Thursday, February 04, 2010

Reds Fantasy Camp, Goodyear AZ

Morty stopped at the ballpark before leaving Goodyear. The ballpark is adjacent the Goodyear Airport, where you can see many airliners, apparently in parked in "mothballs." There are two team facilities there, one for the Cincinnati Reds, the other for the Cleveland Indians. This was the week of the Reds fantasy camp -- the Indians version was held last week.

We saw a series of three games. The teams were the Players made up of  Reds fans and the Pros made up of retired Reds players. The games were only three innings long, and the Pros were limited to two runs per inning. Still the Pros easily won all their games because they can still hit the ball, ending all but one of their innings by scoring two runs instead of getting three outs. There were very few fans, almost none but family members of the Players. They were throwing foul balls hit into the stands back on the field. There were a couple of exceptions, and I was one of them -- the others probably have shelves full of baseball souvenirs.



At the team store, Lynne found a spring training cap that she liked, and so did I -- so we blew $52 on two caps. But there were a couple of guys ahead of us who where buying for the whole family: six $150 jersies in one hand, and a slew of batting helmets in another -- maybe a little guilt-relief from spending the really big bucks on attending the fantasy camp for the week.

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