Friday, March 23, 2012

Spring Training 2012 - Day 1

For those of you that have been following me in this forum for a while, I have had daily diaries from my travels at Spring Training. Wednesday was Day 1 of my 2012 Spring Training trip.

I do post small updates during the day on my Facebook page, so please follow me over there. I'm also posting photo albums over there too.

Day 1 - March 22, 2012 - Mets-Astros @ Port St. Lucie

Early morning workouts on the back fields. Biggest thing I noticed was the orange plastic protective coverings over the tops of every fence in the back fields. Those coverings used to be yellow, but they are now orange matching the team's new blue and orange color scheme. Even some of the signage on-field (such as distance markers) look like they fit into that new scheme. I like it.

Inside, I seem to have beginner's luck getting lots of autographs on my first day and then nothing else after it. Today was the first day, and inside the stadium, I got Terry Collins, Danny Herrera, Bobby Parnell, Justin Turner, and MLB Network's Al Leiter. MLB Network was in town filming for 30 Clubs in 30 Days, and T.C. and Leiter were doing live remotes from next to the Mets dugout for the show.

Then I went over to get my first in person look at the new RF party deck and berm. For those who haven't been down to Digital Domain Park before, the berm opened with a 2004 renovation, but was only accessible from an entrance separate from the rest of the ballpark (along with the RF bleachers along the RF line). After the offseason renovations, a new RF party deck was constructed (replacing the bleachers) and part of the berm was re-done, along with connecting the berm/party deck with the rest of the stadium, making all of it accessible from the rest of the stadium for the first time. Since I never had sat in the berm before (I never wanted to give up full stadium admission to access the berm), I had never been out there until today. I'll post more pictures from out there later in my trip.

I actually spent the entire game down by the Mets dugout. Two big highlights. R.A. Dickey took a no-hitter into the 6th, and Sandy Koufax was sitting behind Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz for part of the game behind home plate. Mets won big.


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