2021 MLB Regular Season thread

Florida residents can get into Disney for $50 bucks a day if they buy the 4-day pass, and the 4 days don’t have to be consecutive.

 

Why are tickets so expensive? Because people will buy them at that price. Been going on for years -- limited supply, lot of demand, hence sky-high prices. Too many people want to make a vacation out of spring training, so clubs jack up the prices.

 

If a tourist is in Lakeland, they WENT to Florida to see the Tigers in spring training. I'm not knocking the place, where I've been for many spring training visits, but a tourism mecca it is not. It isn't even really convenient to Disney World.

 

Maybe, but Legoland is in Winter Haven.

 

It certainly wasn't in the Winter Haven of my day. But good for the town they landed it.

 

You remember it as Cypress Gardens.

 

Try driving there and back from the Panhandle (or more accurately Dothan, Ala.) in back-to-back weeks because Florida starts its girls and boys basketball tournaments at separate times. Talk about testing your will to live.

 

Another fun part of Spring Training 2021 is that because they're trying to be very careful with pitchers and because the low-minors guys won't start until April, a manager can simply say uncle once an inning gets past 20 pitches for the same pitcher.

To his credit, Joe Girardi didn't play that card when Ivan Nova gave up a dinger on the first pitch of the bottom of the first today and couldn't get three outs, but he did when the guy he brought in for Ivan Nova couldn't get anybody out either, so technically the Tigers were 6 (not out) in the first inning in Lakeland today.

Also listening to Dan Dickerson (a modern great) reminded me of one of the delights of baseball on the radio: temporarily forgetting what inning it is or exactly what the score is and not particularly giving a damn.

 

One time I went from Clearwater to Lakeland without knowing it was the last day of the Plant City Strawberry Festival
An hour drive there, two hours back

 

Wow! Now, there's a memory. When I first went to Sox spring training there in 1980, we got free passes to Cypress Gardens.

 

I saw part of a Pirates ST game when I interviewed in Bradenton in 2005. Had to pay for lunch at a little place near the park because the SE had no money. I did not accept the job offer. Or the one in Fayetteville, NC, either. Accepted the one in SoCal.

 

Hell, I took my kids to spring training in Winter Haven for the Indians three straight years in the late-90s. I'm sure we didn't spend $54 for tickets, dogs and drinks in any single day at the park.