Day 9 - March 14, 2013 - Mets-Tigers @ Port St. Lucie
Back to Mets camp. And back to the normal routine of going to the back fields at 9:30am, hoping to watch something and maybe snag an autograph before they kick us out in time to get online to enter the stadium for 11:10am (timing for a 1:10pm game). And back to the expectation that the main group of players goes into the stadium to do things out of our sight and we get to see little bits of what other groups do on the back fields.
A few surprises. Before the outfielders were working out, a couple of rehabbing pitchers were throwing. Danny Herrera and Tim Byrdak to be specific. I kind of forgot that they were both in camp. Both good about signing after they finished throwing. Not sure what else they were working on. The other players were just out there doing their drills, most of which is too far away from where the fans are corralled to. The other surprise was down on Field 7, which is part of the baseball quadrangle of 4 minor league fields (this is the one directly behind the LF scoreboard that you might see on TV with the dimensions of Citi Field and a blue screen on the wall; it is also a field with an entrance in CF that goes past the LF corner of the main stadium and to the big league clubhouse, but all far enough away from the last fence that fans are allowed to go to that the players don't have to interact with us), where Terry Collins went down there during a minor league group of players stretching and throwing to chat with his mentor and Tigers Manager Jim Leyland as well as former Pirates coach and current Mets minor league coach Rich Donnelly. They drew a crowd of fans and were probably there for a good 30 minutes to observe. Collins came over to sign before he left, but Leyland did not. This was all ending well past the time that the ushers would normally herd us away from the back fields, but we learned that they're leaving that area open longer on game days now (something new since I had been there 5 days earlier).
In the stadium, there wasn't much action. There never is. Then the game was played, and for the Mets, there still wasn't much action. Dillon Gee was wild and gave up a lot of runs. The Tigers added on a few more after Gee left, and the Mets lost 9 to 1. I didn't notice much more than that. I did notice a very large crowd and a very large contingent of Tigers fans that made the trip from Central Florida (about a 2 1/2 hour drive, mostly on country roads). I think it was called a sellout. They went home happy. We just went home.
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