(Disclaimer: This Post Is Not Really About Duke/UNC)
So it turns out that Osceola County Stadium, home of the Astros, is a nice little park, but Kissimmee itself is… underwhelming. Also, the Stadium was built by Masons, according to a stone inscription near the media entrance (I took a picture, but haven’t figured out how to post it at a decent size yet; bear with me). I never bought into any of those Masonic conspiracies or anything, but it’s still a little odd that they financed a ballpark, isn’t it?
Notes from today’s game:
-Carlo Delgado has a sore neck – severity as yet unknown, though no one seems to be overly worried about it at the moment.
-Tom Glavine pitched three scoreless innings and feels like he’s on track, though still working on his arm strength. Noting that there were no TV cameras there today, he spent the entire interview with reporters filing his nails — pitchers are very, very careful about their hands.
-First base prospect Mike Carp’s stock skyrocketed today when, in for Delgado, he drove in five runs on two very serious doubles. They guy has an eye-opening power stroke; Willie Randolph compared him to Nick Johnson, though the writers had something loftier in mind (no disrespect to Johnson, who is in fact very good). I was totally ready to get carried away with comparisons, but I remembered just in time that this is always a truly terrible idea after watching someone in a single game.
Of course, Carp is only 20 (!) and at his first-ever big-league spring training, so don’t expect to even glimpse him this year, barring truly massive disaster.
-Finally, I should probably have known this already, but Billy Wagner is a Duke fan (I figured this out using my crack investigative reporting skills; it was the Duke t-shirt that tipped me off). Predictably, he doesn’t think the foul on Hansbrough the other night was flagrant – “people see blood and they panic,” he said. He is right about that last part, but I don’t know; it still looked pretty flagrant to me. Like everyone else, though, I’m a bit biased, so I may be wrong.
I brought an iPod adapter for this trip, only to find, of course, that my rental car (a weird little thing with huge blind spots called a Dodge Caliber) has no tape deck. This led to my discovery that this part of Florida has a truly mind-boggling number of Christian music radio stations. It actually got to a point where, when I found a country station, I was overwhelmed with relief and excitement. It’s gonna be a long drive to Fort Myers tomorrow.
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