Oriole Magic

We took Isabelle to her first Spring Training Orioles game today. Even Uncle Don has never been to a Spring Training game before. Ed & I saw the O's play at the Yankees facility many years ago but this was our first trip to the Orioles facility which is actually a new stadium in Sarasota called the Ed Smith Stadium.

It's a really small venue (most of the Spring Training facilities are) so there isn't a bad seat in the house. Unless you get the sunny side of the stadium on a cloudless day. Then you might be a bit uncomfortable. The concessions leave a little to be desired but everything else was just fantastic. The crew were awesome, bathrooms clean, whole stadium was clean, plenty of cool table seating and patio areas to hang out if you can't sit in your seat baking in the sun for hours.

If you ever end up going, be sure to bring a glove and you really must pay attention to the game. Every seat is prone to having a foul ball tipped it's direction so you have to be careful.

A women near us got hit by a foul ball in the 3rd inning today. The guy behind us looked up to see how bad it was. He sighed, turned back in his seat and said, "Eh, she's a Yankees fan. Totally deserved that.". Now I would NEVER say such a thing, Isabelle. But I did have to chuckle. She wasn't hurt THAT bad. And I think she really was over dramatizing the situation.

Anyway, we had a great day at the park. We're hoping to take Grandpa there next month when he comes to visit if Mother Nature plays nice.