I meant to write up these notes last night and forgot. No deep insights here, just my jottings from a day under the sun at Hammond Field.

I arrived at 9:10, too late to get free parking on a game day. Cheapskate fans of minor league spring ball, take note!

I was approached by a reporter from a Naples newspaper, who was looking to interview average fans. I had initially mentioned my tenuous "affiliation" with TD (thinking he might be Nick Nelson), and apparently that made me way too official sounding for him, so he moved on. LOL.

The players were only just starting their warmups, and I saw maybe one other "civilian" like myself checking things out, to begin with. More started showing up soon, of course.

This just in: Aaron Slegers is tall. He looks like a weed that the lawn mower missed, when standing amongst his fellow pitchers listening to a coach.

Met up with fellow TDer Stringer Bell, and his brother. Great guys. We hung out together, off and on, most of the rest of the day.

I watched the first hour of the two minor league games versus the Rays, back and forth between the adjacent fields. In the nominal AAA game, "A Rodriguez" (I didn't know A-Rod had joined the Twins organization!) scored a hit to right, and the players who had the game off behind the screen near me were hooting that this was his first time to hit to the opposite field, ever.

One of these players was eating some berries, and another piped up with a crack about Hingle McCringleberry. A Key and Peele fan, apparently. No "Berrios" joke, considering he was sitting right there with us, so I guess it's too far from his actual pronunciation which I haven't completely mastered yet. "Bay-REE-ose"? Either that or for some reason they don't want to kid him that way, or Jose had duties charting pitches and maybe shouldn't have been disturbed.

I already mentioned in a forum thread last night that AA pitching coach R. C. Lichtenstein asked the Rays kid who was holding the radar gun behind the plate, "was that a changeup?", while prospect Dylan Floro was on the mound. "No, fastball," was the reply. Hope Floro didn't overhear. Ouch. Very ouch.

In the other game, Sano hit a very long homer on the first pitch he saw. It drew appropriate oohs and aahs from the spectating players. His ability is certainly respected. The players know who's who - see my above comment about A-Rod, and when Max Murphy hit a homer the previous day I watched, one of the guys confirmed his identity for me and added "he can hit".

Stuart Turner threw out a would-be base stealer by about two miles. I know there's a lot more to catching than that, things I can't begin to judge on my own, but it confirms for me the good things I've read about his D.

I finally walked over to the big leaguers' game and made use of my cheap seat ticket. Watched the middle part of the game with Stringer and his brother, and got to witness an error by Dozier and later a bobble by Nunez that he still converted to an out. Guess which infielder I gave a pass on that to, and which one I griped about. It wasn't a very compelling game in the late stages, so after my companions left I watched an inning more, then left with the score 3-2 going into the bottom of the ninth. Apparently I didn't miss much.

That's it for now. Off to the park now for another go-round.