Spring Training Sunday

Tony Oliva watched part of the game with us today. Molly (Paul Molitor) doesn't bother me, but I find myself in awe of Oliva and it's really hard to watch a game when he's around. I think it's because I grew up watching Oliva. He's the only coach we have that flakes me out (totally) when he's around.

One of these days I'll work up the nerve to ask him for an autograph. I've got all the rest of the Twins' HOfers. But knowing me, I'll probably do something stupid like sink down to my knees, and say something like "Mr. Oliva, would you do me the honor of signing my poor, pathetic baseball."

I have to wonder if this is one of the reasons the guys don't pay a lot of attention to baseball history, because they know they're going to have to work with some of these great players sooner or later in their career and don't want to be over-awed by them.

We (Fort Myers) won 6-4 over Lynchberg. I think the funniest part of the game was when Kory's dad asked me the score, and I said, "We're two up but I'll tell you in a minute" as I grabbed my camera and bounced up to take pictures of Chris Brown.

When I sat down again, I explained. "Brownie played for our college team ("Florida Gulf Coast University" one of the players wive's supplies) and he's a bit of a local hero." They understood this, as their son is a bit of a local hero in Beloit.

Then I look at my scorecard and I say "6-4".

"6-3" the wife argues.

"No," I say, it's 6-4."

"He's 6-3," she tells me rather nastily.

I looked at her and said, "Oh, I'm sorry. I thought we were talking about the score, which is 6-4. Not how tall his is."

The media guide lists Brownie at 6'2" and I'll stick with that. I'm hoping he makes the Miracle this season, but...unless they cut Zamijc (pronouced as Z'amich) --which I wish they would, he's mostly useless-- we'll have Woody and Zamijc at first base.

On the whole, watching games with the wives/GF's is very annoying as they are all more interesting in how even their tan is, vs. how their boys are doing in the field. Some are my friends. Cassie got to a game late and I gave her the run down so she could "pretend" she was there on time, so now she's my friend forever. Some are just very annoying. Some I love more than the players. I don't care if Matty's on the team, but I want Robbie to hang out all year long. LOL. (Okay, that's not really true. Matty's my favorite pitcher, but I don't really care if he's pitching in New Britain, I think Robbie should hang out in Fort Myers.) Other ones, well...If one of "my" guys latch onto a girl I can't stand, I'm going to have to talk to them about it. So far, it's not happened.

Meanwhile, Tommy's mom, Anna showed up and sat down next to me. "He's not here," I say. "They went to Bradenton." She disagrees. He called her up and said they were playing at home, so he hurried over from church. Evidently, she was right. They (the Triple A guys) played a scrimage against the Double-A guys on field one. I didn't even look over there as I thought they were playing at Bradenton. ::shrugs::

In any case, she points at the field and says "Who are these guys."

"Fort Myers, you know, the local team your son played for for two years and that issued a bobble-butt for?" Oh yeah. She starts to take off and I say "Oh, yeah, be anti-social. Like we only like you for your son." She comes back and sits down cowed. I love Anna more than I love Tommy, and I know she doesn't quite understand that. I met her because of Tommy, but I would love her even if Tommy wasn't part of the picture.

Given a choice between the Wives/GF I'd take the parents as a whole as being the much cooler group. Too many gold-diggers amongst the the W/GF group, but then again, I'd have missed some meeting some tremendous people if I went by that rule.