Firsthand Thoughts on Spring Training

Old people, housewives, or burnouts work at Tradition Field (which apparently became Digital Domain Ballpark, or something like that, a couple of days before I arrived.) The old people are confused. They're thrilled to be there. Out of the house. Contributing. Helping people eat fried dough and find their parking spaces.

The women are maybe the jolliest of all. They joke with you, try to get a bite of your food, want to take a minute to talk. Working for the Mets is a thrill, and everything is a joke. Eighty percent new people everyday, whether they be tourists or Cardinals fans taking a short trip.

I don't know what used to happen to people who were strung out. I'm not in the drug scene. I'll drink a bit but that's about it. I know some friends who are on that. Not a particularly good or bad scene in either direction. It just exists. But these guys are kind of done, in the Harry Potter-ghost sort of way. They'll give me my funnel cake or ice cream but there's really something missing behind the eyes. It keeps me from enjoying any of the things I buy from them. I want to shake a fist but I end up just sitting down and pacifying myself with sugary foods. Edit: I was clearly not in a rational state of mind when I wrote this paragraph but uh... I'm gonna keep it.

These people set the mood at Tradition Field, because they set the structure. They create the mood because they control the food and the money. The score doesn't matter, and who's playing generally doesn't matter. With that, all things are equal. This gives the employees greater control than they'd previously had to unintentionally control a game. It just happens that way. A bases loaded jam in the sixth is less important than your snack in the fifth.

It's a different universe. In Flushing, you can always count on the focus always coming back to the home team. Not true in Port St. Lucie. My attention drifts. Why sit and watch these men? They're just practicing. But we can get close to them. You can hear my voice on tv if I yell loud enough you fucks.

Here's a place where we watch baseball happens but ERA, RBI, and OBA don't matter, and even VORP, WAR, FIP, and BABIP don't really matter. But we'll sit, we'll watch. It just seems like the right thing to do. I need my fix.