Seeing is believing

I said this yesterday and I’ll say it again; whenever, you come to spring training you just never know what you’re going to see. All you can count on is that it’s going to be memorable. Such was the case for Cheryl and me again today.

You know the saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Well, in the case of the photos below, words can not possibly describe what you’re about to see. “Funny” doesn’t begin to describe the site of Mike Scioscia running the bases during some drills today at Tempe.






Now, I thought of all kinds of captions for the photos of Scioscia including, “Angels add some speed to the team” or “Eat your heart out Bengie Molina.” I bet I could come up with these all night long and I’m sure you could too. Feel free to post them in the comments.

The photo in the bottom left hand corner is of Joe Saunders giving Scioscia a cup of Gatorade. Looking on (from left to right) is Brian Stokes, Ervin Santana, and Jason Bugler.

The photo on the bottom right hand corner is none other than Jered Weaver who looks like he’s about to bust a gut.

This is spring training and these are good times.

One of the reasons these are such great times is because of the people who work at Temp Diablo Stadium. They’re some of the nicest people you will ever meet.

One such person is Bob Emerson, who has a cool business card that reads “Retired” - “If I get the urge to work, I lie down under a tree until the urge passes.” Bob calls himself a “sun bird.” He lives in Arizona all year long (unlike the snowbirds that migrate to Arizona in the winter).

If you make your way out to the Cactus League games at Tempe this spring, you’ll notice the Angels have a brand new scoreboard. What you might not know is that our friend Bob will be operating that scoreboard. He’s pretty excited about the new board and the cool graphics it will show during the games.



Cheryl and I also ran into a dad and his son, who we had actually met yesterday. Frank and his son Giovanni were back for a second day of fun. Frank is the first person I’ve met (that I didn’t know previously) that has read this blog. That was kind of cool and surprising at the same time.

Frank told us he was a regular on the Halos Heaven web site. He hails from Irvine and got the bug to come to spring training a couple years back when another Angel fan posted pictures on the web from Tempe. He’s hooked now.

We also had the pleasure of meeting another young family from Costa Mesa. Blake, his wife Bernie and their two sons Landon and Roman were making their first trip to Tempe. The back of Landon’s Angels jacket was covered with autographs from Angels.

Funny story – Landon (who is 4 years old) plays T-ball and when he found out he had to wear a Dodger uniform this season; he told his mom and dad, “I’ve been traded!” He wasn’t too happy about the idea of not wearing Angel red. Sounds like a die-hard fan to me.

The family is pictured with Robb Quinlan. Not pictured is 5 month old Roman who is hiding somewhere behind the group.


Again, these are fun times – but they don’t just happen before your eyes all the time. You really need to put in the time and effort to get the most out of the spring training experience.

I’ll post some videos from today later tonight. Right now Cheryl and I are off to one of our favorite restaurants – Don & Charlie’s – which is a restaurant I mentioned in my previous post – A fan’s guide to spring training.