Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 3, 1991 TAG: 9103030283
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: D-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By SAM ROBERTS THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Veterans wistfully recall when nearly all of Florida's Grapefruit League baseball stadiums were barely more than fields of dreams transplanted to the tropics.
But spring training for the uninitiated still promises an intimacy and informality much different from the rank commercialism, crude crowds and impersonal arenas of the regular season. Weekday afternoon games have not been sacrificed to the exigencies of television.
No other sport celebrates its annual prefatory phase to this degree; none has the good sense to begin the preliminaries in spring, when a new season heralds renewal and when fans from the North desperately need it.
When I was a young Brooklyn Dodger fan, our family probably couldn't have afforded the trip from New York to Florida for spring training.
It never even occurred to me to ask. And, by the time I was 10 years old, the Dodgers had defected to California. After that, I couldn't have cared less (or, in the dialect of Brownsville, I could've cared less) about most of the regular season, much less the preliminaries.
But what a plaque outside the Port St. Lucie, Fla., sports complex obliquely proclaims to be the "magic to stir men's blood" had, as it turned out, been suppressed just beneath the surface. All that was required to transform me into a true believer again was the birth of two sons and the arrival of spring.
That we chose the 1990 season for our family's first trip to spring training nearly provoked the same level of disappointment that had turned me into a cynic at age 10. There would be no joy in this Dudville; the Mighty Mets had been locked out.
Fortunately, Michael was still imbued with the idealism of an 8-year-old and Willie, at age 2, didn't know better (although he had already been trained by his brother to yell, at the slightest provocation, "Let's go Mets" and "Yankees stink").
But we were doubly blessed. Months before, we had made reservations at the Sandpiper in Port St. Lucie, a second-generation Club Med that goes out of its way to make single guests welcome, but is tailored primarily for families with young children. More fortunately, the baseball owners' lockout ended the day after we arrived.
This year, the first players reported to camps almost two weeks ago and exhibition games begin Thursday, with tickets increasingly hard to come by. Exhibition games end Sunday, April 7.
In 1990, we flew into West Palm Beach, where renting a car for the week seemed to offer the most flexibility (although transfers to Club Med are available by van). We encamped an hour later at Port St. Lucie, where the Mets were wooed four years ago from St. Petersburg on the Gulf Coast to a largely anonymous tract that is the quintessence of suburban sprawl, but with no big city to sprawl from.
Port St. Lucie is just inland from the Atlantic coast, about a two-hour drive from either Miami or Orlando (a one-day excursion to Walt Disney World demands stamina), which means that it can loosely be described as centrally situated, though far enough from Florida's Gold Coast to be lackluster.
Besides the Mets camp, the nearest spring training bases, among the 18 in Florida, belong to the New York Yankees, in Fort Lauderdale; the Atlanta Braves and Montreal Expos, in West Palm Beach, and the Los Angeles Dodgers in Vero Beach.
Probably the less said about Port St. Lucie the better.
The city has at least one obligatory baseball card store, but even the unimposing miniature golf course we finally managed to find was closed temporarily because the owner was off running an errand. With three small children (including our niece, Katie), though, what lured us to Port St. Lucie was baseball and the appeal of a family-oriented Club Med.
Both were worth the trip.
The Mets' official spring training guide bills its sports complex, anchored by a hulking 7,300-seat stadium, as a "baseball utopia."
It is, at first, striking in its spotlessness, but soon seems antiseptic compared to the team's summer home. Being away from Shea Stadium for six months makes it seem almost charming by comparison.
That baseball's annual short season was further abbreviated by the lockout last year proved to be an unexpected bonus (although the players arrived before their uniforms did, so identifying obscure members of the expanded preseason roster without their numbers was no small feat).
Admission is free to daily morning and early afternoon practice, which provides a front-row seat - or one in the fifth or sixth row, if you arrive later - on a work in progress. It is one thing to watch pregame practice from the nether decks of a major-league stadium during the regular season.
It is quite another to sit within listening range of Mel Stottlemyre, the pitching coach, as he offers pointers to rusty alumni and unseasoned rookies, to chat about local haunts with Howard Johnson as he takes a break from batting fungoes and to share the stands with Fred Wilpon, the gracious co-owner of the Mets, and Fay Vincent, the baseball commissioner, who was touring spring training camps.
Intimacy has its risks, however. One player swung and muttered an audible obscenity when he missed the ball.
Unfortunately, our 2-year-old didn't miss the word. For the several months that our son recounted the experience, we had to explain that if he repeated the epithet he, too, would be dispatched to a bench - in our apartment.
Also, as spellbinding as baseball up close became for my wife and me, the dosage for younger children should be governed by the vaudeville prescription: always leave them wanting a little more. After several hours on the first day of our visit, the options at the concession stand had been exhausted and the demands shifted to when we would resume our search for the miniature golf course.
The Mets and Yankees, numbed, perhaps, to the relentlessness of those New York fans who hound them for fun and profit, share among the worst reputations in baseball for giving autographs.
Moreover, most Mets' practice fields in Port St. Lucie are shielded from fans by a chain-link fence. Still, we found players approachable and friendly, particularly when they broke for lunch and when workouts ended in midafternoon.
The informality was even more pronounced at the far end of the complex where the Mets' minor league franchises play; one game ended after six innings, apparently because the visiting team had to catch a bus home.
Major league exhibition games are another matter, though. Some of this year's games are already sold out.
Most teams recommend that fans order tickets well in advance. Tickets can either be mailed to their homes, if there is enough time, or can be held at the ticket window of the local stadium in Florida. Given the number of retirees from the New York region, Mets and Yankee tickets are particularly scarce.
But most teams reserve several hundred or more tickets for same-day sales, generally two hours before game time, which is usually about 1 p.m. Prospective spectators are advised to telephone individual teams at their spring training sites for further information.
Not everyone goes to Club Med or even to Port St. Lucie in the spring for baseball. But incorporating spring training into your plans can transform an ordinary vacation.
Spring training is, after all, a metaphor for infinite possibilities, for a year to come that offers the dream of a new beginning - and of just playing the game again.
The Club Med Village Hotel of Sandpiper is at 3500 S.E. Morningside Boulevard, Port St. Lucie, Fla. 34952;. For reservations telephone (800) 258-2633.
by CNB