Welcome to the third and final part of the series of special reports done by DC on his trip down to the sunny land of Spring Training. This time around: simple pleasures watching a hand sign a paper, or a ball leave a bat. We hope you enjoy.Since I was only in Florida for a weekend, there was only one Red Sox game that I could attend. Luckily, it was the coveted Saint Patty’s Day game. We got there early and hung out watching batting practice, which (excluding the Josh Beckett incident) was a lot of fun. One of the coolest experiences from Spring Training is Johnny Pesky coming out for 45 minutes, sitting in a folding chair and signing autographs, cracking jokes and telling stories. The guy has this down to a science! Johnny has a guy who stands by him and retrieves the memorabilia from the crowd, hands it to Johnny and then returns it to the correct fan. This guy is responsible for carrying three things: Johnny’s folding chair, a blue ballpoint pen and a sharpie. Why two pens, you ask? Johnny says that blue pen is best for signing baseballs and sharpies work the best on memorabilia.
Watch for that person who has that special item: a picture of Johnny when he was playing, a program from the 1946 World Series, anything of that sort. Then, right before your eyes, this simple autograph session becomes magical. You can almost see the memories pouring into Johnny’s mind as he smiles and starts to tell you a story. Just like that, he sucks you in: you forget where you are and you’re no longer worried about your impending sunburn; none of that matters. All you can think about is how lucky you are to be there at that very moment and how much you love baseball. Honestly, watching Johnny Pesky do his thing was almost as good as the game.
The other exciting thing that happened before the game had nothing to do with the Red Sox. It had everything to do with Cincinnati outfielder Adam Dunn. Adam Dunn taking batting practice was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. Now I had seen big guys like Wily Mo and Papi hit some shots and I knew that Adam Dunn was a big man with an even bigger bat, but nothing could have prepared me to see him in person. The guy looks like Paul Bunyan in baseball pants. And as soon as he stepped into the cage and hit his first bomb, I just stopped looking around and watched. The guy hit bomb after bomb, just mythic, towering shots that never seemed to land. It was truly quite a sight.
One other off-the-field thing that warrants mention: Fergie Jenkins was there signing autographs for charity. For $10 you could get the Hall of Famer to sign a baseball and all the proceeds were going to Habitat for Humanity. He was an amazingly nice man and seemed to really be enjoying meeting the fans and doing the charity work. Maybe we can pay him to tutor young Joshua?
As far as the game went, there wasn’t really much that stood out, besides Hideki Okajima's funny, deceptive-looking throwing motion and Wonderboy getting hit in the hand with a pitch and leaving the game. Okajima looks pretty good, but I have to admit part of me didn’t care at all about Pedroia getting hurt. I swear the guy never hit the ball out of the infield during batting practice. Otherwise, the pitching kept things close and the Boston offense wasn't hitting, just like they haven't for most of the spring, leading to a 2 - 1 victory, a good game and a nice day at the ballpark. Oh and yeah, those green jerseys are sharp!
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