Take Me Out To The Ball Game

While visiting south Florida there's been a superfluity of sporting events in both Fort Lauderdale and nearby Miami. The NHL's Panthers played the Toronto Maple Leafs. One of the early rounds of March Madness, the NCAA basketball tournament, was hosted in Miami as was the world baseball series and so on. But we didn't go for those big ticket items. Oh no. We decided to take in that great American pastime: Spring Training.

Fort Lauderdale Stadium was built in 1962 and up until about 1996 was spring training home to the New York Yankees. Since then, when the Yankees moved on to Legends Field in Tampa, the Baltimore Orioles have played there.

My buddy and I got tickets to the Orioles vs the Tampa Rays but unfortunately the game was rained out. Sure, fly 1500 miles from snow covered Canada in search of fun in the sun and encounter 17 straight hours of rain and flood alerts. We weren't off to a good start. Undaunted we traded our tickets in for a game with the Washington Nationals, which worked out well for a couple of Canucks. The Nats, you see, used to be the Montreal Expos.

Here's the main entrance of Fort Lauderdale Stadium...

Here's a shot of the press box...

Here's the opening pitch. The Nationals beat the Orioles 3-1.

Here's a shot of the Beer Guy

Here's a shot of the photo guy...

And here's a shot of the tourist guys, my snowbird buddy on the left and some other guy.

And a good time was had by the tourist guys for a grand total of $14 each. Geez, that's about half as much as the t-shirt I bought!

So when it comes to the Grapefruit League Spring Training? Been there, done that, got the t-shirt! (C'mon, you musta seen that comin',)

The Polka Dot Door

A long time ago, when I was 22, my first child was born. That kid grew up on a little Canadian kid's show called Polka Dot Door, produced by the TV Ontario network. And Dad, more often than not, sat through those shows with his little one. Nine or so years later when a brother, and a year after that when a sister came along number one son was moving on to Knight Rider and The Dukes of Hazzard. But there was a nice overlap where his siblings picked up where he had left off with Polka Dot Door. And Dad was right there to welcome them. So you're looking at a Polka Dot Door veteran. The show began in 1971 and ran to 1993. I didn't watch the full run but I did get in my fair share. The formula was pretty simple. A young male and female host, which seemed to change every week, sang songs, told stories, made crafts and generally did their best stimulate little brains. The show opened as follows... Imagination Day! Oh boy! ...

The Dangling Conversation

There's a debate underway in my household between my wife and I. I say "underway" because it hasn't quite reached the "raging" stage. If you want raging, my wife (a Francophone) and I (an Anglophone) from time to time (usually in a weak moment of my own making) slip into our number one discussion around why we don't speak more French at home - ergo - when am I, a former public servant who learned French at the expense of our gracious taxpayers and was technically rated bilingual (even though I hardly used it), going to improve my use of Canada's other language? This one never gets resolved, hence it's ongoing nature. But the current debate is over a remark I casually made the other day. I'm no geek, but with a lot of time on my hands I surf the web, converse on Facebook and such and - I have to admit - "I'm nonamedufus and I'm a Twitterholic". In an epiphany-like moment I was struck by the apparent impact of social networkin...

30 Days of Photos III #4 Sour

Check out Ziva's Inferno for the rest of today's photos.

nonamedufus

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