For the first time in seven seasons, I am not attending the Championship Game. Its at Tropicana Field, and we treat the two teams to lunch in the coolest third base lunch room with a balcony the length of the room overlooking the field. We watch the Rays play the Twins (today). Then our Florida League teams go warm up on an outside field.
Next, the BEST moment happens. These "Second round draft pick" and "I've played in the College World Series" college players who walk with a swagger because they are some of the best college players in the country, these guys enter Tropicana Field from a door in left centerfield.
They are like four year olds in a candy shop. Their mouths are open, they slow down their paces and stare at the ceiling (its a dome), at the seats, at the scoreboard. Some stop dead in their tracks. Some smile ear to ear, some just stand their with their mouths open. Some hit their buddy on the arm "Can you believe this!"
They take out their phones and take photos of themselves with the scoreboard in the back. They stoop to touch the artificial turf. They walk to their dugouts and put down their bags, carefully. They look around the dugouts, the very same benches Big Papi and A-Rod sit on.
This is what all our players dream of, have dreamed of for years and years of 6 AM running, skipping parties so you can get a good night sleep, working out until they throw up, practice in the cold rain, getting yelled at by your coach, playing through a sprain, long five hour bus rides home after a loss with a liter of soda and a cold pizza on their laps. Watching our players enter Tropicana is the biggest thank you for me for this league. We do it for the players. This is their moment. Their faces are the biggest thank you I could ever get. It is SOOOOOO much more fulfilling to give than to receive.
I will miss today. I'm amazed, but I have tears as I say that. I really am crying I am not there. It is just too long a day and I am really going to beat this sinus infection. I've been put on another ten days of Avelox antibiotic, so I need to cooperate with this healing stuff. I'll be there next year. And for many, many years to come.
