Good morning!
The only time baseball’s slow pace bothers me is from November to February. The long wait between pitches ended a week ago Friday at McKethan Stadium in Gainesville, where the University of Florida hosted the Long Beach State Dirt Dogs.
Crosby Hunt and I stood outside Peisano’s in the Publix shopping center when Kevin Rainesberger swung around in his late model Cube. We piled into the car like robbers on the run and he spun out of the parking lot and cut across three lanes of traffic past Lake Alice, where people stood and stared at windowless beige houses on stilts.
“Waiting for the bats,” said Rainesberger.
“Gonna be a while,” said Hunt.
“How many come out?” I asked.
Hunt paused and thought a moment and replied, “One, five … then a thousand.”
Rainesberger was helping Hunt buy a condo.
“You’re a realtor?” I asked him.
“I’m an actor,” he said.
Rainesberger was raised in Melbourne and was high school friends with Bruce Bochy, the manager of the San Francisco Giants who announced he will be retiring after the season. In college, he sold souvenirs at Gators football games, and earned 60 cents for every tray of soda he sold. “I was there when the team was so bad that I saw a guy trying to barter two tickets for a cigarette,” he said. “That was the low point of Florida football.”
He lived in Los Angeles for five years but the closest he came to acting with Samuel L. Jackson was golfing 18 holes with him on a course where he was the club pro.
“I’ve been married four times,” he said. “Cros knows three of my wives. Very few people have known all four.”
For the past 22 years he’s worked at Disney’s Hollywood Studios theme park at Walt Disney World in Orlando, where he’s cast as the film director in the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular. One of the stunt women, he said, is married to former Red Sox prospect Rick Asadoorian of Northbridge.
Between shows, they play a paddle game he’s invented called Moatball. “It’s a spinoff of pickle ball, only a smaller court,” he explained.
The university’s four sports complexes all border each other like a campus Monopoly game. The 4,000-seat track and field stadium abuts the 5,500-seat baseball stadium that faces the 10,000-seat basketball arena which is across the sidewalk from the 88,500-seat football stadium.
Last year, McKethan Stadium was sold out for the defending national champions’ season opener, but Friday’s game was a few hundred seats shy of a sellout. Our bleacher seats cost $6, and Gator fans did the “chomp” and pounded their feet on the aluminum stands behind us.
The public address announcer was an amped-up Top 40 DJ-type, who lacked the understated dignity of the late Sherm Feller and Bob Shepherd. Reggie Jackson called Shepherd the voice of God, and the deep-voiced Feller occasionally broke his silence to utter “passed ball” for Fenway fans who were keeping score.
The sloppily-played game lasted two minutes short of four hours (hey, I asked for it). The pitchers combined for 14 walks and hit four batters, and an out call by the third base umpire was overturned, helping the Gators to a four-run first inning.
Gators catcher Brady Smith allowed two passed balls, watched three wild pitches sail past him and dropped two popups. “He kept his mask on,” gasped Hunt. “Throw away the mask! We learned that in Little League.”
We left in the seventh inning after Dirt Dogs left fielder Calvin Estrada let a bases-loaded fly ball drop behind him and the Gators took a commanding 8-2 lead.
The Gators won again Saturday, and Sunday was dollar day. The woman in front of us handed the ticket clerk a $100 bill and asked if he could cash it. He nodded while her two teenage sons stood next to her embarrassed. “Now, we can pay for the popcorn!” she exclaimed.
Hunt walked through the turnstile and I stayed back to drink my water. I tossed the plastic bottle into the recyclable bin and walked over to the ticket window, got the clerk’s attention and asked, “Can you cash a $500 bill?”
During the game I read the newspaper, ate a pulled pork sandwich and felt grateful knowing that back home the weather’s lousy and my friends are cranky.
We sat in the last row of the right field bleachers next to the TV cameraman who wore shorts and white socks with a Miami Dolphins logo on the tops.
A foul ball sailed over my head, bounced off the concrete deck and over a fence into the track stadium. Two kids ran over and yelled to a pole vaulter who picked the ball up and tossed it over their heads.
Sprinters were practicing leaving the starting blocks and a coach raised her pistol and squeezed the trigger. At the same exact moment, a pitch landed in the catcher’s glove. The gunshot reverberated into the stadium, the crowd oooed and a startled fan looked at us and exclaimed, “What was that?”
The Gators scored two runs in the third inning and one run in the fourth and the score held up for a 3-1 win.
Over 12,000 fans had spun through turnstiles for the three-game series. All but two Gators hail from the Sunshine State, and the media guide lists 57 players who’ve reached the Major Leagues, including former Red Sox catcher Haywood Sullivan and his son Marc.
Earlier this month the school announced plans to build a $65 million stadium that will seat 10,000. It will include indoor pitching and batting cages, a team lounge and an expanded locker area. “There’s not a day that goes by I don’t pinch myself,” said Florida coach Kevin O’Sullivan, who garnered his 500th career win on Sunday.
The next morning, I drove across town and handed over my crumpled ticket stub at Krispy Kreme, cashing in on a promotion that offers two free doughnuts whenever a Gator player hits a double.
On Wednesday, the Gators played the University of North Florida. I went alone and wrote down the lineups that are posted behind home plate.
At McKethan Field, anyone not wearing blue-and-orange is considered the enemy. A stocky fan in his 60s stood beside me wearing a Gators t-shirt. “You guys are off to a good start,” I said, decked out in my King Arthur Flour t-shirt and Realtree Outdoors baseball hat.
He stared at me in disbelief, and I said, “Three straight wins, right?”
“No!” he barked. “They got beat last night, 6-1, by Central Florida. Two hits.”
He walked away, digusted, and I turned and yelled at his back, “My apologies!”
It wouldn’t get any better against North Florida, a school so small they couldn’t afford to bring their mascot Ozzie Osprey. Last year, North Florida finished 28-28 against no-name teams like Southern Illinois, Radford, Savannah State and Stetson.
A pair of Tanners — Tanner Murphy and Tanner May — blasted pitches by Florida freshman Christian Scott over the left field bleachers, and the Gators mustered only eight hits — all singles, no doubles, no Krispy Kremes.
In the ninth inning, left-handed hitting Chris Berry put a Carl Yastrzemski swing on a fastball and hit it over the right field scoreboard. Three outs later, the Ospreys celebrated their 7-1 thumping of a Gators team that was ranked No. 3 nationally in the preseason. Gator Nation would need to regroup in time for this weekend’s home series against Miami.
Next week, I’ll be on the road and listening to spring training games on satellite radio. Other than an occasional urge to turn around, it’ll be a quick and easy ride home.
Chip Ainsworth is an award-winning columnist who has penned his observations about sports for four decades in the Pioneer Valley. He can be reached by email at sports@recorder.com.