Spring Training Trip: Part 1, "I'm bored, sad and lonely"

I'm back from my first trip to Spring Training.  I'm going to break the trip report up into a few different posts.  This first one will be entitled "I'm bored, sad and lonely".

Unfortunately on Friday morning I got the call that I was dreading.  Kev was seriously sick and we couldn't make the Spring Training trip together.  Kev was at the doctor and she recommended that he not fly due to a sinus infection.  He sounded horrible on the phone and I couldn't fault him for not going.  Dex suggested that Kev was just acting sick (the third oldest trick in the book) so that he could ditch me.

We called Jon to see if he wanted to take Kev's ticket.  For some reason Jon hates Spring Training.  Dex thinks it's because he went two years ago and it was really hot.  Jon hates the heat and it has forever soured his experience.  At one point we even convinced him, that we would be let on the field to shag fly balls and meet the players one on one and he still didn't want to go.

I debated canceling my flight and postponing the trip which would probably get put off until next year, but then decided to just make the best of it.  I'm going to Spring Training by myself!  

So I fly out there, get a rental car, drive to Peoria and walk over to the Padres practice fields.  It was a nice cool day in Peoria, probably in the mid to low 70's. It was probably still too hot for Jon.

As I was walking around the complex, I saw about 50 guys in Padres uniforms doing a bit of running and BP.  The vast majority of them were just standing around though.  Baseball practice looks real easy.  The only person I recognized was Chase Headley, he was jogging.  Watching the practice and not seeing any big name players made me extremely bored.

How was everybody else having fun, when I was so bored?  Then I noticed, that everybody was there with their best buddy.  Look, there's two kids playing catch.  Hey there's a lesbian couple eating lunch beneath the shady trees.  Over there two kids comparing baseball cards.  Off in the distance there are two young girls salivating over baseball players.  Here in front of me are two best friends playing grab ass and throwing sun flower seeds at each other.  This is what Spring Training is all about, but here I am all alone, without a friend in the world.

I grabbed myself a hot dog, some chips and a drink and threw myself a nice little pity party on the grass. I called Dex and sobbed uncontrollably in my phone.