Close encounters on the third base line

Sports: Jays’ Spring Training in Dunedin

Whether you’re sponging up the baseball, sponging off the spilled beer, or buying a sponge in a seaside tourist shop, catching Blue Jays spring training in Dunedin is a ball fan’s beery version of Valhalla

By Jay Stone

DUNEDIN, Fla. — On my first day in Dunedin this year, I went to a spring training baseball game and saw a pitcher named Pat Venditte, who can throw with either arm. He has a special six-finger glove with a thumb at each end, and he can put it on whichever hand he wants and throw with the other arm.

Venditte, who is in the Toronto Blue Jays camp, has been in the league for a while — he was with the Yankees two years ago and Oakland last year — and there’s even a rule named after him. It says that he has to declare which arm he’s going to throw with against a switch-hitter. This keeps baseball, which is kind of a leisurely sport anyway, from becoming an endless game of chicken, with Venditte moving his glove from hand to hand as the hitter moves from one side of the plate to the other until someone gives up.

This is one of the wonderful things about baseball: there’s always something you’ve never seen before. There used to be a pitcher named Jim Abbott who was born without a right hand but could throw with his left while resting his glove at the end of his undeveloped right forearm. After he threw, he would slip his mitt onto his left hand in case a ball was hit to him. He could field a grounder, and manage to get the ball out and throw it. Abbott pitched for the California Angels, an American league team that uses the designated hitter, but one year in spring training he played in an interleague game and had to come to bat. Using only one arm, he hit a triple.

This is one of the wonderful things about baseball: there’s always something you’ve never seen before.

I was in Arizona at the time with a bunch of guys who were going to that game, but we got lost on the way to the stadium. We were parking the car when he heard a roar, and when we finally got to our seats, people were still talking about the hit. One of the guys used to tell people, “We were at the game where Jim Abbott hit a triple,” which was technically true.

It would be great if Venditte caught on with the Blue Jays, but I went to five spring training games this year and only saw him once, pitching in an intersquad game, just before opening day of spring training, that was free to the public. You just wandered down to Florida Auto Exchange Stadium, the cozy, slightly rundown 5,500-seat park just down the street from the town’s main intersection, and walked in. You could sit in the front row and watch Josh Donaldson, with his hair all curled and knotted above the shaved sides, chatting with Troy Tulowitski, the tall and morose-seeming shortstop, as Kevin Pillar — slightly bow-legged, with his pant legs worn high in the manner of the quickest base runners — trotted by. The fans lined the right field fence, and some of the players stopped to sign autographs or sometimes hand a ball or even a bat to the smallest spectators.

Not all the big names were there, Jose Bautista didn’t play in the first week or so — he’s resting up for his upcoming gigantic salary — and neither did Edwin Encarnacion, who needed dental surgery, but they didn’t seem necessary, not yet anyway. In one game, a right-field prospect named Junior Lake fielded a single and fired a rocket to third base to nab a runner who had recently left first with such high hopes: it was positively Bautistaesque. There was little Marcus Stroman firing 94-mile-an-hour fastballs, and Michael Saunders, surprisingly tall and broad-shouldered, hammering home runs to every field.

They were the best team in baseball, for the first half of the month anyway, even if their stadium didn’t have the flash and finish of some of the other spring training grounds (the Phillies’ showpiece stadium is in nearby Clearwater.) It’s a big issue in Dunedin, which fills up with Canadians every March. “Welcome back Blue Jays,” read signs strung across the main street (along with thank-yous to veterans, an abiding American obsession), and dozens of people in Blue Jay hats and shirts stroll along Main or down Douglas to and from the park, “Encarnacion” written across the back of an infant or “Bautista” on an old guy with a huge belly who looks like the days of yoga-inspired calisthenics of the original are well behind him. You meet people from Vancouver in the box seats behind you or from Hamilton, Ont., sitting next to you in the bleachers, all of them talking about what the hell is wrong with Drew Hutchison or the chances of Saunders, or when Tulowitski will start hitting. And did you see that guy Venditte the other day?

It’s very relaxing, because it doesn’t really matter, not yet anyway. Dunedin is a pretty little town of 36,000 on the Gulf of Mexico, with a charming downtown of nice restaurants and little shops, none of which — this being Florida — sell anything everyday or useful. You have to drive miles to buy groceries or find a bakery, but there are endless strip malls comprised of places that deal in canvas awnings or offer home birthing services.

But from our place just at the northern edge of town, it was a nice half-hour walk to the stadium along the pedestrian/bike path that runs through town on an old railroad right-of-way (there are places in town to rent bikes.) It’s perfect, but the Jays are looking for something more modern when their lease runs out next year, and there’s talk in Dunedin of ripping down some buildings, including a nearby library to expand the grounds. It’s a multi-million-dollar decision in a town that relies on Blue Jays baseball for a lot of its spring business. Ripping down a library for the sake of baseball is a paradox all of its own.

It’s very relaxing, because it doesn’t really matter, not yet anyway. Dunedin is a pretty little town of 36,000 on the Gulf of Mexico, with a charming downtown of nice restaurants and little shops, none of which — this being Florida — sell anything everyday or useful. You have to drive miles to buy groceries or find a bakery, but there are endless strip malls comprised of places that deal in canvas awnings or offer home birthing services.

Private cigar lounges can be combined with a tailgate party during Spring Training in Dunedin

It would be a shame if the Jays left, because Dunedin is just about perfect for a ball fan. It’s on the water but there’s no town beach, so you don’t have the hordes of young merry-makers who crowd the Florida sands every year. Not that there’s anything wrong with being young and fit and drunk, but at a certain age you’d trade every bikini on St. Pete’s beach for a perfect throw from right that gets the runner at third.

If you do insist on a beach, there’s a causeway about a mile north of the main intersection that takes you out to Honeymoon Island, which is in a state park. You pay a few dollars to get in, and you can walk along a wild coast of treacherous currents where the tides sometimes come so far in you get only a narrow sandy footpath to walk along. It’s delightful, though, if you like solitude and choppy waves. For those who crave more, there’s a 20-minute ferry ride ($14 return) to Caladesi Island beach, which is three-and-a-half miles of lovely sand, birds, shells and all the rest. Caladesi is known as one of the best beaches in the world, but the fee to get into the park and pay for the ferry, keep it fairly exclusive.

Otherwise you stroll into town, grab a huge breakfast at Kelly’s (bacon, eggs, potatoes and pancakes are standard) and stumble down the path — past the homemade-seeming police and military museum — to the ball game. It gets pretty hot, even in early March, so the best seats are on the first-base line, where the sun stays slightly behind you: out in left field, you can bake.

Afterward, everyone heads to one of dozens of bars: Florida is a beery culture, and along with happy hours and other specials, there are money-off offers if you present Blue Jay ticket stubs. I enjoyed the atmosphere at Eddie’s, a sports bar on Alt. 19, the highway that runs through town, where you can watch more sports — I spent many a trying evening at Eddie’s watching the Senators lose — or, on Thursday nights, play trivia for prizes of gift certificates for yet more beer. The food’s pretty good too. Kelly’s has jazz on Wednesday evenings on the covered back patio: not great jazz, but a welcome alternative to the music of The Stones and The Eagles and the rest of the stuff that has become the soundtrack of the boozy after-party of life.

Next door to Kelly’s is a club called Blur where, on Tuesday evenings, you can take part in transvestite bingo: two cross-dressers call numbers and make lewd suggestions to an audience mostly made up of local hipsters. On the night I was there, a well-developed “adult entertainer” from Clearwater took off her top to change into a bingo T-shirt, a development that could have affected nearby tide patterns. None of this concerned the nearby table of four older women who looked as if they were there for the bingo and were willing to wait out the campy commentary between numbers (O-69 is read out in unison by the crowd).

It’s just short drive to Clearwater, St. Petersburg, Indian Rocks and the other beaches that run south of Tampa, or you can go nine miles north to Tarpon Springs, a touristy town with a lot of Greek and seafood restaurants on its waterfront. It’s a sponge-fishing centre, and you can take tours, look at boats, buy sponges or drink more beer. A few miles to the east is a place called Safety Harbor that’s a quaint little town (with a bakery!) and has a long wharf where, if you’re patient, you might see big manatees lumbering under the waves.

The gulf sunsets are spectacular, of course, and one evening by the waterside deck at our resort, a couple of porpoises came swimming by. That was pretty good too.

The sun sets on Dunedin…

Photos: Jay and Sandy Stone

THE EX-PRESS, March 15, 2016

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