route 92. The stadium itself is tastefully decorated with a collection of pennant flags, each marking a year the storied Yankees have won a World Series—27 if you’re masochistic and counting.

In my day-to-day life, I’m egregiously early to pretty much everything (it’s annoying for everyone involved), and baseball games are no exception. Game time in Tampa is 1:07 p.m., and I’m already through the gate by 11, ready to take in every last drop before the first pitch is thrown. As I walk the concourse at Steinbrenner, down the aisles toward the field, dozens of yellow-shirted staffers, most of which are seniors, say hello and tell me that they hope I enjoy the game. It’s such a pleasant environment it almost feels suspect, as if it’s impossible for all of these people to be this nice in quick succession. I watch as a guy in a Jays jersey has a warm, friendly chat with a guy in a Yankees jersey, reminding me that in Spring Training there are no real pressing rivalries. The clock is set back to zero, and the slate is wiped clean.

The anthropology of being a sports fan is starting to interest me.